by Deb Kastner
“Really?” he asked, surprised. “Did you watch one too many horror movies when you were a kid?”
She snorted and shook her head. If only it was that easy.
“If you must know, I was out camping with some friends last year and a swarm of hummingbirds decided to dive-bomb me. I am so not joking. The buzz of their wings and—ugh!”
She swiped in front of her face as if the hummingbirds were still there.
Rowdy’s lips twitched and she narrowed her eyes on him. He gave a valiant effort, but eventually he threw back his head and laughed at the picture she’d painted.
“Excuse me,” she protested. “I’m serious here. I ran back to the RV and didn’t emerge again until nightfall, when the idea of s’mores finally tempted me back out near the campfire.”
“There’s quite a difference between hummingbirds and chickens.”
She rolled her eyes. “Thank you for pointing that out, Captain Obvious. Now tell me something I don’t know.”
“Chickens are awesome?” he tried, a chuckle following his words.
“No, I don’t think so. Try again.”
“I think, given this new morsel of information, that I went about today’s lesson all wrong. I didn’t realize there might be—issues—where chickens were concerned.”
“Oh, cut it out. I can’t possibly be the only one who doesn’t like chickens. You don’t have problems because you grew up on a ranch. This is all second nature to you. For me, not so much.”
“Right.” He stroked his stubbled jaw and scanned the chicken run, as if he was looking for something.
“Ah. Here we go,” he said, scooping a chicken into his hands and tucking it under his arm, holding it like a running back would hold a football.
“This here is Lucy,” he said in the soft Texas drawl that had always melted Angelica’s heart. She’d lost much of her own accent after living in Denver for as long as she had.
“What are we going to do with—er—Lucy?” she asked tentatively.
“Just pet her a bit. Get used to her. Don’t worry. I’ve got a good hold on her.”
“She won’t peck me?”
He chuckled. “No. Lucy is perfectly tame.”
“So I just um, pet her like a dog?”
“Mostly, except she has feathers and not fur. Lucy doesn’t mind the attention, do you, Luc?”
The chicken didn’t so much as cluck, which Angelica took as an affirmative answer, so, holding her breath, she ran her hand along the bird’s feathers, which were surprisingly soft.
“How about that?” she murmured. “Are all the hens as mellow as Lucy?”
“For the most part. Once in a while, you’ll get one in a dither about something. That’s when they’ll peck at you a bit. Just show them who’s boss. They’re really nothing to be afraid of,” he added with a grin.
“Says you. Great. Thanks for the encouragement,” she said drily.
“Any time.”
He passed Lucy to Angelica and showed her how to hold the chicken. For a full minute, she stood as still as a board, afraid to move, with Lucy under her arm.
But she was holding a chicken.
That was progress.
Conquer the fear, she coaxed herself. Embrace it, and then move beyond it.
Swallowing hard, she set Lucy on the ground and picked up another hen, just as she’d seen Rowdy do.
The second chicken wasn’t quite as docile as Lucy had been, but she didn’t try to bite. Angelica called that a win.
Setting the second hen down, she made a tour of the run, determined to touch every last chicken and face down her phobia, send her fears flying—no pun intended—hopefully never to return.
She even slid her hand underneath a roosting hen in the henhouse, exclaiming in delight when she withdrew a bluish-green egg.
Easter eggs, indeed.
A couple of the hens balked, clucking and flapping away from her at her sudden triumphant cheer, but she barely noticed. She had an egg in her hand.
Yessss!
Fist pump.
“You got it, girl,” Rowdy praised.
Angelica grinned as her heartbeat slowed. One of her daily chores would be caring for these chickens and gathering eggs.
And she could do it.
She might even learn all their names.
She’d still have to continue fighting her phobia. As much as she would like for it to, it wouldn’t go away in one fell swoop, but every time she conquered her fear and entered the chicken run it would become less and less of an issue until eventually she wouldn’t think about it at all.
Setting the egg in the bucket Rowdy held out to her, she brushed her palms across her blue jeans and headed back through the coop’s metal gate.
Toby picked that moment to make his presence known. He was awake and crying softly, the sweet ah-wah, ah-wah of an infant.
“We’d better go in and wash up before I pick up Toby with these grimy hands.”
“Mind if I join you?” Rowdy asked. “I’d like to hold the little guy for a minute, if that’s okay with you.”
Angelica’s heart flipped in response. Not too many guys would want to hold a baby who wasn’t their own flesh and blood, especially one with special needs.
But Rowdy wasn’t most guys.
It wasn’t that Rowdy was treating Toby special because he had special needs. Rather, it was more like he just accepted Toby the way the Lord had made him with all of the dignity and respect he deserved as one of God’s children.
She reached for the car seat but Rowdy beat her to it.
“I’ll get him.”
Angelica didn’t argue. Her arms perpetually ached from lugging the car seat around with her everywhere, although she would suffer no end to aches and pains for the sake of her precious son.
As the three of them walked back toward the house, Angelica spotted, out of the corner of her eye, the multicolored rooster running loose across the yard.
She wondered why the rooster was so brightly colored in hues of blues, greens, reds and golds, while its fellow chickens were all feathered in shades of drabby browns and tans. And she’d forgotten to ask why the rooster ran loose when the others were cooped up.
She’d touched every chicken on the property except this one. If she was going to face down her fears, she might as well be off and running at a one hundred percent success rate.
Without informing Rowdy of her intentions, she turned and strode straight toward the rooster. She half expected it to flap away to freedom since it wasn’t cooped up, but instead, this one appeared to be preparing to face her down.
A chill of alarm zipped down her spine as the chicken puffed itself up and raised its wingspan in an attempt to make itself look bigger.
It looked big enough even without the aggressive movements, and plenty scary when it squawked a warning to her.
It’s just a chicken, she reminded herself. It was probably acting that way because she’d startled it and caught it off guard.
No matter.
She was bigger than this rooster and stronger than her fear.
Taking a deep breath for courage, she stalked forward and held out her hand, determined to touch the colorful rooster’s back and end her day on a win.
It was only after she’d firmly committed herself and was mere inches away from the chicken that Rowdy’s frantic shout cut through the pounding adrenaline.
“No, Ange. Wait! Don’t!”
* * *
Rowdy had been deep in thought, wrestling with his stray feelings for Ange and Toby, when suddenly Ange had vectored off the path.
At first, he didn’t comprehend her direction or realize where she was heading—that is, until the bantam rooster in the yard squawked and ruffled his feathers.
Rowdy’s adrenaline spiked and every nerve
ending leapt to life.
What did Ange think she was doing?
Facing down her fear, he realized, too little, too late. Just as she had done in the henhouse.
To her inexperienced eye, a chicken was a chicken was a chicken.
This was so not going to end well.
As quickly and gently as possible, Rowdy set down the car seat and lunged for Ange.
Her hand was already well within the rooster’s strike zone.
“Ouch,” she screeched as she snapped her hand back from the angry rooster. She shook out her fingers. “Ow, ow, ow! It bit me. Twice.”
“You need to—” Rowdy started, but Ange was already following the instructions he had yet to give.
She twisted away from the ticked-off rooster and bolted the other direction—also, Rowdy noted, well away from where Rowdy had set Toby. Even in her own distress, her first priority was on protecting her baby.
“Help,” she called, zigzagging around and looking behind her, only to realize the rooster was gaining on her. Its wingspan and clucking would be intimidating to even the heartiest of country folk, and Ange was afraid of birds to begin with.
The bantam pecked at her jeans-clad legs repeatedly. Rowdy had been around roosters enough to know this encounter would leave bruises.
But the real damage would be internal.
This was Ange’s worst nightmare come to life, especially when the rooster started flapping his wings up toward her face.
With the full-on rooster deluge, Ange wasn’t watching where she was going and her feet hit on a patch of loose gravel.
Before Rowdy could so much as lunge in her direction, she’d fallen hard onto the earth, tucking her knees into her chest and protecting her head with her arms.
“Rowdy,” she screamed.
His heart was beating out of his chest by the time he reached her.
With one well-timed leap, he batted the rooster away with the palm of his hand and then took his place between Ange and Psycho Rooster to carry on the battle.
Taking the rooster’s lead, Rowdy drew himself up to his full height, straightening his shoulders and holding his arms out full-length, palms facing outward, making himself look as large and intimidating as possible.
When the rooster squawked at him, he shouted back.
“Shoo. Get out of here.”
Still, the rooster attacked, flying at Rowdy’s face, his pointed claws extended.
Rowdy grabbed the rooster’s legs and then tucked him under his arm and held on tight, ignoring the pecks and scratches on his forearms and the rivulets of blood dripping from his jaw.
He marched the rooster none too gently to the back of the house and released him, pushing him away and hollering after him.
“Shoo, you naughty fellow. Get on out of here.”
He followed up by chasing the rooster a few uneven steps for good measure. Rowdy’s limp was always more pronounced when his dander was up, and he was good and angry now.
No agitated rooster was going to attack Ange.
Not on his watch.
His heart was thumping loudly in his chest. What if Ange had been holding Toby?
He refused to follow those thoughts to their logical conclusions. Ange and Toby would be gone soon, back to the city. He doubted she’d run into any Psycho Roosters in Denver.
After he was certain the rooster wasn’t going to turn back to follow him and continue the fight, Rowdy jogged back to Ange.
She’d rolled to a sitting position, her arms wrapped protectively around her knees while she attempted to catch her breath.
“What was that?” she asked with a grimace.
“The meanest rooster in Texas. The only person that ornery bird ever respected was Granny Frances. What possessed you to chase him, anyway?”
Her cheeks flushed a pretty pink.
“I just wanted to touch him the way I had done with all of the other chickens, so I could call my phobia-conquering exercise a complete success. How was I supposed to know it would freak out on me?”
“Quick lesson on chickens. The nondescript brown ones are hens. That colorful guy is a rooster. He struts around with all those fancy feathers to impress the ladies. Hens are by and large friendly creatures. Roosters, not so much. Better you just stay away from that one.”
Ange snorted, then stood and brushed off her jeans. “You don’t have to tell me that twice.”
She shook her head and laughed. “Well, I can definitely chalk that one up to a learning experience.”
Rowdy was surprised she could laugh about it quite so easily—and so soon after the encounter.
Sure, it was the kind of story that would be passed around the family table during holidays for years to come, but right this second, Rowdy’s heart was still beating half out of his chest.
Ange could have been seriously hurt.
“Rowdy,” Ange said, touching his jaw and gently turning his head so she could get a better look at the left side of his face. “You’re injured.”
He shook his head and held his hands up, palms out.
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. You’re bleeding.”
She took his hands in hers and turned them over, examining both sides of his arms.
He shrugged. Okay, so he had a few bites and scratches. He’d had worse.
“You are coming in with me,” she said in an unyielding tone that reminded him of Granny. All attitude and no-nonsense. “I remember Granny kept a first-aid kit in one of the kitchen cabinets. Hopefully it’s still there.”
“That’s really not necessary,” he protested.
At that moment, Toby wailed in earnest, making his presence known as only a tiny baby can do.
“It sounds like you’ve got your hands full with your son,” Rowdy said with a chuckle.
“Those scratches are not nothing, and I’m not taking no for an answer. It was my fault you got hurt. Again.” She choked out that last word.
What did she mean, again?
At first, he thought she must be referring to some physical incident, but that couldn’t be right.
It took him a minute to sort through his memories and realize she must be talking about emotional pain—something far more damaging than any rooster could do.
The wedding.
His heartbreak.
He definitely didn’t want to go there.
“Okay. I think you’re making way more of this than it is, but lead the way,” he conceded, more to get out of the possibility of having to talk about what happened eight years ago than because he really needed bandaging up.
He gestured toward the house, but she didn’t go on ahead of him as he’d expected her to do. Rather, she picked up Toby and placed the car seat handle in the crook of one arm and then slipped her other hand under Rowdy’s elbow, as if to somehow support him as he walked.
Which was the outside of ridiculous. Yes, he walked with a limp, but he’d had to deal with that for many years since a freak accident at a ranch rodeo and it didn’t slow him down much.
Granted, he was pretty scratched up by his wrestling match with Psycho Rooster, but the steady streams of blood made the injuries look much worse than they appeared. A clean scrubbing with soap and water and he would be as good as new.
Still, he humored her, understanding that she needed to feel as if she was doing something useful.
Before long, they had reached Granny Frances’s ranch house. They washed their hands and Ange put Toby down for a nap. Then she seated him at the table in the kitchen and carefully peeled off his blue chambray shirt, leaving him in a white T-shirt, his arms bare.
In moments, she had his arms on the tabletop, couched in a soft towel, while she rummaged through the cupboards for the first-aid kit.
She opened the kit on the table and clicked
her tongue against her teeth as she rummaged through the contents. She finally settled on several large bandages, rolls of gauze and tape and some antibiotic ointment.
He was going to be as trussed up as a Thanksgiving turkey by the time she was finished with him if she used all that stuff. His vote was still on soap and water.
But then again, if he’d been alone, he never would have been taking on a mad rooster to defend Ange.
Which, despite his injuries, felt pretty good.
The adrenaline spiking through him. The chance to be a hero. He led a secluded lifestyle on his ranch, so he would take what he could get.
Even if it was stupid.
He sucked in a breath through his teeth when she dabbed at a particularly deep scratch along his forearm with the corner of a wet washcloth.
“What is on that thing?”
Her gaze widened. “Rubbing alcohol, of course.”
The alcohol burned through the open wound and it was all he could do not to leap off his chair.
“Hold still,” she said. Her voice was gentle but she had a death grip on his wrist. “I have to make sure the wound is clean before I bandage it.”
“By digging to China? Why did you have to go and use rubbing alcohol? A little soap and water would have sufficed just fine.”
“You may be the expert in ranch living, but I took a course in first aid before Toby was born and I am Red Cross certified. Who knows what kind of germs those awful claws are carrying? I don’t want any of your wounds to become infected. As it is, that one on your jaw may leave a scar.”
A scar?
Cool.
Didn’t scars make a man look rugged?
The ladies loved them, right?
Somehow, he suspected Ange wouldn’t feel the same way if he were to voice his thoughts.
“That chicken really did some damage.”
“Rooster,” he corrected without thinking.
“Right. Rooster. The one with the bright feathers. I won’t make that mistake again. Thankfully, they don’t have roosters running loose in downtown Denver.”
Rowdy assumed such a statement was meant to reassure him, and he guessed in a way it did. She and Toby would be gone before long, and the land would be his.
But there was a part of him that didn’t want her to go, at least not yet. They had unfinished business. He had not yet taught her to know and love sheep farming, and maybe catch a glimpse of what might have been if she had not run off on him the night before their wedding.
