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He set the calf down and tried to get it to stand but it immediately crumpled back to the ground again. “Hmm,” he said.
“What? Don’t all baby calves take a while to figure out walking?”
He shook his head. “Calves should be able to do it right after birth. Or at least within a few hours. Let’s bring Mom out here and see if she’ll clean her off and bond with her at least.”
Reece made me climb outside of the fence while he let out the mother, which I took to be responsible of him considering that the mother didn’t seem any less agitated once she was free again.
She certainly didn’t seem to be interested in the new baby we’d just pulled out of her.
Reece kept trying to entice her to take notice of her newborn, but she’d just charge right past the baby, looking for the exit of the yard back out into the bigger pasture.
Finally Reece climbed over the fence where I was. “Maybe it’s just cause I’m here. We’ll give her twenty minutes to figure it out for herself.”
“What happens if she doesn’t?”
Reece’s mouth flattened into a hard line. “Well, then my brother will be pissed at me and we’ll have to bottle feed the calf for a little bit while we keep trying to get her mom to take her in.”
“That’s terrible. How can she not connect with her? It’s her own child!”
Reece looked my way and laughed. “Hey, it’s okay. It happens.”
I nodded absently. Yeah. Sure. I guess it would be weird to say I had a thing about mothers not loving their kids enough to fight for them when it mattered. But that was definitely more a me issue than this poor cow’s fault.
“You cold?” Reece asked, looking over at me. “Jesus, where are my manners? We could go in and get some coffee and a bite to eat. Shit. If you came in from the main road, that’s a long walk. And then I put you to work with the cows.”
He wiped his hands on his jeans, but I wasn’t sure that made much of a difference, considering what he’d just been handling with all that had been covering the little calf, hugging it to his chest as he carried it into the yard. Both of us were fairly stinky at this point, but at least I wasn’t covered in cow birth.
I laughed. “Maybe you shouldn’t go in the house but I could get you something to eat and drink. I’m pretty good around a kitchen if you just aim me in the right direction.”
He looked down at himself and his look of dismay was comical when he looked back up at me. “Shit, this isn’t the best first impression, huh?”
I laughed out loud at that. “You’re doing just fine. I’m… Charlotte, by the way.” Charlotte? Where the hell had that come from? I’d always thought it sounded pretty, like a name I might call a daughter if I ever had one. But then I suddenly panicked because what if I didn’t answer when people called me it? Not that I’d be here long enough for—
“Charlie for short,” I quickly amended. I was used to going by Penny, and Charlie would be a natural shift.
Reece just grinned, a mouthful of straight, white teeth, though one of his front teeth was just ever so slightly crooked. It made him look even more charming than he already did. My mind told me anyone so good looking could only be a heapful of trouble, but again, I wouldn’t be here long enough for it to matter.
So I smiled back and basked in the moment. Just a woman, enjoying a man smiling at her. No past, no future. Just here in this moment.
“I’d shake your hand, but well…” He looked down at his dirty hand and we both laughed.
“Yeah, better not.”
I had a brief out-of-body experience in that moment. Who the hell had body-snatched my life? Who was this person easily laughing with a stranger on a ranch in the middle of nowhere Texas?
It certainly wasn’t Penelope Chambers, socialite and trophy wife extraordinaire. I blinked and took a step back from the fence. “So, um. The kitchen?”
“Right.” Reece nodded and looked down, the smile dropping from his face as if he was embarrassed to have gotten so lost in the moment, too.
Oh God, had we just been having a moment?
I felt like a teenager again. I didn’t know how real humans acted in the actual world. I’d grown too used to a plastic world of fake interactions, so busy keeping my secret that I didn’t even know how genuine people interacted anymore.
I followed Reece across a wide yard to the big, two story house I’d seen when I first walked up the road. “You can head inside,” he said. “I’m almost as new here as you are, so feel free to eat and drink whatever you find. If you could make me a sandwich if there’s anything to make a sandwich of, that’d be great. I’ll stay out here on the porch to wash up and keep an eye on the mom and calf.”
He kept a respectful distance as he said it, and I wasn’t sure, but I wondered if it was more than him being dirty that kept him outside while I went in. Was he remembering my first reaction to him? But still, was he really so trusting? I was a stranger and he was just going to let me wander around in his house?
“Are people around here always so trusting?” I asked before I could think better of it.
