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It sounded like a script, like a rehearsed answer that he’d said a million times over.
The simple life…Nicole squinted up at the sun so that she didn’t roll her eyes. She’d love to see his face the moment that he realized life wasn’t so simple around here. If it was, she wouldn’t be selling up, would she?
She took a deep breath and tried to keep her anger and hurt under wraps. Let the guy fall on his own sword. She’d be long gone by then. It was none of her business.
They came to the sheds where the cows were gathering for their afternoon milking, the high-tech robotic machines hooking up to the cows automatically before funneling the milk to the creamery nearby to be processed. It was a huge structure, able to fit all one hundred cattle if they needed to, the walls open to let them in and out whenever they pleased, steel stalls set up for them to eat in, sleep in and get milked in if they didn’t feel like being in the field or needed shelter from the sun or a storm. It was a breezy life being a dairy cow, especially in a farm as small as this where they could get individual attention.
Nicole stopped, Brendan by her side, and gestured limply to the milking shed. “Well, that’s where the magic happens. Creamery’s that smaller building there; all the machinery is inside, good to go. My dad updated it all a few years ago, so it’s all state-of-the-art stuff.”
Brendan was nodding as he took everything in, and Nicole couldn’t help but notice that he was looking a tad overwhelmed.
“Kind of funny, you know; I always thought cows were only black and white — didn’t know they could look like this too.” He laughed, but his smile quickly fizzled out when he saw the look on Nicole’s face.
Did he actually just say that? Did those words actually just come out of his mouth?
“They’re Jerseys,” Nicole said with the world’s most deadpan voice. “They’re good milk producers. The black-and-white onesare Holsteins...”
She said it slowly, like she was talking to a child. Brendan’s enthusiastic smile had now completely vanished.
“Right,” he said, having the decency to look like he was taking her seriously. “I should probably write that down, huh?”
Write it down?This might finally be the moment that pushed Nicole into a mental breakdown.
“Okay, so…” she was going to say something else,anythingelse, but found that she was utterly speechless. She’d known the second she’d seen him in those fancy new boots that he didn’t know what he was doing, butthis…
“I’m going to show you the creamery,” she said, not even wanting to, just needing to dosomethingso that she wasn’t paralyzed by his stupidity.
Nicole stormed forward, feeling like she was walking through some sort of hallucination, opened the door to the creamery and switched on the lights. It was a white room — easier to spot anything that needed cleaning that way — filled with large steel vats ready to boil the milk.
“So everything’s there that’s needed to pasteurize. Um, there’s a booklet on the table, with instructions if you need them.”
He would definitely need them; there was no doubt in her mind.
“So how necessary is this process?” he asked, looking around as he leaned on the doorframe. “What exactly does it add to the milk that makes it so much better?”
Oh, God, he was being genuine. This kept getting worse.
Nicole pressed her lips together. “Um, okay, so you know how most people don’t die from drinking milk these days?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“Yeah, that’s because the germs are boiled out of it, in these big tubs. Because, you know, science.”
“Good to know,” he said, a faint tinge of pink starting to creep up his neck, like he was becoming aware of how much he really didn’t know. Nicole resisted the urge to continually rub her hand over her face in frustration.
She flicked off the lights and shut the door behind her, walking a little further up the path to point out the rest of the property spreading out around them. If she just kept walking, she might be able to keep her cool.
“So each day the cattle need to be herded from the sheds out to pasture so that they can eat. They’re currently spending the day in the closest one.”
“And are there horses?”
Nicole looked up at him quizzically. “Horses?” she asked.
Brendan shuffled a little. “Yeah, horses…” he said. “Don’t… Don’t ranches have horses? To herd the cows out to the pasture?”
His voice petered out to more of a mumble, and he coughed into his fist awkwardly.
“Well,” said Nicole, licking her lips. “Um, it’s not really aranch,Mr. Greenwood; it’s a dairy farm. So, there’s not really a need for horses.”
