5. Chapter 5
Chapter 5
BERNIE
I stared at the strangest tools in the same older gentleman’s hands. “You gonna take them or not?” he asked, offering them again. “Or you can use a good ole pocketknife, but this’ll make it easier for you, newbie.”
Hesitantly, I reached forward and slid them off his yellow gloves and then raised my eyes to him. “Call me an idiot, but run this by me one more time,” I asked, and he shook his head.
“You better not be fucking squeamish or such.”
“I’m not, I just am—”
“Clearly not experienced. What the hell was my wife thinking?”
“Well, sir. I don’t think—”
“Yeah, you obviously don’t think much.” He stepped forward and pointed at the tool in my right hand. “Them green bands go around these here four prongs and then stretch it as wide as it’ll go. You’ll put that around the bull calves’ nuts as high as you can get them and clamp it off. But only on the bull calves that are less than a week old. The rest of them, you’re gonna slice it open and cut out their balls and toss them in the bucket with this tool here.” He pointed to the strange blade that was flat on one side with a crimped edge while the other side of the scissor-type tool curved like a rainbow.
“The bucket’s labeled Testicle Receptacle if you forget, redhead,” another cowboy said as he snickered, a crooked smirk rising on his lips. He tossed a thumb at the black bucket with dirt smudged across faint letters.
“Careful, if you get too close, I might forget you’re not a damn calf and use this emasculator on you,” I said and pinched the handle. The curved blade clacked against the crimped edge. “I got two options for removal too, seeing as I clearly have no fucking clue how to tell if you’re still just a wee baby or a grown-ass man.”
He threw his head back, laughing along with several other hands. The dust sprayed up around them as they slid off the metal railing surrounding the massive pen where the black cattle all huddled together.
The older cowboy in front of me shook his head. “At least your humor fits,” he grumbled as they walked away.
“Look, if I can just have a minute to explain, I’ll—” I began, but he merely waved a hand and left me alone.
The fucking hell was going on?
I’d not seen a glance of Kat, nor had I had a chance to text her before being whisked away to apparently castrate bull calves.
There were more heeler dogs than I’d seen in my life, yapping and running around the cattle, men on horses and on foot, holding tools that I couldn’t even begin to place, simply waiting for the cue to begin. Pretty sure I’d heard some cowboys talking about who was doing the branding, who was vaccinating, while the ones on horses sorted, but I had no fucking clue what any of that meant.
Glancing back down at the tools in my hands, I winced. As long as they didn’t end up anywhere near my own fucking nuts, this should be fine. Right?
“Oh my hell.” A voice I recognized sliced through the chatter as the sun’s rays laid across the tips of the surrounding mountains.
Twisting sideways, I locked eyes with the very woman I’d come looking for sitting atop a beautiful brown horse.
“What the fuck am I about to be doing?” I asked, walking around a couple of cowboys to stop beside her leg. Her own cowboy hat sat atop her head, clearly worn from years of work. Full cheeks lifted with a grin as she pushed her braid behind her shoulder and adjusted the sleeve of her plaid button-up shirt.
She giggled, and with each inhale, the buttons threatened to burst at the seams around her distracting bustline. “I’m sorry, but why are you out here? You were supposed to text me when you got to the ranch.”
“Some grumpy old-ass dude chewed me out and told me to get the fuck over here and that I was late. Now, I’m holding two different tools that are apparently used to fucking chop balls off.”
Throwing her head back, a full laugh loosed from her mouth. As gentle and sticky as honey. “Wanna jump up here and help sort instead? I’m wicked fast with the emasculator.” She winked and slid her gaze down my body.
Fervently, I shook my head. “Absolutely the fuck not. You will not be coming anywhere near me with these things.” Swirling low within my stomach was a bubbling of excitement and curiosity, along with legitimate worry.
It was very clear how capable she was, merely by the ease with which she sat on her horse. And it was very clear that I’d met my match, and I was lapping it up like a puppy in her hand.
She shrugged her shoulders and leaned forward. “Worried, Bottle Cap?”
“That you’ll cut my nuts off?” I asked.
She nodded once with a grin.
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
“Good. Have fun. I’ll give you your ID back after.” She winked and raised the reins, clucking at her horse.
My jaw fell open. The audacity…
“Uh, excuse me?” I shot a hand forward and grabbed the leather, pulling her horse to a stop. “You’re just gonna throw me to the wolves?”
“Don’t flick bottle caps at people while drunk, then maybe next time, I’d help get you out of this,” she answered.
A buzzing roared low in my stomach, and for the first time since shit went down, the anger that normally blazed hot in my veins began to simmer down instead of boil. My entire focus rested on her, locked onto her. Damn… Was this what Mikey felt the moment he saw Scottie? And Griffin with Jane?
“By the way,” she added as I released the reins from my fingers. “I’m assuming that grumpy-ass man you mentioned was him over there.” Kat raised a finger and pointed at the gentleman who now sat atop his own horse. A horse with a blue coloring to its coat .
“Yeah,” I grumbled and then raised a brow as suspicion settled in me. Scanning the man once more, my shoulders sagged. “He’s your dad, isn’t he?” I sighed.
She laughed again. “And you just called him a grumpy old ass.”
With a smirk on my face, I whipped back around and gazed up at her. “Good thing I’m not trying to impress nor flirt with his daughter.”
Her blue eyes narrowed, and something that had me confused flashed across her face. “Good thing,” she politely said without an ounce of warmth in her voice, and then quickly spun her horse away and trotted off, leaving me in a cloud of dust.
I cocked my head, watching her stop on the far side of the pen, all by herself. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that interaction. Maybe Duncan’s death rattled me more than I’d expected, and my flirting didn’t sound like flirting to her. I felt really off my game, really lost.
Really lost in general.
She looked everywhere but across the herd of cattle at me, where I remained still, simply watching her. Where I studied every single curve, every line, every rounded, full-figured part of her body. I shouldn’t have stared like I was, but I couldn’t help it.
At this moment, before all the chaos began and I would be thrown into something I’d never experienced in my life, I lapped up a woman who’d just waltzed into my life and who I knew was about to upset it all.
In a good way.
In a way that I needed and longed for. In a way that had me anxious and very much leery of my own impulsive tendencies .
The distraction from all of the destruction that I’d been through by a beautiful woman sounded very nice, however, and a smidge of disregard for that caution drummed within me. Though a faint tick at the back of my mind warned me she was more than a distraction. That she held the key to something I’d long since let go of as an option for me.
I tipped my head as her eyes drifted across the horizon. They locked with one of the cowboys seated near her father, and a flash of pain rippled across her face. Something haunting filled her soul and then she sighed and looked away.
Through my peripherals, I watched the cowboy with dark hair and upturned brown eyes smirk, then chuckle with one of the guys sitting near him. They whispered about something and then nodded subtly toward Kat once more.
She, on the other hand, did not seem to notice their exchange, and something snarled deep within me.
But there was no time to sit and figure out what the fuck that interaction had meant as the calm whipped into a frenzied madness of wild animals. Not a second existed for me to gain my bearings as the gate opened and hands waded into the cattle, darting in and out of the herd on horseback. The dogs nipped at heels, whistles from the other cowboys guiding them as the pets helped separate mom from calf just long enough for the rest of us to do our jobs.
A job that, while I eventually got the hang of, I sure wasn’t too happy about doing. Calf after calf, roped and laid on its side, met the end of my emasculator. Most of them were too old for them to be banded, which was a relief, but it didn’t stop me from wincing every fucking time I had to slice out a pair of nuts and toss them into that bucket.
Spinning on my heel, I swiped the back of my hand across my forehead at the sweat staining my skin and rose with a pair of testicles in the other. A quick jog over to the bucket where I opened my fingers and they plopped into the receptacle.
“Another one for you, Redhead,” one of the cowboys shouted.
As quickly as I could, I weaved through the crowd and knelt beside my next victim. “Sorry, buddy,” I muttered, tipped my head, and sliced through the bottom part of his scrotum. The bull calf bellowed a gut-wrenching cry.
“Are you apologizing to them?” Kat asked. I briefly glanced up. Seated on her horse, she grinned and adjusted the rope wrapped around her saddle horn that had caught the calf I was working on.
“Do you have a set of balls?” I asked and sliced with the emasculator.
“Does it look like I have balls?” she sassed.
“Nah, but you sure act like you have a fucking huge pair,” I answered in kind and braced against my knees. Raising my gaze to her, I offered a smirk.
She chuckled. “Would it change things if I did?”
I winked. “You might be a bit taller.”
“Then why aren’t you?” She pinched her brows together as I threw my head back and laughed.
“There is no correlation between height and the size of a man’s nuts.” I rose to my feet and stuffed the emasculator in my back pocket while keeping the freshly removed pair of rocky mountain oysters in my other hand. “Besides, I am a solid five-foot-eleven inches, which makes me plenty taller than you are.”
“And what if I was, like, six feet?”
“Then you’d be six feet. Besides, the inches that matter aren’t the ones concerning my height,” I unabashedly flirted.
Her cheeks flushed bright red. “Well—That is—He may—Just, quit apologizing to them or I’ll castrate you myself. You’re taking too long.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said with a smile and stepped back, keeping my gaze steady on her.
With a squelch, my foot landed directly in something warm, mucky, and slick. My eyes widened.
“Bernie!” Kat shrieked.
Right as my ass and back slammed against the ground.