Her mouth went dry. Holden’s shirt dangled open, revealing his very fit physique. She’d had a witty retort, but for the life of her, she could not think of what it was. She sucked in a breath as the tanned flesh of his chiseled navel slowly disappeared as his fingers worked to fasten each button.
Look up! she demanded—pleaded with herself.
After a moment, she was finally able to divert her gaze to his face, though with his sexy blue eyes and dimpled smile, she was doomed. He was a very handsome man.
“I brought your boots in,” he said, jutting his chin toward the fireplace. “They should be nice and toasty by now,” he said as he took a step toward her and reached up, pulling something from the cupboard above her. “Would you like to help me collect the eggs?”
She cleared her throat and forced herself to focus on his words.
“Eggs? Yes. I would like that. Very much. Mmhmmm. Yep.”
He laughed. “Are you all right?” he asked as he looked down at her, his brows etched together.
She didn’t trust herself to speak again, so she folded her lips together and simply nodded.
“Well, what are you waiting for?”
She stood there a moment, unsure what he was insinuating.
The boots.
She dodged her way around him, found a seat in the little wooden back chair near the fireplace, and tugged on her warmed boots. She glanced up to see Holden tucking his shirt into his waistband.
She exhaled smartly, then jumped up and met him at the door.
Holden handed her a basket and the new jacket they had picked up for her in town.
“Ready?”
As they approached the pen, he took a few minutes to explain what she needed to do. They had over twenty chickens in the enormous coop and she’d never actually been in one, so she wasn’t sure what to expect.
“Remember, even though the chickens can’t bite, they can peck. And it’ll hurt. So, do your best not to get pecked.” He opened the pen door and walked with her to the coop gate.
“Gee, thanks for that,” she said as she cautiously approached the door.
“After we collect all the eggs, we need to let them out into the pen to roam around.”
“Why does that sound like one of those things that is easier said than done?” she asked as she approached the miniature-sized barn-style building.
“Don’t worry. You’ll do just fine.”
Once they got inside, Olivia took a moment to study it. If she ever used collecting eggs in one of her books, she wanted to make sure it would be as close to real-life as possible. Several cubicle-style boxes sat against the wall along with a few heavy baskets lined with straw bedding—most of them occupied by sleeping hens. One chicken had perched itself on one of the shelves, and a couple of them roamed around the elevated wooden floor.
“It’ll go much easier if you don’t wake them,” he told her, lifting one hen very carefully and retrieving her egg.
It didn’t look too difficult.
Olivia followed his example to the tee and when she’d successfully collected her first egg, she nearly dropped it before she could get it into the basket.
“Careful,” he reminded her in low, quiet tones.
COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!
In moments, the coop was a muddle of chaos as the chickens awoke all at once at the rooster’s crow. Amidst the commotion, several of the hens left their roosts with the eggs still lying neatly in the straw—making for easy collection.
“Do we have them all?” she asked loudly, counting the eggs in her basket.
Holden held up a finger. “I’ll get the last one and meet you out in the pen.”
Olivia opened the coop door and stepped out onto the ramp, but was greeted by a strutting rooster, eying her from the bottom of the plank.
“Holden?” she called nervously over her shoulder in a quiet voice.
The animal was more than twice the size of any of the hens inside.
“Holden,” she called again. “There’s a rooster out here that doesn’t look very happy with me.” She could hear the slight shake in her voice and chastised herself for her cowardice.
You can do this. You are smart. You are brave. You’ve got this.
When she took another slow step down the run, the rooster crowed loudly and started to chase her up the ramp. She stumbled backward over the top rung, but managed to knock Holden back far enough that they could close the door. She stood with her rear-end against the wood, set the basket down—grateful the eggs had not been broken in the process—and placed her hands on her knees, her heart pumping heavily inside her chest.
“We’re trapped,” she said breathily, then started to laugh.
“I see you’ve met Brewster.”
“You have a rooster named Brewster?”
“Sad, isn’t it? He’s the meanest, orneriest rooster you’ll ever meet, but you just have to show him who’s boss.”
“And how exactly am I supposed to do that?” She shook her head.
“So, you can hold a bullsnake without a second thought, but you’re scared of a little old rooster.”
“Little?” she asked incredulously. “Have you seen that thing?”
He was right though.
Buck up, Liv.
“All right. Since I don’t want to be stuck in here all morning, tell me what I need to do.”
“I’ll show you what you’ll need to do next time. Without gloves and a thicker coat, he’ll eat you alive.”
“That’s encouraging.”
Holden stepped in front of her and opened the door. Brewster was not there waiting for them. Maybe there wouldn’t have to be anymore chicken related lessons today after all. Olivia picked up the basket of eggs and looped it over her forearm, then placed her hand against Holden’s strong back and followed him down the ramp. They left the coop door open so the hens could come down into the pen at their leisure.
Olivia looked from one side to the other—still no Brewster in sight. Her feet hit the dirt.
COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!
“Run!” Holden yelled, pointing toward the pen gate.
Then she saw him, the rooster, running toward them faster than she’d ever seen a chicken move. With one hand trying to hold the eggs as still as possible, she ran.
Peck.
Ouch. He’d gotten her on the back of the leg. Luckily she was wearing jeans and not her black yoga pants. That could have been really bad. She didn’t look back. She just continued toward the gate as fast as she thought she could go with her delicate cargo.
Landon appeared on the other side of the gate and swung it open as she approached. Once she was clearly through, he closed it again, trapping the rooster in the pen with Holden and the hens.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” Landon said, the rays of light from the morning sun adding just the right backlight to his masculine cowboy appearance.
“Thank you. That was perfect timing.”
She turned around to see Holden chasing after the rooster with his hands extended out in front of him. It didn’t take long before he caught the thing around the middle, scratching, twisting, and pecking. He tucked it up under his arm and calmly walked around the pen. He caught her stare and with a smile walked toward her, opened the gate, and walked through—the rooster still in his grasp.
“See,” he said. “That wasn’t so hard.”
“You wanted me to…catch the rooster?” she asked in disbelief.
Peck.
“Dam…” he glanced over at her, “…-rn—darn it all,” he corrected.
Brewster had drawn blood from Holden’s hand.
“How did Brew get in the chicken’s pen?” Landon asked his brother. “I thought we weren’t—”
DING. CLANG. DING. CLANG. DING.
Everyone looked toward the house where a plump woman in a blue dress and an apron stood ringing an old-fashioned triangle.
“So, I forgot to tell you. Granddad hired Mrs. Davenport to come and cook for the week,” Land
on said. By the look on his face, he may as well have been licking his lips. “I guess he wanted to make sure that Olivia had a good culinary experience as well.”
Holden looked down at her.
“Hungry?”
“Yes, sir.”
He took the rooster back to his separate pen. Olivia was amazed that when he turned it loose, it simply started pecking at the ground and strutting around as if nothing had happened.
When Holden returned, he also acted like it had been no big deal, but she could see the smile dancing around in his eyes.
“Allow me,” he said, reaching out to take the basket from her.
She relinquished the eggs and turned to walk up the back porch steps. When she got to the top, he rushed to get the door and she noticed the blood that had made a trail between his forefinger and thumb.
“That’s a lot of blood. We should get it cleaned up,” she said—not that her first aid training would do her any more good after sitting on a shelf for three years, than simply knowing how to clean it with some peroxide, then dress it with anti-biotic ointment and a bandage. “Chickens can carry all sorts of bacteria and diseases.”
“It’s nothing,” he said just like she expected he would.
“I insist,” she replied with a raised brow.
He chuckled and pushed open the door.
The savory scent of fresh cooked bacon wafted through the air and Olivia’s mouth watered. This Mrs. Davenport worked fast. It had been a long time since she’d had a home-cooked breakfast. Cold cereal and a piece of fruit or juice had become her recent go-to morning meal with her busy schedule and she had missed the finer points of breakfast like pancakes, eggs, and bacon.
Holden set the eggs down on the kitchen cabinet and motioned for her to follow him.
The main floor bathroom was beautiful with rich grooved wood linoleum and a tiled shower. He opened the cabinet behind the door and pulled out a box full of medical supplies.
Olivia turned on the water in the sink and washed her hands thoroughly. She left it running when she was done. Once it was warm, she moved away from the sink to allow room for Holden.
“Wash them really good,” she said with authority.
“Yes, ma’am.”
When he finished, the wound was still bleeding pretty steadily.
If chickens were anything like cats, she knew the more it bled the better it would be to help clean out the toxins and possible debris. Couldn’t hurt. She grabbed one of the small clean towels from the box for him to dry his hand.
“I’m guessing collecting eggs will not be on your retreat agenda,” he said with a smile as she patted the area dry.
“On the contrary, as long as that devil of a bird stays in his own pen, collecting eggs was quite the experience.” With a large cotton swab she’d soaked in peroxide, she brushed over the puncture in order to see the wound more clearly.
He didn’t move, but the muscles in his jaw flexed.
Olivia held his hand out over the sink and poured directly from the bottle. It fizzed a little at first, but after a moment it ran clean. She used another cotton swab to scrub the affected area, rinsed it, then dried it off before applying the ointment. Blood still trickled from the wound, so she quickly wrapped it with a large adhesive bandage.
Her fingers lingered a little longer than necessary. She liked the warmth of his hand in hers and she looked up at him.
“All done,” she said with a sense of satisfaction. “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” she mimicked his earlier comment.
“I couldn’t have done it better myself,” he said as he put everything back in the medical box and returned it to the cupboard. “Now, can we eat?”
“Yes. I’m starving and it smells so good.”
Her stomach grumbled.
They both laughed.
Chapter Nine
The rest of the day proved fairly uneventful. Granddad had decided to take Olivia for a tour of the other ranches at SilverHawk after breakfast. They’d been gone all day and it irritated Holden that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the woman the entire time.
He sat out on the porch in one of the old rocking chairs that had been passed down through generations and watched as the sun slowly began its descent on the mountainside. He’d finished up his chores early and had taken the time to sneak in a few chapters of Olivia’s book. He had to give her credit. It was pretty good—for a romance novel.
Tomorrow would be a full day. It was time to check the herds and make sure that the mamas were still feeding their babies. Calving season this year had been pretty busy and had lasted longer than most, but all the new additions had been tagged, given their shots, and the males banded—except for the two purebreds that would be raised as bulls.
He wasn’t sure how Olivia would react to the long ride, but he had a feeling she’d overcome this obstacle with her usual vibrant optimism.
Grayson pulled up into the drive and climbed out of the truck. Holden hadn’t seen his brother all day as he’d taken a shift at the sheriff’s office and then had gone over to Silver Canyon to help Wes and Micah with some of the new horses that had come in.
Holden tucked his book into his jacket.
“Where is everyone?” Gray asked as he approached the porch.
“Granddad decided to give Olivia a tour of SilverHawk. Landon is in his studio. And the new hands are having a meeting out in the bunkhouse with Joe.”
Grayson sat down next to Holden and released a drawn-out sigh.
“Long day?”
“You could say that.”
“Some idiot climbed the fence in Old Lady Haskell’s yard and cut a good dozen roses from her prize bushes. Gave her quite the scare. Now, who would do that?”
“I guess that’s a more interesting case than having to find little Shirley Mavis’s baby doll.”
“You mock, but we found that doll hanging from the trellis just below Johnny Willis’s bedroom window. Now, there’s a miscreant child if I ever met one.”
Holden laughed.
“Speaking of mysteries. I’d like to know how Brewster got out into the chicken pen this morning. I thought I’d made myself clear about that list.”
“It wasn’t me, Hold. I swear. What happened? Did Olivia get hurt?”
Holden rubbed the section of his flesh that had been punctured by the rooster. “No, but I think that devil of a bird needs some breeding hens.”
They both laughed.
“Oh, by the way, Wes said he didn’t have anything to do with the air being let out of your tires last night. He said he didn’t even realize you were in town until he saw you with Olivia.”
There had been another car parked between their trucks, but if Wes hadn’t done it…
It just didn’t make any sense. It was too much of a coincidence. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
It wasn’t like him to worry—especially about someone he’d just met, but Olivia and his grandfather had been gone a long time. Almost too long. SilverHawk was big and there was a lot to see for someone looking to do business here, but he couldn’t shake the bad feeling that washed over him.
His phone rang as if on cue, and he let out an uneasy breath.
“It’s Granddad,” he said as he picked it up.
Everything was fine.
Their cousin’s wife had made them dinner and then they’d stopped off at the Community Center in town to introduce Olivia to the local book club members. He could just imagine the reaction of those ladies at meeting a famous author. He had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. He was beginning to see that there was more to her than the fluff he’d believed her books to be. He’d been wrong about her. And her books. And that didn’t happen very often.
A phone call would have been nice. He hadn’t been able to say the words aloud or he might have given his granddad, or Grayson for that matter, the wrong idea.
“I think I’m going to call it a night,” Holden said as he stood up out of the chair. O
livia’s book tumbled out onto the porch. He’d completely forgotten he’d tucked it in his jacket.
Grayson reached down to pick it up. “What are you reading?”
Holden wanted to wipe the widespread grin right off of Grayson’s face as he handed it over.
“You’ve got a thing for the pretty romance novelist, don’t you, Hold?”
“Get some sleep,” he said, snatching the book from his brother’s hand. “We’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow.”
Grayson laughed. “Now it all makes sense.”
“Shut up. Love you. Goodnight,” he said, walking into the house, allowing the door to snap shut behind him.
Though distant with a wall between them, Holden could still hear the chuckle in Gray’s voice as he called back. “Goodnight.”
Chapter Ten
Eight hours in and out of a saddle and Olivia was ready to head back to the homestead and crawl into a nice hot, soothing bath. They’d been riding all day out to the many pastures of SilverHawk to check on the hundreds of new calves that had been born already this year, and then herding them into fields flourishing with growth.
Two beautiful border collies had been trained to guide the herd and she was amazed at how efficiently they handled the cattle.
“Over here,” Landon called out from his position by the stream.
“Let’s go see what he’s found,” Holden said.
Several of the men gathered around where Landon waited, standing next to his horse.
“Looks like this one’s brand new,” Landon said. “He’s hardly been licked and I can’t seem to find which one could be her mama. She hasn’t been tagged.”
Holden glanced around. “It’s not often that a mama will abandon her new baby, but if she was a heifer—a first time mother—she may not have known what to do with the baby and wandered away.”
Olivia appreciated the insight. Most of her research had taken her to horse ranches and she knew very little about cattle.
“It’s getting pretty dark out here. We’ll have to come out at first light and see if we can’t find her mama.”
“Wait. You’re just going to leave her here? Alone? Without anyone to take care of her?” Olivia couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
Landon's Love (Silver Spring Series Book 2) Page 5
