Chapter 4
Chapter four
Hayden
MAKING AN IMPRESSION
“Are we there yet?” Wendy asks in her most childish whining voice. We’ve been in the car for two hours now, and for the last twenty miles she’s asked the same question.
“Do you see me pulling into a ranch?”
“Well, you said this place was in Bellerelle, well, we’re in Bellerelle, the sign back there welcomed us in big blue letters, so where is this ranch then?”
“It’s about twenty minutes outside of the town.”
“Urgh, I’m starving. Let’s stop to eat.”
“They will have food there. It’s an all-inclusive stay.”
“Yeah, but I’m hungry now. Look over there, I see a big coffee cup sign.
You love coffee, come on, I’m sure they have some super sweet country bumpkin blended thing you can try,” she begs, and I know if I don’t stop, I’ll have to listen to her complain for the next twenty minutes, and my brain just can’t handle that.
So I pull in front of a butcher three stores down from the cafe and climb out.
The air is crisp, even with the sun out, and I pull my coat tight around me, praying the cafe has the heaters on inside.
“Oh, this place is so cute,” Wendy gushes, turning in a circle as she walks beside me. “Can’t you just imagine yourself moving out of the city one day to a place like this?”
“No,” I reply deadpan.
“Really? I think it’s adorable. I can just picture us in rocking chairs on a cute little porch sipping iced tea and remembering the good old days.”
“So we’re on this porch together?”
“Sure. I mean, after my third husband had died and left me with all his money, you’ll need someone to help look after you.”
I laugh. “And that will naturally be you?”
“Who else?”
“I don’t know, maybe my husband?” I reply, pulling open the cafe door for her to pass.
The warmth from inside rushes past me, and I hurry in after her so that I can close it before we lose too much heat to the bitter winter chill outside.
“And let me guess, the third husband will die mysteriously in some kind of freak accident?”
She shrugs. “Either that or he’ll contract some kind of virus and pass quietly in his sleep.”
I look up at the menu board, white chalk in fancy lettering displaying my options. Funnily enough, they do have a few flavors, no pumpkin spice, but cinnamon and vanilla will suffice.
“Belladonna leaves no trace if you do it right,” she says, and the young girl behind the counter frowns and glances my way.
“She’s joking,” I tell her, but I don’t think she fully believes me.
“What can I get you?” she asks Wendy, and she replies with her standard, “Large black coffee with an extra shot, please.”
“And you, Hun?” she asks, turning her attention to me.
“Can I get a vanilla and cinnamon almond milk latte, please?”
“Sorry, no almond milk.”
“Oh, ummm, what do you have?”
“Fat cow, or skinny cow.” She chuckles.
“Skinny cow, please, and it’s for Hayden,” I reply, and she scribbles my order but not my name onto a paper pad and rips the sheet off, adding it to the row of orders beside the coffee machine.
“It’ll be ready in a few,” she says, and I step aside with Wendy to wait at one of the tables. The cafe is busy, most of the tables full, with a few guys standing by the window, holding their cowboy hats in their hands as they wait for their orders.
“Cowboys are so hot.” Wendy leans in to whisper, but her voice carries to the guys by the window, and they look her way with smiles on their lips.
My cheeks burn under their stare, heart racing faster as they make a start toward us.
“Enjoy your day, darlin’,” the taller of the two says on their way past, and they grab their drink order from the girl at the counter and leave.
“So, you think the ranch will have hotties like them?”
I shrug. “I’m going to the ranch to write, not hook up with any of the cowboys.”
“Yeah, but I still can, can’t I?”
“Sure, Wen. If you find some cutie cowboy you wanna ride, I’m not going to stand in your way.”
“You need to get ridden. How long has it been?”
I glance around the room, face burning even more than before, and then lean in closer to reply.
“Too long, but I’m not talking about that with you, right here, in an open cafe with strangers listening in.”
“Oh, please, no one here cares how long it’s been since you got laid.”
Someone coughs behind me, and I turn my head to find a muscled blond mountain man with his cowboy hat in his hands, shaking his head with a grin.
“Sorry, my friend has zero boundaries,” I say, and his reply is a single raised eyebrow that gives me an instant semi.
“Connor, your order’s up,” the woman behind the counter says, and the blond Adonis pulls on his hat, tips it to us like some cowboy out of an old Western movie, before he weaves through the tables to grab his order.
“The next two weeks are going to be awesome,” Wendy says, leaning back in her chair and tilting her head to get a good look at him as he strolls past the window.
“Hayden, your coffees are ready, Hun,” the girl behind the counter says, and I spin in the seat, my smile immediate at the sound of her calling my name.
“Thanks,” I say, grabbing them and adding a five into the tip jar. “Have a great day.”
“You, too, enjoy your stay.”
Wendy leans over and grabs her coffee.
“Oh, we will,” she replies with a grin.
I’m about ten minutes out of town when the first stomach rumble starts.
It’s been forever since I’ve had anything but almond milk, but I figured I’d be good with lite.
It was really only full-cream milk that I had any issues with before.
But as my stomach growls louder, churning in a sickening swirl, and when I swallow, it’s like it’s sitting in my stomach wanting to bubble up any minute. I push my foot down on the gas.
“Whoa, you alright there?” Wendy asks.
“Not really. I think that coffee wants to make a reappearance.”
“Oh no, maybe you should pull over?”
“I’m not throwing up on the side of the road. The ranch isn’t far. I can make it.”
“Do you want me to drive?”
“No. I’ll be okay,” I say, hoping I’m right. I turn off the heater and crack my window, much to Wendy’s protests. But I’m praying it will help me control my urge to throw up.
I’m going twenty miles over the limit signs, but I don’t care.
Every corner makes the contents of my stomach swish and swirl, threatening to come up, and I start breathing through my nose alone, swallowing slowly, not wanting to add more liquid to the churning pot.
It wouldn’t be any good pulling over, I would be too paranoid someone would see me throwing up, that I’d be unable to actually do it, and I’m guessing it’s only getting all the milk out of my gut that will help me feel any better.
“What is this idiot doing?” I say, hitting the brakes behind a pickup truck that’s going twenty under. The tires skid on the wet dirt road, kicking up mud behind us.
“Seriously, hurry up,” I say, beeping the horn. I see his head tilt so that he can check his rearview, and then he shakes his head.
I beep again.
“Chill, man, you’re going to get us murdered out here in the wild if you keep that up. Remember that Australian movie about the guy who was a dick to a local and then the local guy tracked him down and gutted him?”
“This isn’t Australia. And he’s not even going the fucking limit. Come onnnn,” I say, beeping again and again.
“Just go around him.”
“Or he can just go the actual speed.”
I dry heave, and my stomach swirls again, and finally, this jerk pulls over to the side of the road, and I zoom past.
“Way to drive dickhead,” I yell on the way past, and Wendy chuckles beside me.
“You know you could just pull over.”
“I will when we get there,” I say, and the notification on the map tells me to pull in at the next driveway. “Finally.”
I pull into the small parking lot, the tires skidding to a stop, and the engine is off, and I’m out the door before the dust settles. I spot the trash can behind a blue Chevy and make it there before the first convulsion brings everything up out of my stomach.
“Are you okay?” Wendy calls, and I wave a hand over my head. The trash can is pretty well hidden, thank god. My fingers grip the rounded edge, the cold metal chilling me to my core as I heave for a good minute before I finally feel empty.
“Here,” Wendy says, passing me a bottle of water.
“Thanks.”
“So are you going to tell me why you couldn’t do that on the side of the road?”
“I’ve never been able to throw up in public.”
“You just threw up in a parking lot.”
“Yeah, but I was hidden by the Chevy, and it was into a trash can.”
“As opposed to behind the car in a ditch?”
“Exactly.”
“You’re weird, you know that?”
“Weird is a guy on an open road driving twenty under the limit, who was that—“ before I can finish my sentence, the pickup truck pulls into the driveway, the window down, and the hottie cowboy is the one behind the wheel.
Well, fuck.
“Do you think he knows it was us?” Wendy asks, and like he’s got supersonic hearing, he glances our way with a stern frown on his brow.
“I think he knows,” I reply, and I turn before he calls me out and head to the car.
While the cabins are set on the property of Beaker Brothers, they ask guests to park in the small lot just off the road so that there isn’t a heap of cars coming and going all the time.
It was in the info pack my boss sent me, along with the itinerary of the whole Christmas Experience.
We’ve got horse riding, nature walks, private cuddle sessions, a movie night under the stars, and countless other things to keep us occupied.
Oh, and a milking lesson, because who doesn’t go on vacation and think to themselves, you know what I really wish I could do right now?
I wish I could milk a cow. Urgh, this is going to be a long two weeks.
I grab our bags, sling my work bag over my shoulder, pass Wendy her small carry-on, and stack her duffel bag on top of the large suitcase I brought.
“Do you want me to help with those?” she asks, but I shake my head.
“I got it, Wen, you just lead the way.”
We walk down the drive, the scratching of the pebbled drive probably doing extensive damage to the outer shell of my suitcase, but it’s way too heavy for me to lift and carry, so it’s just going to have to take the hit.
The pickup truck is parked beside a large two-story farmhouse, but there’s no one inside.
Wherever the hottie cowboy went, it was far away from me, and I couldn’t even blame him.
I mean, I can. He was driving slower than Miss Daisy, but I guess I didn’t have to be all horn-happy either.
I should probably apologize next time I see him.
If I see him. For all I know, he’s only stopping in here before heading back to his cattle ranch or horse ranch or wherever hottie cowboys go to be all hot and muscly and urgh.
I have to stop picturing him shirtless, tossing a bale of hay.
“Welcome to Beaker Brothers,” a young guy with pink hair calls, jogging out from behind the house.
“Hi, we’re, umm, I have a booking. I think it’s under Franklin Lowes.”
“Yes, Mr. Lowes.”
“No, I’m Hayden Quaid. Mr. Lowes can’t make it, so here we are. He should have sent an email.”
The young guy looks like he doesn’t quite believe me.
“I’ll have to check, give me a minute?”
“Sure, take your time,” I reply, and he jogs into the house.
“I love his hair,” Wendy says, dropping her bag and walking over to the fence surrounding the cow paddock on the left of the driveway. I leave the bags and follow her over.
There are so many different-colored cows in the paddock. I thought cows were mostly brown or black and white, but there’s a large white one and a creamy kind of colored one, and ones with long hair and caramel fur.
“Aren’t they pretty?” Wendy says with a sigh.
“They’re cows, Wen.”
“But they’re pretty cows. I thought they’d all be dirty and muddy and, I don’t know, boring.”
“They do have some interesting colors.”
A throat clears behind us, and there’s hottie cowboy leaning against the back of his pickup truck.
“Can I help you?” hottie cowboy asks, staring at us from under his worn cowboy hat.
“We’re checking in, the young guy went to check the reservation,” I reply, heading back over to the bags. “So do you…umm, work here?”
“Sure do.”
Wendy walks right past me and up to the hottie cowboy.
“I’m Wendy, this is Hayden, he’s working up the courage to apologize for being a dick on the way in.
His stomach isn’t used to country life, so his coffee wanted to make a quick exit on the way over.
” I turn back to the cows, hoping he didn’t see my face just go immediately bright red.
It has to be. It’s on fire right now. Why the fuck would Wen tell him that?
“Out this way, you can come up on an animal or a kid along any of these roads. Best to stick to the speed limit around these parts in the future,” hottie cowboy replies.
“Will do,” I call back without turning. I focus on steadying my breath to bring down my racing heart and, hopefully, the color of my face while Wendy chats up the hottie.
With a creak, the screen door of the house opens, and I turn.
“You’re all set, Mr. Quaid. Oh, Connor, great, can you take Mr. Quaid and…sorry I didn’t get your name.”
“Wendy Summers,” she replies.
“Connor, you’re taking Kiki back to the cuddle cove, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, she’s asleep in the front. Doc said she did great.”
“That’s awesome. Can you take Mr. Quaid and Ms. Summers down to cabin twelve? They’ll be with us for our Christmas Experience.”
“Explains the suitcase,” Connor, the hottie cowboy, says, swaggering toward me.
“I can grab it,” I say, but he shakes his head.
“You’re our guest, let me,” he replies, then he lifts my heavy suitcase with one hand and the carry-on and duffel in the other, carrying them back to his pickup truck with ease. “You’ll have to sit in the back, though. Just picked up one of our mini Highlands from the vets.”
So that’s why he was driving so fucking slow. He just came from the vets. Fuck, now I feel like an even bigger jerk.
Wendy flips her long blonde hair over one shoulder.
“We’ll sit wherever you want us,” she says in her best flirty tone.
“The back will be fine,” he replies, and I watch his perfect round ass pick up in his worn denim jeans with each step, and my cock twitches.
Okay, maybe having a Cowboy Christmas isn’t such a bad idea after all.