Chapter Two #2
“Oh, I live with my parents too,” he said, then shrugged one shoulder. “I mean, kind of.”
“How do you ‘kind of’ live with someone?”
“We’ve got a great big homestead at Shiloh Ridge,” he said.
“My daddy was one of the co-owners, and we lived in the house with my aunt and uncle and their family for a while. Then they had way too many kids, so they built another house. But the homestead is huge and has two wings. I live in the East Wing. My parents live in the West one.”
“Wow,” she said. “A house with wings.”
“It’s a big house,” he said. “There’s a bottom-floor apartment too.” He didn’t dare look at her or ask any of his other questions.
When she made no other comments about his family or the wealth at Shiloh Ridge, he said, “I’ll take ‘em for the seven thousand, and I really do need an education on llamas—starting with….”
“With what?” Savannah asked.
“Trailering,” he said. “Do I need a special kind of trailer, or can I bring my horse trailer?”
“A horse trailer will work as long as it has good airflow,” she said.
“What about if it’s enclosed but has air conditioning?”
“You have an enclosed horse trailer with air conditioning?” she asked.
“And non-slip flooring.” He looked over to her. “Maybe I could ask you a bunch of questions about llamas over dinner.”
Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth, all while Wilder begged God that she wouldn’t reject him.
“Maybe,” she finally said. “I can actually bring the llamas to you. They might settle in better if I’m there to give them a little pep talk before they meet the lambs.”
He chuckled, because at least she hadn’t told him no. “A pep talk, huh? That would be great,” he said, really wanting to be present for that. “What’s your schedule like this next week?”
“The girls have preschool on Tuesday and Thursday mornings,” she said. “But my momma watches them at other times, so it’s really up to you.”
“Mm, what I’m hearing is I should get your phone number.” Wilder grinned at her, no longer pretending to watch the llamas. “I mean, it wasn’t on the website, or I would’ve called.”
He was suddenly so glad he’d had to drive here to talk about the llamas, just like he’d had to drive to the flower shop to get Gun’s proposal roses. If he’d have been able to do either of those things with a phone call, he would never have met Savannah at all.
“If I have your number, then we can arrange for a drop-off time that works for both of us,” he said.
She hesitated for a long moment. And then another one. And then a third—which was long enough for Wilder to send up another prayer.
Maybe tone the flirting down, ran through his mind, and he let the smile drift off his face. “Or I can just give you my number, and you can text me if you want.”
She held out her hand, and Wilder stared at it. “Give me your phone, cowboy,” she said.
Wilder hastened to do that, quickly passing over his device. She took it, and then handed it back. “You need to unlock it for me.”
Foolishness ran through him, and he grabbed his phone and typed in his PIN. He stood there marveling as Savannah typed her number into his phone.
She smiled as she gave it back to him. “Would you care if I brought the girls?”
“Nope,” he said. “Maybe they’d like to see our new lambs.”
“They’d love it,” Savannah said, and this time she stepped closer, and with her eyes firing something sharp and hot at him, she added, “But just so you know, everywhere the twins go, they cause chaos.”
“Oh, honey, I grew up with, like, forty cousins. Chaos is my middle name.”
She raised her eyebrows and fell back a step. “All right, Mister Glover. You’ve got my number, and you’ve got your llamas.”
“Yeah, but I still don’t have the lessons,” he said. “How much for those?”
“Let me think about it.” She turned from the fence and started to walk away.
“Hey, which one is Nacho, and which one is Carl?” he asked.
Savannah paused and turned back toward the llamas and alpacas. “Carl is the gray one,” she said. “He’s there on the far left, and Nacho is right next to him. He’s the white one with the brown and reddish-brown patches who charged you.”
Wilder gazed at the two llamas he hoped could save his lambs and kids. “Okay, great,” he said, and he turned to follow Savannah. “Thanks for taking a few minutes with me today.”
“Yeah, sure,” she said easily.
Wilder suddenly felt like he was ending the first date, and a keen sense of awkwardness settled over him.
“I’ll text you when I get back to the ranch and have my calendar in front of me, okay?
” He glanced at her, utterly charmed and fascinated by her.
“I’m the foreman over scheduling, so I’m fairly busy. ”
“I’ll be here,” she said.
Wilder tipped his cowboy hat at her and got behind the wheel. He waved again, and then backed out before he made a total fool of himself.
He’d come to learn more about llamas, and he’d done that. “Heck, you bought a pair,” he said suddenly, pressing on the brake. He hadn’t even left Savannah’s driveway yet, but she’d moved somewhere out of sight.
He leaned up to get his phone out of his back pocket, and he tapped and found her name in his contacts— Savannah Calloway with a rose emoji after it. It looked so pretty, and he smiled at the letters before he tapped to call her.
“Hello?” she asked.
“Hey, it’s Wilder,” he said.
“I can still see your truck.”
“Yeah, I just thought of something. How do you want me to pay you when you bring the llamas? I can do cash or check.”
“You can hand me seven thousand dollars of cash?”
Wilder swallowed. “Or I can write a check. I can also do a wire transfer,” he said. “Or I can TwoCents it to you, though I think there’s a fee for that much money. I’ll have to ask my daddy.”
She pulled in a breath, and Wilder’s stomach dropped. “Oh, my heck. I just realized…your dad invented TwoCents.”
A groan pulled through Wilder’s soul, but he managed to stifle it before it came out of his mouth. “Yeah,” he said. “I can get him to waive the fee if that’s how you want me to pay you.”
“Sounds like I have a lot of options. Can I decide when I bring the llamas?”
“Yeah, of course,” Wilder said. “I just wanted to be upfront about it.”
“Oh, I think you’ve been very upfront about a lot of things,” she teased.
“Does that mean you’ll go to dinner with me?” he asked, surprised at his own boldness. Perhaps he was channeling Gun after all.
“That’s another thing I need to think about,” she said. “I’ll talk to you soon, Wilder.”
“Yep. You too, Savannah.” He let her end the call, and he drove off her property with as much dignity as he possibly could.
He set the truck north and headed back to Shiloh Ridge, never happier to be the foreman of the ranch. What had been a drudgery the last few months—especially when something like coyotes came to the ranch—suddenly felt lighter.
Everyone looked to him to know what to do, and the truth was, Wilder was only twenty-six years old and making things up as he went.
It’s what we all do, son , his daddy had told him when Wilder had confessed his lack of ability. I trust that you’ll figure it out.
It was his daddy’s trust that kept Wilder going every day. Lately, he’d been thinking a lot about crops and cattle and cowboys, trying to keep everything and everyone organized. Moving into summer brought so many challenges, and he had that trio of weddings weighing him down too.
Through all of that, he’d been ruminating on the mystery woman from the flower shop too. The brunette beauty had spent a lot of time in Wilder’s mind, and he couldn’t believe his path had crossed Savannah’s again.
“How lucky am I?” he whispered. “No, blessed . Thank you, Lord, for sending me to Llama Mamas.”
As he pulled back onto the ranch and went under the sign that welcomed everyone to Shiloh Ridge and right on around the corner to the homestead, warmth filled him from head to toe.
That faded quickly when he couldn’t find a parking spot at his own house, because at least a dozen trucks had been parked in the gravel area in front of the homestead.
“Great,” he grumbled, going further down the road to park, because now he’d be facing a crowd the moment he walked in.
Sometimes that irritated Wilder to no end, because he felt like he had zero privacy and no room to grow into himself.
He’d been watching Brandon for the past several months, and JJ Walker for longer than that, and both of them had added their own touches and flair to their ranches and land.
Wilder didn’t want to be just another Glover at Shiloh Ridge. He wanted to expand it into something that was his, the way Link had brought guinea fowl, and his own daddy had brought power tools and machines to the ranch.
JJ had expanded first with Longhorns, and then with Gypsy Vanner horses.
Brandon and Lenore had transformed their homestead from barely functioning to a fully producing piece of land.
Wilder wanted something that was all his own too, but he still didn’t actually know what that thing was. “Maybe it’s guardian llamas,” he said to himself.
A sudden twist in his stomach reminded him of his cousin. He didn’t want to override Gun, who’d brought the livestock guardian dogs to the ranch, but he’d been consulting with Gun for a week now, and they both knew the dogs needed more training.
He suddenly had another question for Savannah, and he wondered if it would be too much to call her again. Her laugh had stuck in his ears, and Wilder decided he could put off asking her if llamas could work with dogs until he had his calendar in front of him.
Feeling invincible and like he’d accomplished so much that day already, he got out of the truck and headed for the homestead.
He entered to a wall of conversation and laughter, and while part of him wanted to head straight up the stairs and into his silent, private wing, he couldn’t help turning toward the large arched doorway that led off the foyer and into the kitchen and living room.
Johnny stood right against the doorway, and he turned when Wilder closed the door behind him. “Hey, there you are,” he said, a wide smile sitting on his face. “Judy and Trooper just got engaged.”
“Great,” Wilder said, hoping his sarcasm couldn’t be heard through all the other noise in the homestead. He also knew he couldn’t escape upstairs, not if this was his cousin’s engagement party.
He thought of Savannah saying, I’ll be here in her sweet Texas twang, and he figured it wouldn’t kill him to wait a few hours to talk to her again.
He stepped into the kitchen, where somehow, a full twelve-course meal waited on the island. Judy and Trooper Wellington shone like stars, and Wilder had the very distinct thought, But this may kill you.
Then he moved forward to congratulate the happy couple, the idea of seeing Savannah and talking to Savannah on repeat in his mind. Anything to make it through yet another engagement party that wasn’t his.
Oh boy! I can’t wait to see what happens during these llama lessons with Wilder and Savannah.... You can preorder THE COWBOY WHO LIVED HIS DREAM now.