Her Stubborn Cowboy

by Patricia Johns

  “Sorry—should have warned you,” he said.

  “It’s okay. I was going to—”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  This couldn’t have gone worse, even in her most vivid imagination. In her mind, she’d always given him some searing comment about his inability to appreciate a good woman, but she couldn’t pull one together for the life of her. And suddenly it didn’t seem to matter so much.

  “Chet, I think I’m going to have a bottle baby on my hands.” She turned to the older brother, who stood behind Andy with his arms crossed over his broad chest. His gray eyes were focused on her, and she felt a blush rise in her cheeks.

  “I’ll get you a sterilized pail to start milking,” Chet said, and he tossed her a small teasing smile. He knew exactly how awkward this was.

  “I can get that,” Andy said, his old charming smile coming back. “If you tell me where it is, I guess...”

  “I’ll get it.” Chet cast his brother a flat look and strode off toward the back of the barn.

  “So...” Andy said, once his brother was out of earshot. “I hear you inherited this place.”

  “I hear you got engaged,” she countered.

  “I did.” Andy laughed softly. “Unfortunately, we just broke up.”

  Shaky relationships were Mackenzie’s forte, and she gave him a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry about that.”

  Andy shrugged. “We were together four years, so it’s complicated.”

  “I imagine.” Somehow, when she’d pictured this scene over the years, she’d never included all of their respective baggage in the picture. This wasn’t about proving a point anymore.

  “How are your parents?” Andy asked after a few beats of silence.

  “Still driving me nuts.” She smiled wryly. “Dad should have inherited this place. Not me.”

  “Is he mad?”

  She shrugged. “Hurt, I guess...okay, and mad. Not at me. More at the situation. It looks like Granny held a grudge.”

  They exchanged a look. Andy had known all about her father’s dalliances. He’d been her boyfriend during her parents’ divorce, which meant he’d heard all the unsavory details already. It was strangely comfortable to be able to skip all the explanations.

  “So you’ve been living in Billings, too?” Andy asked.

  “Yep. That’s where both my parents are, and the rest of the family, so...”

  “If I’d known you were around...” He cleared his throat. “I’ve been managing that big Ford dealership on the west end. You should stop by sometime.”

  “Well, it’s a bit of a drive now,” she pointed out, and Andy laughed.

  “Yeah, well... I guess we’re neighbors again, aren’t we?”

  Chet came back at that moment and handed her a bucket. Andy fell silent, and she could feel the tension between the brothers. That was something that hadn’t changed a bit. Chet grinned at her. “Do you know how to milk a goat?”

  “No,” she admitted. “I’ll need a quick lesson.”

  Chet nudged past his brother, and Andy looked less than willing to give room—or was that her imagination? He didn’t have a lot of choice, though. Chet was bigger and more solidly muscled, and he pulled open the stall gate for her to go back in. Chet followed her, and Andy leaned over the top rail, watching them. It almost felt like old times, the three of them in the barn together, except in the past decade all three of them had inherited land, one had gotten himself engaged and life had become a whole lot more complicated. Their parents’ worries were now their own.

  “Okay, so you have to grab ahold like this and then squeeze downward, like you’re emptying a tube of toothpaste.” Chet demonstrated, and a hiss of milk shot into the bucket. “Your turn.”

  Mackenzie leaned over, her arms pressing against the hard muscle in Chet’s. She managed a few squirts into the bucket and she felt a surge of victory. After a day like today, she needed to win at something, and if that was milking a goat, she’d take it.

  “Look at you,” Andy said from where he watched. “I never thought I’d see you working a ranch, Mack. Remember how we used to go into town just before chores?”

  Andy laughed and Chet raised an eyebrow at Mack questioningly. On this side of things, her teenaged antics that had pulled Andy away from his chores seemed stupid.

  “Sorry,” she said softly. “It seemed fun at the time...”

  “It was fun,” Andy insisted. “We used to play pool, remember?”

  Andy was trying to pull her into old memories, but the memories he’d held on to weren’t the same ones she had. He remembered ducking out on chores. She remembered holding hands in the hayloft. Chet pushed himself to his feet and stepped away, the place where his arm had been pressed against hers suddenly cold. Mackenzie glanced up at Andy.

  “A lot’s changed,” she said, feeling almost as if she had to apologize to him for that. She couldn’t even explain everything she meant by those words, but obviously she was no longer the teenager who enjoyed bucking off responsibility.

  “Speaking of change...” Andy turned toward Chet and took a few steps away. The milk continued to hiss into the bucket as Mackenzie worked, but she could still make out the men talking. “The whole family ranch business is in the past, Chet. You know it.”

  “Since when?” Chet demanded.

  “Since the big beef suppliers started taking over. You make pennies on the dollar out here. You work yourself to death.” There was a pause, and Mackenzie focused on the rhythmic movement of her fingers. “Tell him I’m right, Mack.”

  “Leave her out of this,” Chet growled.

  “She can have an opinion,” Andy retorted. “What do you think, Mack?”

  Mackenzie rested the side of her head against the goat’s back. She wasn’t about to get in the middle of a Granger brother squabble. “I’m pretty new to this, Andy, so you’ll have to leave me out of your debates.”

  “But you can see where the future’s headed, am I right?” Andy pressed. When Mack didn’t answer, he sighed. “Chet, you love this life, but I can’t do it. It’s not for me.”

  Mackenzie looked back at the two brothers. Andy’s back was to her, but she could clearly see Chet’s face, and his light eyes flashed with suppressed anger. There was something else going on here, something a whole lot deeper than personal preferences, and Andy’s comment had the sound of a declaration.

  Andy’s voice lowered. “I need to liquidate. You have to understand that.”

  They stepped farther away and she could no longer make out their words over the sound of the milk driving into the bucket. The Granger brothers had always been at the opposite ends of pretty much any debate. You name it, they’d quarrel over it. Today, though, the stakes seemed higher—she could tell, if only by looking at the expression on Chet’s face.

  The shrill ring of a cell phone broke through the hum of barn sounds, and Andy walked away, picking up the call. Chet wandered back toward Mackenzie.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “It’s okay—it’s nothing.”

  His gray eyes had turned a brooding charcoal, and he leaned over the rail, his gaze directed inward.

  “You own your ranch, right?” she asked cautiously.

  “I own half of it,” he said, his eyes flickering to his brother again, and suddenly it made sense to her.

  “And Andy owns the other half,” she concluded. “So when he said he had to liquidate—”

  Chet cast her a dark look. “Yeah. It’s complicated.”

  Complicated. That was the word of the day, it seemed.

  “That’s how Andy described his relationship with Ida,” she observed.

  “Well, we’re all a bit complicated, aren’t we?” Chet said, his tone bitter. “Andy has the pleasure of being as complicated as he likes, and the rest of us just have to roll with it.”

  “The developers?” she clarified.

  “If he doesn’t change his mind.” Chet scuffed his boot across the cement floor.

&nb
sp; “Buy him out,” she suggested.

  “He won’t sell to me.” Chet turned and met her gaze, and she realized with a sinking in her gut that the very permanence of the land out here wasn’t quite as strong as one might like. Was it possible that the Grangers would sell and she’d be left out here in Hope, alone, trying to forge her own ties and help lines without them?

  Chet handed her a white screw-top bottle with a goat-sized nipple on top. She didn’t need instructions on how to put all the parts together for this, and she lifted the bucket away from Butter Cream’s hooves and poured a stream of creamy froth into the bottle, spilling a little onto the ground between her boots. The other kid moved in to nurse immediately, and Mackenzie shifted aside to give them space, and there was the sound of hungry slurping. She twisted the nipple onto the bottle.

  “Here.” Chet came back into the stall and picked up the brown kid. It kicked its hooves a few times, but Chet got the tiny creature expertly tucked up in his arms.

  “Here’s your meal, baby,” Mackenzie crooned, and she eased the nipple into the kid’s mouth. It pulled back in confusion at the rubber, but after a few more tries, the little thing got the hang of it and started to drink hungrily, milk drenching its chin.

  “You’ve got your work cut out for you now,” Andy said, sauntering back over.

  “Looks like,” Mackenzie agreed with a smile. “How often will she need a bottle?”

  “Every four hours for a bit,” Chet said. “Set your alarm.”

  Mackenzie smiled wanly. It looked as though she wouldn’t be sleeping much for the next little while.

  Andy’s phone rang again, and he picked it up with a curt “Yeah?” Then his tone softened. “Hey, Ida...Yeah, I’m just out in the barn with Chet.” He paused. “Yeah, yeah...I know. It’ll be another couple of weeks before I can get some movers, but I’ll give you plenty of warning before they come...”

  Mackenzie glanced up at Chet and they exchanged a silent look. This was Andy’s ex, and the sadness in his voice was unmistakable. She’d known that Andy would love again after her—obviously, since he’d been the one to end it—but listening to Andy talk like that to another woman twisted something inside her.

  “It must be hard to try to unravel a life together,” Mack said quietly.

  They weren’t the same three teens who used to hang out. Ten years had changed them all.

  “True enough,” Chet said. “Ida’s just about family now. So it’ll be hard on a lot of people.”

  “So the family really likes her, huh?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  The confirmation stung. They really liked Ida, but none of the Grangers had approved of her. Least of all Chet.

  “And you want them back together,” she said, attempting a little levity in her tone despite the disappointment in her gut.

  “Well, you know me. Family first,” Chet said, his voice a low rumble in his chest.

  Family first. That was what Chet Granger had always stood for. Most of the time, Mack would agree with that sentiment, but there were times that she wished he’d just choke on it.

  Chapter Four

  The next afternoon, after Mackenzie had given Chocolate Truffle her bottle of milk—she’d named the little goat during one of the nighttime feeds—she leaned back against the fence and let her eyes close. She’d been up three times the night before to feed the baby goat, and she realized that if she’d adjusted that feeding schedule, it could have been one trip out to the barn in the moonlight, nightgown flapping against the tops of her gum boots. The other two feeds could have been done just before bed and then at sunrise.

  “Oh, I feel stupid...” she murmured to herself. She felt like a first-time parent who was too tired to connect the dots. She’d never roll her eyes at her friends complaining about lack of sleep again. This job was much harder than she’d ever anticipated, and if she was serious about keeping this ranch, she’d soon need to hire some help. Could getting up at night to bottle-feed a goat be in someone else’s job description?

  So far today, she’d mucked out the barn, cleaned the chicken coop, temporarily fixed a rotting fence rail, started sorting through her grandmother’s garage and harvested some zucchini that had gotten too big. Whether or not they’d still be edible, she wasn’t sure. What she was certain of was her exhaustion.

  She opened her eyes again, enjoying the warmth of the sunlight as it soaked into her jeans, warming her legs and arms deliciously. Chocolate Truffle stood a few feet away, her little tail wagging back and forth cheerfully. A full tummy made for a happy kid, it seemed. Mackenzie glanced around in time to see Butter Cream and her second twin trotting blithely across the field, toward Chet’s barn.

  “Oh, for crying out loud!” she muttered, pushing herself to her feet. Then she raised her voice. “Butter Cream, get back here!”

  Mackenzie had left Butter Cream in the barn today so that she would be undisturbed with her new babies. She was still hoping that the mama goat would accept her abandoned kid—perhaps that wasn’t realistic, but a woman could try. Mackenzie wasn’t sure what she expected when she shouted after Butter Cream, but the goat stoically ignored her and continued on its journey to the preferred barn. She looked down at the tiny brown goat who stayed by her side.

  “You seem to like me, at least,” she said wryly. “Come on. I’ll bring you back to the barn...”

  How could one goat and two kids be this much trouble? She scooped up Chocolate Truffle into her arms and the kid let out a low bleat of contentment. Mackenzie was the source of milk, and this little goat knew where her bread was buttered. It didn’t take long to get her resettled in the stall with some fresh hay, and Mackenzie ventured back outside into the sun to go fetch Butter Cream.

  The goat had already disappeared by the time Mackenzie ducked through the rails of the fence and headed in the direction of Chet’s barn. Across the stretch of land and down a rolling grass-covered incline, she could see the cows’ pasture. Her small herd stood in bovine bliss, tails flicking flies away and jaws munching in slow grinding revolutions. The intermittent lowing of the cattle surfed along the sweet breeze, and she paused for a moment, soaking up the beauty of it all.

  Comparing this—tired as she was—to long hours in a fluorescent-lit cubicle was almost painful. This was the kind of scene she used to dream about while sitting in front of her computer screen and wishing the time would pass faster. Keeping that cubicle job as long as she had was one of her major regrets. She’d kept working at the insurance agency for a number of reasons—namely that it paid fairly well and that she wasn’t sure what else she was qualified to do. Looking back on it, there had to have been something—anything, really—that would have been better, but she’d stayed put because she was afraid of change.

  When she’d quit that job, her work friends had thrown her a little party with a store-bought cake and some paper plates. They’d all wished her well, signed a card and gone back to their desks after chatting for an hour in the break room. The hole she’d left would be filled promptly, and before a month was out, she was sure that they’d have forgotten her. So why had she been so loyal to a job she was so indifferent toward? Had a paycheck really made her fluorescent-lit days worth it?

  “It was dumb,” she muttered to herself. She’d never make the mistake of staying in a rut again.

  Mackenzie continued toward Chet’s barn, but she paused as she saw Chet strolling her way, Butter Cream following as obediently as a lamb and her little white buckling tucked under Chet’s muscular arm. Her heart sped up a little at the sight of him, and she realized that she was relieved to see him. Quietly, over the past few days, Chet had become a part of her routine. Somehow, his dry humor and his comfortable silences gave her something calm and reassuring to look forward to.

  “Morning.” He tipped his hat with the other hand, and he slowed as he approached her. His light gaze found hers and a smile turned up the corners of his lips.

  “I was just coming for them.” She return
ed his smile, then nodded down at Butter Cream. “Why won’t you just take this goat off my hands, Chet?”

  “I told you before,” he said. “I don’t need a goat.”

  Mackenzie couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up from her throat, and she turned around and started back toward her property, but she could feel Chet’s strong presence close behind her. He caught up and matched her stride, his arm inches from hers.

  “Somehow, I expected nothing less,” she said. “Have you always been this stubborn?”

  “You tell me.”

  The Chet from a decade ago had been quiet and brooding, too, but he had nothing on the man beside her. Chet today was solid, resolute, and he wasn’t brooding so much as determined. She had a feeling that once he’d made his mind up about something, there would be no turning him. That was both frustrating and reassuring. Chet Granger was who he was, and you could take him or leave him.

  “Far as I can tell.” She eyed him sideways. “So what do you do for fun around here?”

  “This isn’t fun?” he asked drily.

  “That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it,” she shot back. “What I remember of you, you were always knee-deep in muck or riding off into the sunset.”

  “Sounds about right,” he replied. “That’s why you chose Andy instead.”

  There was something deep in his tone that made her heart rate quicken. Was he suggesting something about all those years ago? It was true—Andy had worked significantly less than his older brother. Except where she was concerned—he’d worked hard to win her. He’d take the time to come find her, take her to town for a cone at Beauty’s Ice Cream or for a walk down Main Street to look at the murals painted on the sides of the buildings depicting old farming techniques from the nineteenth century. Andy had pursued.

  “I don’t remember you being interested,” she retorted.

  “Don’t you?” His tone lowered and his eyes held hers for a moment in a way that made her breath catch in her throat.