AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Hoo boy,” Wayne said, taking off his cowboy hat and running his hand through his hair. His was mostly white now, with only a hint of reddish-blond in there from days past. He wore a huge, white cowboy hat, a plain blue button-up shirt that went all the way to his wrists, and jeans. His belt looked as dusty as his boots, and he walked over to the west side of the porch and leaned into the railing, facing the farm.
“You haven’t worked a dairy farm before, have you, son?”
Spencer bristled at the wordson. “No, sir,” he said anyway. “I’m at Hope Eternal right now. Not a lot of dairy cows there.” Zero, in fact.
“Out at Sugar Hill before that,” he drawled.
“Yes, sir,” Spencer said, staying right where he was. The porch extended to both corners of the house, but it was narrow, and he’d just have to come back this way anyway. “Cattle there. I was only there for a few years.”
He didn’t say he’d left because he didn’t like the way the boss treated his hired help. That sounded too much like something his dad would’ve said.
Wayne nodded and turned back to him. “The job has changed a little,” he said. “Due to some things shifting around here I wasn’t aware of when I put it on the board.”
“Okay,” Spencer said. “I can handle anything. I’ve been workin’ with animals and people for decades.” He offered Wayne a smile as he approached in a gait that looked like it had a hitch in it, like his right leg was a little shorter than his left.
“Let’s go out on the farm and take a look-see around, should we?”
“Sure,” Spencer said, glad Wayne had returned his smile. He seemed perfectly at-ease, and Spencer relaxed out under the blue sky, with the rolling fields, waving trees, and whispering breeze.
“There’s farm chores,” Wayne said after he’d gotten in Spencer’s truck. “Just take the road back the way you came, but don’t turn toward the highway. We’ll go out to the barns first.”
“Okay.” Spencer did as he said as Wayne continued to talk.
“We’ve got horses to tend to. They have stalls and an arena that has to be kept clean.”
“No problem.” He glanced at Wayne. “Hope Eternal has over a hundred horses now. We do these massive horseback riding lessons in the afternoons.Everyafternoon.”
Wayne nodded and pointed to a deep, brick-red stable. “Right there, son.”
Spencer pressed his teeth together and parked at the stable. He got out quick as a whip and hurried around to the passenger side to help Wayne down. The older man did fine, but Spencer really didn’t want to be with him should he take a tumble.
“My sons run the milk side of the operation,” he said, limp-walking toward the stable. “But we’ve got hay to harvest, barns to stock, horses to care for. We’ve got chickens galore, and my daddy has about ten dogs that circulate around him at any given time.” He flashed Spencer a grin and opened the stable door.
Spencer held it for him so he could enter first, and he’d already moved on to talking about the work that had to be done around the ranch too—fences being restrung, watching for foxes in the chicken coops, and all the road maintenance.
None of that would be new for Spencer either, and he took a moment to gaze past the stable to the cowsheds where the dairy cows were milked. The milk parlor sat there too, with several other outbuildings related to their dairy operation here at Cooper & Co.
The farm itself was called Sweet Water Falls Farm, but the dairy side had been labeled Cooper & Co. Everyone knew that, but no one knew why.
His eyes landed on the retail shop here on the farm, and Spencer quickly tore his gaze from it and entered the stable. Clarissa ran the retail shop, and he told himself over and over and over again that she wasn’t going to be there.
For one, they closed pretty early, though Spencer didn’t have the hours memorized. Number two, he’d heard she’d be in San Antonio, training for her new job this week. By the time he put in notice at Hope Eternal and made the move over here, she’d be long gone.
His gut writhed at the thought of sitting down with Nate and Ginger and telling them he was leaving the ranch. Ginger would take it personally, and Nate would want to know more about why Spencer felt like he needed a change. They wouldn’t come at him in rapid-fire succession, but they’d still come. Nate was a thoughtful, meticulous man, and he could see deeper than a lot of other people. Spencer supposed his time in prison had fostered that inside him.
He wondered what he’d learned from all the bad things that had happened to him in his life. How not to snap at someone when he was angry, he’d learned that. He’d learned not to even get angry, especially about simple things like rain and animals that got stuck in fences. Those were just things that happened, not events to rage about.
“…over there,” Wayne said, and Spencer realized they’d gone through the whole stable already.
“Okay,” he said, though he hadn’t been listening to the man he hoped would be his new boss soon.
“So we’ll head over to the barn, and then I’ll take you to the shoppe. Clarissa will go over that part of the job with you.”
“O—what?” Spencer came to a full stop. “The shoppe?”
Wayne simply walked outside and held the door for Spencer. He better get a move on—and start paying attention to what Wayne said. “Yes, the shoppe,” he said, indicating where it sat across a small parking lot. “We sell cheese, milk, butter, and ice cream. I guess anything Clarissa makes, we sell it.”
A single car sat out front, and Spencer could only blink at the quaintness of the place. The shoppe looked like it had come from an old western novel, complete with a white picket fence along the faux porch, dark brown boards as the walls, and a bright white roof. The sign even held the old-fashioned lettering, with an extra P and E on shoppe.
