Take the Reins (A Cowboy's Promise Book 2)

by Megan Squires

  “Yes. I do.” Seth kept a hand bound around two spindly legs as he crouched to gather the chains and pull handles from his leather bag with the other. He’d come prepared and that didn’t surprise Josie one bit. “We’ll have to use all the strength we can muster to get this calf out.” He said it all as he twisted the chains above the hooves and around the fetlocks, securing them in place. “We’ll use her contractions to our advantage.” Seth motioned Josie over with a nudge of his head. “Take this handle. I’ll take this one. When she starts to contract, we’re going to pull.” He looked directly into her eyes. “Hard.”

  Mother Nature waited until Seth rattled off his instructions before the sky made good on its earlier promise. It opened up like someone just unzipped the storm clouds. A burst of rain showered down in fat droplets, obscuring Josie’s vision in a disorienting blur that couldn’t be cleared no matter how many times she tried to blink.

  “Ready?” Seth shouted over the growing storm.

  Josie gave a quick nod. Water gathered on the tips of her lashes, sloped down her cheeks and drenched her shirt collar. In a matter of minutes, they’d both be soaked to the bone but there was little to be done to avoid that.

  When the heifer wailed with the pulse of another mounting contraction, Josie slammed up against Seth’s shoulder, her feet digging into the now muddied ground to gain some sort of leverage. She slipped and slid like she had ice skates on.

  “Hold on tight.” Seth slunk an arm around Josie’s waist to steady her. His fingers pressed into her hip and he bent his knees to brace for the pull. “Here comes another one. Ready?”

  Another nod.

  This time, the calf slipped out to its middle. A hoot of cheer broke past Josie’s lips. Seth shouted a similar celebratory noise.

  “We’re almost there. Come on, mama.”

  Another crack of lightning cleaved the sky in two.

  “Come on, girl,” Josie encouraged as the contraction swelled again. “One more big push.”

  The calf, Josie, and Seth all hit the ground just as a roll of thunder rumbled the earth beneath them.

  “He’s breathing!” Seth wiped the calf’s nose and swiped his hand into its mouth to clear the mucous gathered there. “Looks pretty worn out, but alive. Thank God.”

  Josie scrambled to her feet to untie the cow who strained against the rope to get to her new baby. “Hold on mama. Hold on. Just one second.”

  Once free of the knot, the cow spun around to take over for Seth. She vigorously licked the calf’s face—nose, eyes, ears.

  Seth fell back onto his haunches. He tugged one glove from his arm, pulling it inside out, then did the same with the other. “I don’t love that they’re out in this wet weather, but I don’t think she’s got the energy to make it back to the barn tonight.” He wadded the gloves into a ball. “At least it’s not supposed to be too cold. Mainly just wet.”

  It was up to the cow, now, Josie supposed. They’d done all the good they could.

  Josie could still feel her adrenaline pumping frantically through her veins when they got back to the barn. She had to rally several intentional breaths before her heart steadied into a slower pace, one that matched the methodic saunter of the horse beneath her.

  There was an eerie quality to the ranch that she couldn’t pinpoint, and it wasn’t until they’d untacked their horses and sent them to their stalls with a flake of hay for the night that she realized they’d done it all in near darkness.

  “Power’s out.” Seth glanced up at the barn lights that remained dark even when he flicked the switch up and down on the wall. “Must be from the storm.”

  “Well, there go my plans to take a hot shower and sit by the heater to thaw for the rest of the evening,” she grumbled, only half kidding. “Any chance you have a generator I can borrow? As luck would have it, my old one broke.” Which was one of the reasons she had been so happy Seth had an electric hookup for her trailer at the ranch.

  “We do, but ten bucks says my dad’s got it hooked up to the beef freezers. Last time we had an outage, we lost over a hundred pounds of meat.”

  “Shoot. I imagine that must’ve been costly.”

  “More frustrating than anything. But let me give Dad a call and see what I can work out. He might have an extra around here somewhere.”

  Josie shook her head swiftly. She definitely didn’t want to get Seth’s dad involved. “No. Don’t do that. I’ll be fine. Really.”

  Seth gave Josie an unreadable look that made her stomach clench. “Normally this isn’t something I would ever say to a woman, but you really do need to shower, Josie.”

  The groove between Josie’s eyebrows puckered in blatant offense. “Well, gee, thanks.”

  “I’m only saying that because…” He moved close and took a clump of her sodden hair between his fingers. “It looks like you’ve got more than just rainwater in your hair.”

  When the strands in question waived in front of her face, it instantly hit her. Bile rose into her throat. “Is that…?”

  “Cow manure?” Seth’s expression fell somewhere between embarrassed and empathetic. “I’m afraid so.”

  Oh good grief. As if being cold, wet, and bedraggled wasn’t enough, she had to smell like cow crap, too. Josie groaned so loud her back molars vibrated. “I must’ve landed in a pile with that last big tug.” She gave Seth an irritated, if not jealous, sneer. “And would you look at that—you managed to get by completely unscathed.”

  “Must’ve narrowly missed it,” he said with a full belly laugh, complete with his hand clutching his stomach. He was having too much fun with this.

  “Totally not fair.” Now that Josie had gotten a whiff of the putrid scent, it was all she could smell. Her nostrils burned from the sour aroma. “Heater or not, I’ll have to get this cleaned up. I’m gonna have to just suck it up.”

  “Or come back with me to my place.”

  The words were so out of the blue they made Josie gulp. “What?”

  It took Seth a second to find his voice, and even when he did, it came out as a stammer. “I just mean…I’ve got a fireplace...” His eyes were saucers, like his own words took him by surprise. “A fireplace you can sit in front of to warm up after you wash your hair.”

  The thought was enticing for multiple reasons. But still, showering at Seth’s did strange, strange things to Josie’s brain, along with every other part of her body. Unfortunately, she was out of options. “Okay. I suppose that’ll have to work.”

  Once she accepted the invitation, she didn’t second guess it. There was no reason to shiver alone in her rickety trailer when promises of warmth and comfort were well within reach. It wasn’t until Seth opened his front door and Josie stepped over the threshold that she wondered what the heck she was doing.

  Seth’s home was small but not cramped, masculine but not quite a bachelor pad. Family pictures hung just a touch off kilter on the wall immediately to the right of the front door, and they ranged from full color portraits to the traditional grayscale of times past. There was a crumb-coated cookie sheet on the stove top in the open kitchen and a spatula on the spoon rest. An overstuffed, leather recliner was the focal point of the quaint living room. It had cracks and creases along the arms, right where Josie imagined Seth’s elbows would rest when he read the morning paper. A plaid couch that looked far less used ran along a wood planked wall and it faced the direction of an old box style television that had such a thick layer of dust, Josie wondered if it had even been turned on in the last decade.

  Seth reached for her jacket and hung it next to his on a hook on the wall. “Bathroom is down the hall on your left.” He flicked his finger to indicate the path for Josie to follow. “Clean towels are under the sink. Soap and shampoo and all that stuff are in the shower.”

  “Thank you. I won’t be long.”

  She padded down the hall. The bathroom door squeaked shut as she locked it into place, and out of habit, she flipped the light switch. Nothing. Of course. The power was s
till out and she knew that but it had been a reflex. She fumbled her way in the direction of the shower, but her foot met the base of the toilet with a loud smack. “Oomf!”

  “You okay?” Seth’s voice carried from the other end of the house. She heard his footfalls steadily encroaching until they stopped just on the other side of the door. For a moment, there was no sound at all. Then a light knock. “You alright in there, Josie?”

  She pulled on the door handle and swung it wide in surrender. “I think it’s just too dark in here for me to shower.”

  “I can get some candles—”

  “No!” Josie spat the word. “I mean, no. That’s not necessary.” A candle-lit shower in Seth’s bathroom was not going to happen. “I can just wash my hair in your kitchen sink if that’s fine with you.”

  “Absolutely.” Moving around her, he pulled back the plastic shower curtain. The rings scraped on the rod in a grating sound. He reached for a bottle of men’s shampoo and tucked it under his arm, then stretched to grab the conditioner. “Okay. Got everything we need. Let’s go.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, Josie. I’m going to wash your hair.”

  All air whooshed right out of her lungs. “Umm…Seth. You don’t have to—”

  “I know I don’t,” stood as his answer and before she could protest, he was down the hall and far enough away that he wouldn’t even be able to hear it.

  15

  Seth

  The water would be cold, but he calculated there was enough stored in the retention tank to get Josie’s hair sufficiently washed, even with the electric pump for the well currently out of commission. But they would have to move quickly. He knew Josie wouldn’t be able to do that with just one arm.

  Washing Josie’s hair for her was really the only option.

  She hadn’t responded all that well to the suggestion of using a candle to light her way in the bathroom, so Seth hoped the several he had already ignited around the house wouldn’t garner the same reaction. Without them, they would both be stumbling and bumbling about. Power outages and candles went together, but so did romance and…

  Seth cut his thought off before it could trail any further into a rabbit hole he couldn’t climb out of.

  He slid a ladder-backed chair from the dining nook over the floor and then pushed it up against the cabinets directly under the big farmhouse sink, creating a makeshift salon chair and shampoo basin.

  “Take a seat.”

  “Seth, I can do this on my own.” There it was, that anticipated stubbornness, sure as the sunrise.

  “I know you can.” He took her by the shoulders and pressed lightly to walk her a few steps backward. Her knees hit the edge of the seat and locked.

  “Honestly, Seth—”

  “Will you just let me do this one thing for you?” There was an edge in his voice that he hadn’t meant to be there. He recovered his tone. “The storage tank only has a certain amount of water in it and I want to make sure you’re all cleaned up before it runs out.” Reason was going to be the only thing to convince her. Hospitality certainly wasn’t enough. “Please. Just sit back and let me take care of things.” Take care of you, he thought, but he left off.

  Josie’s cheeks ballooned as she pushed out a fiery breath of air with the resignation Seth knew she fought to give. “Okay.” She dropped into the chair and threw her hands into the air. “Fine. Have at it.”

  Seth rolled up a towel as padding for her neck and placed it along the hard edge of the sink. “Don’t most women like getting their hair done? Isn’t it some sort of pampering thing? Going to the salon and all.” He flipped on the faucet and let the cool water pour out.

  “I wouldn’t know. Never been.”

  “You’ve never had your hair done before?”

  She leaned back and squinted her eyes shut to avoid the sprays of water. “Nope.”

  “Not for a haircut or anything?”

  “I cut my own hair.”

  For some reason, that didn’t surprise Seth one bit. But what did surprise him was his sudden desire to make sure she enjoyed every minute of this particular shampooing. He cupped his hand under the stream of water and then cradled her head with his other palm. Immediately, Josie stiffened under his touch.

  “Relax,” he urged. He rocked her head to the side to angle a stream of water down the long length of her honey colored strands that collected in the basin like swirling threads of gold.

  “I’m trying,” she admitted, grimly. She pushed out another forceful breath that hit Seth’s cheek and she gave him an exacerbated look. “Believe it or not, I really am trying.”

  When her eyes slipped softly closed, Seth interpreted that as a good sign. He collected the shampoo bottle and squirted a dollop into his palm, then massaged it onto Josie’s scalp, digging his fingers gently into the crown of her hair while he washed away the mess from their evening. As he continued to move his hands across her scalp, her lips parted and something an awful lot like a sigh eased through.

  She cleared her throat with a small cough.

  “You doing okay?” Seth tried to hide his smile.

  “Yep.” Her features tensed back up. “Just fine.”

  “Only fine?”

  Josie’s eyes popped open. “Do you want me to say this is the best shampoo of my entire life?” she mocked in a tone several octaves above her usual one. “Is that what you’re hoping for?”

  “Something like that, sure.” This time, Seth didn’t hide his snicker. He let it out completely. “You trust me, don’t you?”

  It took a moment, but she finally answered, “Yes. I trust you, Seth.”

  “Then just try to relax while I get this caked-on cow patty out of your hair.”

  “Gotta admit—not words I ever thought I’d hear,” Josie confessed, but something did shift in her composure after that. She slunk just a little lower in the chair, angled her head back just a degree more, and her tight features loosened enough to allow a moderately peaceful look to slide onto her face. This would be the closest version of relaxed Seth would ever get.

  He reached for the conditioner and spent the next few minutes working it into her hair, making the cream become a foamy lather. He tilted and turned her head until the water ran clear, then took up the towel next to the sink basin and wrapped it over her sodden strands once he switched off the faucet. He gently nudged her to sit forward.

  “There we go. All done. See? Not so painful.”

  For a beat longer, Josie’s eyes remained closed. A blissful exhale, followed by an easy grin, culminated in a thank you she didn’t have to speak. She opened her eyes and met Seth’s. “Okay,” she drawled. “I’m starting to understand this whole pampering thing.” She stood and flipped her head over, then refit the towel onto her wet hair by twisting it into a coil with one hand. “That was pretty great. Not gonna lie.”

  “Think I’ve got what it takes to open up my own salon?” He winked because he was clearly joking.

  “I wouldn’t quit your day job just yet, cowboy.”

  “Oh, come on. You know I have magic fingers.” He wiggled all ten and grinned devilishly.

  “I’m not even going to answer that.” She made a face, then glanced over his shoulder and into the family room behind him. “Do you think we could get that fire going? It’s great to be clean, but it’ll be even better to be warm.”

  “I’m on it. But while I do that, why don’t you go back to my bedroom and get yourself one of my old sweatshirts to swap out with yours. Top drawer in the pine dresser under the window,” he instructed. “No sense being cold and wet if you don’t have to.”

  Josie didn’t put up a fight about that. She disappeared down the hall while Seth got right to work.

  He had a cord of firewood already collected by the hearth so he took a few from the pile and pitched them into the brick fireplace. Then he tore long strips from an old newspaper and stuffed them in between the logs for kindling before he struck a match and launched it in. A small spark ign
ited, then slowly spread across the paper, burning up the words and pictures from yesterday’s news to give them new life in the form of a bright, orange flame. Within minutes, the fire popped, crackled, and warmed the room by several degrees.

  “I hung the towel over the shower stall in the bathroom to dry,” Josie informed when she appeared several moments later, hair damp but no longer dripping.

  Seth had been crouching by the fire, and thankfully so. The sight of Josie in his gray Ford Ranch sweatshirt was enough to trip him up, big time. It was undoubtedly oversized—it had been pretty big on him, too—and the way it fell loose on her shoulders, teasing him with the feminine slope of her slender neck and delicate collarbone, made it a beautiful, startling sight. He pushed off his knees and swiped his hands together. “Fire’s good to go.”

  “I can feel it already.” She came close and stretched her arms to warm her palms by the flames. “Thank you.”

  “Not a problem.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Can I get you something to drink? Eat?”

  “I’m fine, Seth.” There was a softening of her tone, along with the look in her eye. Tender, almost. “Do you mind if I sit?” She motioned toward the couch.

  “Not at all. That’s what couches are for, right?” A dumb thing to say, but all he could come up with.

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said on a laugh. “I don’t have one.”

  He gave her an odd look.

  She shrugged. “Doesn’t fit in my trailer.”

  “Ah. Right.” Seth didn’t know if it was okay to join her on the sofa or if he should take the recliner, instead. He vacillated and she noticed.

  “You can sit with me, Seth.” She patted the empty cushion next to her. “I don’t bite.”

  Why was he suddenly nervous to be around her? They’d spent nearly every day together for the last week. Was it the fact that he had just washed her hair, something inherently intimate? Or that she had on his favorite sweatshirt? Or that the fire casting an amber filter on the room made things take on a warmth that did weird things to his heart rate?