Chapter Five #3
If she hadn’t been listening, she’d never have known about them in the first place.
She’d have gone right ahead, mooning over him and having him know it and be amused by it.
Her pride felt tattered. She’d never been one to wear her heart on her sleeve, but Rey had kissed her as if he enjoyed it, and she’d built dreams on those kisses.
She realized now how truly naive it had been.
The first man who paid her any attention in years, and she fell head over heels for him.
Seen in that context, perhaps it wasn’t surprising after all.
She’d heard Leo accuse him of being a rounder, and she had to admit that his experience ran rings around hers.
Apparently he was accustomed to playing sensual games with women.
That was all those devastating kisses that had brought her to her knees had meant to him—just a game. And she’d taken it seriously!
Well, she told herself firmly, he needn’t worry that she’d throw herself at his feet again.
From now on, she was going to be the perfect employee, polite and courteous and eager to please—but she’d never stare at him longingly again.
Thank God she’d overheard what he said to Leo.
It had spared her a terrible humiliation.
A little hurt now was far better than being wrung out emotionally down the road because she’d been ignorant of the facts.
Wasn’t she herself always telling people that the truth, however brutal, was always best in the long run? It was time to take her own advice.
* * *
When Rey and Leo came in to breakfast the next morning, she put bacon and eggs and biscuits on the table with a cool, professional smile.
Rey was oddly subdued. He didn’t give her the arrogant scrutiny that had become force of habit in recent days.
In fact, he didn’t look at her at all. Leo kept up a pleasant conversation about the day’s chores.
They were moving some sick cattle into a pasture near the house so the vet could examine them, and stock was being shifted into closer quarters as well, within easier reach of the hay barn.
“I thought you had those big round bales of hay?” Meredith asked curiously.
“We do,” Leo agreed. “But we still bale it the old-fashioned way and stack it in the barn. You lose some of the round bales through weathering by sun and rain. The hay that’s kept dry in the barn has less deterioration and better nutrition.”
“But you feed more than hay?”
Leo chuckled. He buttered a second biscuit.
“You are sharp. Yes, we have a man who mixes feeds for better nutrition. No animal proteins, either,” he added.
“We’re reactionaries when it comes to ranching.
No artificial hormones, no pesticides, nothing except natural methods of pest control and growth.
We’re marketing our beef under the Hart Ranch label, as well, certifying it organic.
We’ve already got several chain supermarkets carrying our product, and we’ve just moved onto the internet to extend our distribution. ”
“That’s amazing,” Meredith said with genuine interest. “It’s like having custom beef,” she added, nodding.
“It is custom beef,” Leo told her. “We’re capitalizing on the move toward healthier beef.
Quick profit methods are going to fail producers in the long run, especially with the current attitude toward hormones and antibiotics and animal-product proteins for feed.
We think that once organic beef catches on, the market will justify the added expense. ”
“Word of mouth will take you far, too,” Meredith said. “Hospitals teach nutrition these days, not only to patients but to the community. Tailored beef will find a market among consumers with heart problems, who’ll pay the extra cost for healthier cuts of meat grown organically.”
Rey was listening. He finished his biscuit and poured himself another cup of coffee from the carafe on the table.
“J.D. Langley pioneered that organic approach locally,” he remarked.
“He and the Tremayne boys got into terrific fights with other producers at seminars for a while. Then we saw the disasters overseas and suddenly everybody else was jumping on the bandwagon.”
“They’ll be glad they did, I think,” Meredith said.
“Which reminds me,” Leo said, eyeing her. “Mrs. Lewis said her larder hadn’t been opened since you came here. So…what are you making these biscuits with?”
She gave them a wary glance. “Light olive oil,” she said slowly.
Rey gaped at his biscuit as if it had suddenly sprouted hair. “Olive oil?” he gasped.
“Listen,” she said quickly, aware of horrified stares, “olive oil is so healthy that people who live on a Mediterranean diet have only a fraction of the vascular problems we have in abundance in this country. The fat content is still there, but it’s a vegetable fat, and it’s actually good for you.
Until I told you, you didn’t even know you’d given up great gobs of animal fat in those biscuits! ”
The brothers looked at each other. “Well,” Leo had to admit, “they taste just as good as the others did.”
“That’s true,” Rey agreed reluctantly.
“And we’re getting older,” Leo continued. “We don’t want clogged arteries giving us heart attacks and strokes.”
“Or bypass surgery,” Rey sighed.
“So I guess olive oil isn’t so bad, after all,” Leo concluded, with a grin at Meredith.
She grinned back. “Thank goodness. I had visions of being tarred and feathered,” she confessed.
“I’m not giving up butter, though,” Rey told her firmly, dipping his knife into the tub next to the biscuit basket. “Nothing tastes like real butter on a biscuit.”
Meredith didn’t look at him. She couldn’t confess that what he was eating was not butter, but rather a light margarine that actually lowered cholesterol levels. She only smiled and poured herself another cup of coffee.
* * *
Leo and Rey had started moving bulls into the lower pasture, where new forage grasses were thriving even in autumn, when a mangy old longhorn bull suddenly jerked his head and hooked Leo in the shoulder.
Leo yelled and threw a kick at him, but the aggravating animal was already trotting nonchalantly into the new pasture without a backward glance.
“How bad is it?” Rey asked, leaving the cowboys to work the cattle alone while he looked at his brother’s shoulder.
“Probably needs stitches,” Leo said through his teeth. “Drive me to the house and let me change shirts, then you can take me to Lou Coltrain.”
“Damned bull,” Rey muttered as he put his brother into the ranch truck and took off home.
Meredith was sweeping off the back steps when they drove up. She gave Leo’s bloodstained shirt a quick glance.
“Come on in here, let me have a look,” she said gently.
Disconcerted, Leo let her remove the shirt from his shoulder and bathe the blood away with a clean cloth.
She probed around the edges of the cut and nodded. “You’ll need stitches. Here. Hold this tight against the cut until you get to town.”
“I need to change shirts,” he began.
“You need to get to the doctor. Which one do you use?” she persisted, picking up the mobile phone she kept on the table.
“Dr. Lou Coltrain,” he said.
“I’ll phone and tell them you’re on the way,” she said firmly.
Rey gave her a curious glance, but he hustled Leo out the door and into the truck again.
When they got to the office, Dr. Lou Coltrain’s nurse, Betty, came right out to meet them and guide them back into a cubicle.
Lou walked in, took a professional look at the cut, and grinned. “Stitches,” she said. “How about a tetanus jab?”
Leo grimaced. “Well…”
She patted him on the shoulder that wasn’t injured. “We’ll have you fixed up and out of here in no time.”
He sighed, glancing at his brother. “I hate shots.”
Rey shrugged. “You’d hate tetanus more,” he told Leo. “Besides,” he added, “I hear she gives sugarless gum to the good patients.”
Leo made a face at him.
* * *
When Leo was stitched up and given his tetanus shot, Rey drove him back to the house, where Meredith made him a cup of coffee and cut him a slice of cherry pie, making sure he had a cushion for his back in the straight chair at the table.
Rey glared at the special treatment his brother was getting. “Maybe I should get gored,” he commented drolly.
Meredith stared at him, and she didn’t smile. “You’d get a vinegar dressing and a cup of cold coffee,” she said.
He glared at her, too. He felt as if he’d been put in the corner without supper. It wasn’t a feeling he liked. He gave them both a hard look and went back out the door, smoldering with bad temper.