Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Connor
THE FIRST TO KNOW
Hayden and I walk behind the cattle on their way to the milking barn. The donkey, Gordon, lingers behind with us as if he’s really the one looking after the herd. He might be a completely confused donkey, but he’s probably not wrong.
“This is definitely the weirdest farm I’ve ever been on,” Hayden says, and I nod.
“Yeah, me, too.”
“Did you grow up on a ranch?”
“Sort of, yeah,” I say with zero clue why I’m telling him anything about my past. After hearing about the accident, I’ve been checking for updates online whenever I can, hoping that they report it’s under new management, disbanded, whatever it is they do with multi-million, or billion-dollar companies when their owners die.
Instead, all I keep seeing is more and more posts about the search for the missing millionaire.
Me. They’re sharing photos, too, all of them from my partying days, and thankfully, none really resemble the man I am now.
Or at least I hope they don’t. After they first started the search, I set up an alert on my phone for one of the papers.
Any new story that mentions the missing millionaire or the Richmont name, will trigger a chime like a message, and I can check it out.
I’ve started leaving Lulu up at the house more often, too.
If I do have to run, I can’t exactly take her with me.
Poppy would take good care of her. They all would.
They’re nothing like the family I ran from.
My grandfather disowned me, cut me off from the money, the name, the title, all of it, and I didn’t care.
I left and started my new life. Okay, so I left, ran, in fact, and hid in countless quiet towns moving through the country until I stumbled on the Beaker Brothers Ranch.
Thing is, now that I have my new life, I really fucking don’t want to go back to the person I was before.
I was an entitled dick. I slept with more women than I care to admit.
Now, I know that was all because no matter how much I hoped I would find the one that would make me feel less empty, it wasn’t a woman I was searching for at all.
Hayden quietly walks beside me, not pressing for more information, just strolling in step with me, happy to just be.
Maybe that’s why I feel like I want to tell him more.
Hayden shoves his hands into his back pockets.
“I went on a field trip with school, once. Actually, that’s the only time I’ve been to a farm. I guess my knowledge of what makes a farm weird can’t be trusted.”
I laugh. “You’re not wrong, though. This place is pretty weird, but that’s what makes it special. Every animal they adopt finds their home here.”
“Every cowboy, too, it seems.”
“Yeah. I can’t see myself ever leaving this place. Not if I can help it, anyway.”
“You sound like you’re not sure you’ll always be here?”
I shrug, patting Gordon along his back, his fur cool and soft under my fingers.
“No one knows what the future holds, not really,” I say, trying to sound blasé about it all, when really I’m so fucking scared this is all going to be taken away from me.
“Well, if you want to stay, I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it happen.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know. You just seem like the type of guy who knows how to get what he wants.”
“I know I want to see you again tonight,” I say, and he smiles my way, making my chest swell.
Wendy appears at the end of the milking barn, waving the thermos of coffee.
“Took you two long enough.” She chuckles.
“Good things come to those who wait,” Hayden replies, jogging to her and grabbing the thermos. “I can’t believe I let you run off with the coffee.”
“You were…distracted,” she replies, glancing my way, and the way he blushes in reply tells me that she knows about where he’s been spending his time.
Gordon nudges me with his rear on his way past.
“Go on, fella, get in there, you fool, and pretend to be milked.” I laugh.
“I’ll hook him up,” Wendy says, and Hayden returns to me with the thermos.
“Do you want to get milked later?” he asks under his breath before sipping coffee. I turn to him, deadpan.
“Meet you at my cabin at eight.”
“I’ll see you then,” he replies with a wink and then jogs into the milking barn.
***
The snow outside means that the cuddle sessions are going to have to be contained inside the mini barn at the back.
During the colder months, we layer straw over the ground and only spot clean to help create more insulation for the animals, but it also makes it smell a lot more, and if the single guy in cabin three is a critic reviewing this place over Christmas, being forced into a mini barn that actually smells like a barn probably won’t score many points.
So I’m doing another spot clean and adding even more straw.
Then I head up to the greenhouse. Sally-May had it built last year over the vegetable garden as a way to help keep the goats out.
Those shits will destroy an entire garden in a night.
“Why are you in my garden?” Sally-May asks the second I’m through the door. I should have guessed she’d be in here collecting a few things for dinner tonight.
“I wanted to grab some of the mint for the mini barn,” I say, heading for the pots by the back wall. Wild mint tends to go dormant in the colder months, but in the warmth of the greenhouse, it’s stayed pretty vibrant.
“You’re going to hang it in there?” she asks.
“I thought I’d crush it and put it in the bottom of the lanterns, actually,” I say, and she nods.
“Clever. The warmth from the lamps will help warm the oils in the leaves and make the scent even stronger.”
“Exactly.”
I cut a fistful of wild mint stems and bundle them together to carry down to the barn.
“They held the funeral today,” she says, and I freeze halfway through tying a knot around the second bundle. “For who?”
“You know who I mean.”
My heart is in my throat. Fuck, she knows.
I play scenario after scenario through my mind. Most end with me leaving Beaker Brothers, and it makes my heart hurt to even think of it, but I’m not seeing many other options.
A hand rests against my shoulder, and I turn to find her soft smile.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she says.
“It’s not…”
“No one knows,” she says next, answering one of the many questions I have rolling around in my head.
“Then how?”
She reaches up, resting her palm against my short beard.
“This isn’t a comic book, Hun. You would have to grow a full mountain man beard to hide that sweet face.”
“I tried. Most of it stops growing at about three inches, and it gets all patchy and looks shit. Remember last winter,” I say, and she chuckles.
“Ohhh, yes, well, this does look nicer.”
“Thanks. Are you sure the others don’t know?”
She nods.
“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the men of Beaker Brothers aren’t the most observant. Skye changed his hair to pink a good week before Perry and Dean realized.”
“In their defense, Skye does change it every six weeks or so.”
“He could shave his head, and they’d still need prompting. It’s okay, they’ve got enough on their minds with the work out here that what a fella looks like isn’t high on their radar.”
“What about who a fella really is?”
“I think you know this ranch is a home to whoever needs it, and that applies to you, too, no matter who your family is. You know that, don’t you?”
“They weren’t my family,” I reply, turning back to bundle the mint.
“They were once,” she replies, but when I turn to tell her that it doesn’t matter what they were, only what they are, she’s already walking away.
She’s not wrong, and I hate that. My grandfather and cousin were family, and as much as they didn’t want to be in my life, I was equally good at not being in theirs, but since I heard about their deaths, it’s almost all I can think about.
The only time I haven’t thought about the family I left behind in the last few days has been when I was with Hayden.
Seeing the excitement in his eyes when he talks about his book, and the calm that comes after we’ve been together, is like nothing I’ve had with anyone.
He’ll be leaving soon, though, and I should protect my heart from grabbing onto him too tight, except it’s like there is a lasso from my chest to him, reining him in, my whole body holding on for dear life to this feeling of connection, of peace.
Today’s session is only for the guests staying as part of the Christmas Experience, so Nial brings down a container of cookies Poppy baked with her grandmother, along with a few thermoses of hot chocolate and a basket of assorted fruit and vegetables for the minis.
“I’ll take those,” I say, grabbing the basket of treats before one of the minis bowls him over trying to get them.
“Thanks. So, how do you think it’s going?” he asks, as he starts to lay out the mugs on top of an old wine barrel we have standing in the corner.
“They all seem to be enjoying themselves.”
“Some more than most,” he replies, and I catch the smile in his voice.
“Ranch life isn’t for everyone. The sisters seem to be enjoying taking photos of everything. They were making snow angels in the field as the cows walked past earlier.”
“I saw you,” he says with a chuckle, and I spin to face him.
“What?”
“You and the guest from cabin twelve.”
“You saw what?”
He rolls his eyes, which is normally a reaction reserved for his brother, Dean.
“I saw you two kissing by the cove last night.”
“Oh…umm, yeah, we, ummm…”
“It’s good,” he interjects, and I can feel my face growing warmer.
It’s not like I’m the first of us to hook up with a guest. Atlas had a guy from his community out to stay only a month ago.
We had one of the smaller cabins moved up near Atlas’s trailer for his stay.
Keep the nudists together, and far away from the other guests was the plan.
It worked. Mostly. Except when Mrs. Habbersham from cabin three went for a late-night walk and found them buck naked in the pool.
Her scream woke me out of a dead sleep that night.
“It’s something,” I reply, not really knowing what else to say.
“Well, I think it’s great. It’s been forever since you’ve had any fun. You deserve to let loose once in a while. His name is Holden, right?”
“Hayden.”
“Hayden, sorry. And he’s an author?”
“Yeah, he’s writing a book. Apparently, the ranch is good for inspiration. He’s written several chapters in the last few days alone.”
“The Beaker Brothers Ranch magic at work.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“Sounds like the guests are on their way,” he says, heading over to the barn door that leads out to the cuddle cove area. He opens the top section of the door, leaving the bottom closed to help contain the minis.
“Come around to the side door,” he tells them, and a few moments later, the door slides open slightly, and Wendy sticks her head through.
“Is it safe to open?” she asks.
“Yep, come on in,” I reply, and she yanks the door open wider, and the rest of the Experience guests file in behind her. Only Hayden isn’t one of them.
Is he okay? They had horseback riding through the ranch with Atlas again before this; maybe he fell off. No. Nial would know if one of the guests was injured. Maybe he and Atlas got all chatty on their ride, and he’s told him all about his nudist ways. Fuck. Stop.
Wendy climbs over the railing to get into the section where I am with two mini Highlands.
“He’s writing,” she says as she crouches down to feed them both a carrot.
“What?”
She looks up at me with a warm, knowing smile on her lips.
“Hayden is writing, otherwise he’d be here. He had an idea for the psycho killer in his book and wanted to get it down before tonight and your date.”
“Oh…ummm, okay, thanks,” I reply, unable to stop smiling.
“It’s nice seeing him like this,” she goes on to say, and I rest against the wall of the barn, picturing Hayden sitting by the small window of the cabin, a cup of warm hot chocolate by his side, typing frantically away.
“He’s a nice guy.”
“He is,” she says. “Try not to break his heart.”
“I don’t think his heart is the one at risk here.”