Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Hayden
FOLLOW THE YELLOW STRAW ROAD
“Wake up!” Wen calls as I’m jostled side to side. “You have to see this, Hayden, come on, you’re missing it.”
I yawn, stretching my arms above my head and opening my eyes.
“What are you going off about?”
“It’s snowing.”
I pull the covers up and bunch them under my chin.
“It’s cold.”
“Snow will do that. Come on, get up, I want to go for a walk.”
“You can go, you don’t need me,” I reply, rolling over, but she jumps on top of me and jiggles me some more.
“Nope. You and I are doing this. It’s the first snow we’ve seen this winter. Come on, I bet this ranch is super pretty under a blanket of white.”
She climbs off and takes the blankets with her, the crisp air instantly sending a chill through me.
“Alright, I’m up,” I groan, climbing from the bed, grabbing some clothes, and heading for the bathroom. “Why did I bring you again?”
“Because I’m super fun and you love me,” she replies.
She isn’t wrong, I think as I step back out dressed in my jeans and a dark green Henley. I’m wearing thermals underneath, but even with them, I’m still cold.
“Okay, what are we—“
A knock at the door interrupts me, and she leaps from the end of the bed to grab it.
“Oh, lovely,” Wendy exclaims, stepping aside as Connor walks through holding a tray with a covered basket, a thermos, and two mugs in the shape of cow heads.
“Look who’s here,” Wen says as he passes. Wen woke up when I got home last night, and after about ten minutes of her bugging me about where I’d been, I finally gave in and told her about Connor and me. Not in detail, just that we’d…hooked up. She apparently was very proud.
“Sally-May thought all of our guests might like a warm treat to welcome in the first snow,” he says, putting the tray down on the small table by the window and lifting the cloth from the basket. A delicious banana cinnamon scent wafts up on a warm mist.
“Banana muffins and fresh roasted coffee.”
“Oh, yum,” Wen replies, grabbing a muffin and sitting in one of the chairs. “Do you want to stay for breakfast?” she asks him, and I interject.
“He’s probably got loads of work to do,” I say, and he nods.
“Thanks, but yeah, I’ve got to go help bring the girls over for milking. They don’t like being out in the cold, so it’s all hands on deck to corral them there.”
“Do you need any help?” I ask before I know what I’m doing.
“If you’re up for it, yeah, that would be great,” he replies, and I grab my boots from the end of the bed and pull them on.
“Wen, you’ll help, too, right?”
“I most certainly will not.”
“Come on, you were just saying how you wanted to go see the ranch in the snow,” I say as she breaks off a part of the top of one of the muffins and shoves it into her mouth.
“I said walk, not wrangle cows.”
Connor shifts toward the door, and I grab my coat and pull it on.
“I’ll wait for you outside. Seriously, no pressure, though. We’d love the help, but you’re here for a holiday, so it’s totally fine.”
“We’ll just be a minute,” I say, grabbing Wen’s coat. The second he closes the door, I shove it into her lap.
“Put it on. You’re helping.”
“You know I don’t like manual labor.”
“But you do like cowboys, and I bet you’ll get to spend some time with Nial and that other one…Atlas, isn’t it?”
Her eyes light up.
“Oh, do you think?”
“He said it was all hands on deck, so it’s likely.”
“Okay, but I’m bringing the coffee.”
“I woke up two minutes ago, the coffee is coming with me,” I say, grabbing the thermos and opening the top to add in some sugar, but the second the lid is free, a delicious sweet almond scent wafts up to my nose.
I look inside and it’s not just regular black coffee, instead it’s creamy and sweet, just the way I like it.
I pick out a couple of muffins from the basket and we step outside to find a white wonderland.
Every surface is dusted in fresh snow, and there’s Connor waiting beside one of the barren trees lining the path.
He’s leaning on the trunk, turning his hat over in his hands, and when he looks up at me, he’s smiling wide like I’m his favorite person in the whole world.
I can’t help but smile back. His hair is tied in a loose bun at the back of his head, low enough to not interfere with his hat, and he’s wearing dark blue jeans that contrast beautifully with his brown leather chaps and coat.
“It’s so beautiful,” I say, and his smile picks up a little more on one side in a cheeky smirk.
“It sure is,” he replies, his gaze sweeping up and down my body.
Fuck, this man is going to ruin me for other men.
This is supposed to be a job. I’m here for two weeks to review the Christmas Experience and not fall in love with a cowboy.
Fuck. Is that what is happening here? Am I falling in love with Connor?
“He convinced you,” Connor says, turning his attention to Wendy as she follows me out.
“I should warn you, there is a very real chance I’ll send them in the wrong direction, so I’m not sure how much help I will be.”
He laughs, and it’s like the air just got warmer.
“Might have you at the milking barn, helping hook them up, then.”
“I can do that.” She beams, shoving more muffin into her mouth.
We walk toward the large barn. It’s not far from our cabin, and I pass him one of the muffins I grabbed.
“Here, they’re really good.”
“Thanks,” he says, taking it, his fingers brushing against mine as he does and sending a rush of warmth through my arm.
How does he do that? Everything about him is so warm.
His touch, his smile, the way his eyes linger on mine for that moment longer than on anyone else, like he doesn’t want to stop looking.
“So how is Lulu?” I ask, not really sure what to say. Wen is within earshot, so I don’t think thanking him for the mind-blowing sex last night would be appropriate.
“She’s good. I dropped her off at the main house when I grabbed your tray. She’ll spend the day with Cuddles while we work.”
“I have to ask, why did Dean name him Cuddles? It just doesn’t seem like the kind of name a guy like Dean would pick, is all.”
He chuckles. “He didn’t pick it. He adopted him for me at first.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Well, I’ve wanted a pygmy goat for years, and so when Preston had one surrendered for adoption, Dean agreed to take him.”
“You didn’t like him?”
“I loved him. Little fucker only loved Dean. Would cry and try to get away from anyone else who even tried to hold him.”
“Seriously?” I wonder how anyone, animal or human, could not want to be up close to Connor. He smells delicious, like straw and leather.
“Yeah, he even wore him in a sling around his neck while he worked for weeks.”
“So, Cuddles?”
“Is what we voted to call him, seeing as that was all he wanted to do. Cuddle on Dean.”
“Ha. I love that. So is it like that with all the animals? You all get to name them?”
“Sometimes. Loki was Atlas’s idea. You know, because he plays dead throughout all the movies.”
“Until he actually dies.”
“Yeah, he didn’t know that at the time.”
“So you like Marvel movies?” I ask, and he nods.
“I was probably one of the few guys out here to have seen them all. I like action movies.”
“There’s a movie night at the ranch coming up, isn’t there?” I ask, remembering something on the itinerary.
“Yeah, the guys have it all planned. They’re showing two movies, I think, one for the kids and then one for the adults. Both Christmas movies.”
We reach the main barn, and Atlas steps out as Connor opens the gate for me and Wen to pass through. Wendy has stayed a step behind the whole way, but sidles up next to me now and links her arm with mine to lean in close to my ear.
“You should ask him to go with you,” she whispers.
“To what?” I ask.
“The movie night, you doofus. He’s clearly into you, and I don’t mean just a hookup. I think he really likes you.”
“You figured that out from watching us walk from the cabin to the barn?”
“Yes, actually, I figured that out from the way his whole face lights up when he looks at you.”
“I’m only here for another week, Wen.”
“So make the most of it.”
“Maybe,” I say, and she grabs the thermos.
“I’m taking this to the milking barn with me.” I don’t tell her it’s loaded with almond milk and sugar, and chuckle as her face scrunches up when she sips it. “Seriously, how sweet do you need it?”
“You can give it back.”
“No chance. It’s still better than no coffee at all.”
“I’ll take you over,” Atlas tells her, and they leave.
“So, how do we convince a herd of cows to come out of their nice warm barn to be milked?” I ask as he opens the door of the main barn wide, the warmth of the air inside immediately surrounds me, and I’m reminded of how warm Miss Moo was to sit with.
It was like leaning up against a giant hot water bottle.
“Cows are creatures of habit. They do this every day, and they like being milked, so most will walk over like normal, even through the cold.”
“Most?”
“Yeah, we have a few girls that can be stubborn, so we’ll walk behind them and give them a few claps to keep them motivated to move on.”
“And they’ll just know what way to go, even in this?
” I ask, turning in the snow as more flakes drift down in a soft scattering.
It puts a white haze over everything, and while I can still see the red milking barn through the haze, it’s nowhere near as clear as it normally is.
“Won’t their feet get cold? I’m in warm boots and my feet are still freezing. ”
“I’ll grab you a pair of wool socks later.
The cows’ hooves are pretty well insulated, but we’ll make the walk easier for them,” he says just as I spot the green tractor headed our way with a plow attachment fitted to the front, plowing a path toward us from the milking barn.
Following close behind is another tractor, and someone is standing on the trailer hooked up to the back of it, shoveling something out. “Here are the guys now.”
It’s not until they get really close that I can see what they’re doing. After the plow pushes the snow to the side, creating a clear pathway, the other tractor is pulling a trailer of straw that is being laid down over the cleared path.
“It’s like their own yellow brick road,” I say, and Connor chuckles.
“A classic movie. The books were better, though.”
“Have you read the Oz novels?”
He nods. “I read the first one in school, then I kept going. I used to have the whole series.”
“You don’t still have them?”
“No, they’re…gone,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck and looking anywhere but at me.
That’s the third time now I think that he’s reacted weirdly to talking about his past. He mentioned he was alone, but I just have this feeling like there is more to it than that.
Maybe his childhood was rough, or his family were horrible people, or maybe they were amazing and just thinking about them makes him too sad, so he avoids thinking about them?
I should just let it go. Leave him his secrets.
I have enough of my own, like the fact that I haven’t told him that I am here for work, to review the ranch.
Would he even care? I mean, he’d want the review to be positive, and it’s been great so far, anyway, but would he stop wanting to spend time with me outside of the planned activities if he knew?
I’m not ready to let go of our quiet time together.
It’s not even the sex, though that part is pretty fucking incredible.
It’s the time before and after. Just being near him puts my mind at ease.
“Well, I totally agree, the books were amazing. I fell in love with reading in school, too. Shakespeare was what had me wanting to be a writer,” I say, deciding to move on from his past by talking about my own.
“So you wanted to write plays?”
“Yeah, for a while. I did actually write a couple in my final years of schooling. The drama club performed one of them.”
“That’s really cool.”
“I thought so. It didn’t get such great reviews, though.”
“Not every story is for everybody,” he says, rubbing the head of one of the cows waiting by the internal railing containing them.
They start to moo at each other like they’re talking in their own cow language, and I guess for all I know, they are.
A cow lifts its head over the rail and nudges my arm, so I give it a scratch behind the ears.
“I guess you’re right,” I say, and he smiles that wide smile I love so much.
“I know I am. Now, come on, let’s get these girls off to see the wizard.”