A Family for Grayson (Cobbler Cove #6)

Chapter 1

Grayson Lawton was on page four hundred and twelve of Fire Dynamics for Structural Analysis when Ruth Sanger's voice cut through the diner like a band saw screeching through wood.

“You trumped my ace, Walter! Again. That's the third time today. Do it again, and I swear I will end you.”

A male voice responded smugly, “It’s not my fault you lost count of how many spades are still out, Ruthie. It’s just arithmetic.”

“Don't you arithmetic me. I've been keeping books in this town since before you could tie your shoes.”

Gray turned a page. The textbook was dense, technical, and exactly the kind of reading that made his pulse slow and his mind go quiet.

He was taking a double course load in fire science and arson investigation this semester. His academic advisor had called the schedule “ambitious.” Gray had refrained from mentioning that he'd already read most of the required texts before enrolling.

He read fast. Always had. And he remembered nearly everything. Which was a blessing if you were fast-tracking a college degree . . . and a curse if you'd ever had a conversation you wanted to forget.

Rose's Diner at eleven-thirty on a Friday morning was not the quietest place to study. But the coffee was endless, the Wi-Fi was fast and reliable, and the bunkhouse at the Foster Ranch was too quiet during the day.

The pinochle posse, as they called themselves, occupied their regular booths near the front window. They were there every day between eleven-thirty and one, cards out, pennies stacked in tidy columns, gossip flowing as freely as Rose's coffee.

The players changed depending on the day, but Ruth Sanger was always there—a woman of at least eighty whose memory for numbers, grudges, and other people's business was matched only by her willingness to share all three.

Walter Meeks always sat across from Ruth. He was a retired rancher with hands like catcher's mitts and a booming voice that carried to every corner of the diner whether he intended it to or not.

Today, two other players Gray didn't know rounded out that table, and the second booth held four more strangers, their game already well underway.

Gray's phone vibrated beside his textbook.

He glanced at the screen. Dillon Steele, returning his call from this morning.

Dillon was the veterinarian who traveled with the rodeo during the competition season.

Right now, the lucky jerk was back home in Texas eat home cooking and enjoying spring, with weather in the seventies.

He picked up. “Hey Dillon. Thanks for calling me back.”

“I got your message. What's going on with Jenna's herd?”

Gray leaned back in the booth and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I've been tracking her cows' weight gain over the past several months against the expected growth curve for Angus cows carrying Hereford calves. The numbers don't fit. The cows are significantly too heavy.”

“How significantly?”

“Fifteen to twenty percent above where they should be at this stage of gestation.”

“Is Sully overfeeding them?” Dillon asked.

“Are you kidding? He and Jenna are meticulous in how they run the ranch. Besides,” Gray continued, “the weight distribution is wrong. The cows are gaining all the weight in their bellies.”

“Some cows get bigger than others during pregnancy,” Dillon pointed out. “Same way some calves are bigger than others.”

Gray huffed. “You don’t understand. I borrowed the portable x-ray machine from Tucker's ambulance and x-rayed a couple cows. I measured the length of the calf’s leg bones and skull and compared them against a chart of normal gestational size for Hereford fetuses.”

Dillon burst out laughing. “That’s possibly the nerdiest thing you’ve ever done. And you’ve pulled some doozies in the past.”

Gray rolled his eyes.“Do you want to know what I saw or not?”

“Sure, Professor Cowboy.”

“The calves are too big by months. The growth chart said the calves are going to weigh over a hundred pounds at birth. I'm telling you, Dillon, the skeletal growth is consistent with a much larger-boned breed.”

Dillon's voice abruptly waxed serious. “You think the semen shipment she impregnated her herd with was mislabeled?”

“I know it was. I also know Jenna's cows, all of whom are first-time mamas, are not built to deliver calves that big.”

“How many head are we talking about?”

“Thirty-two pregnant cows. If I'm right, some of them—maybe a lot of them—aren't going to be able to calve naturally. I need a vet to perform an amniocentesis on at least one cow so I can do a genetic analysis and confirm the sire breed. Since there’s no vet around here—at least not one who’ll take me seriously—I was wondering if you could come back to Cobbler Cove and help me out.

I don't want to cut your vacation short, but I'm worried Jenna’s going to lose her whole herd just when she's getting her ranch back on its feet.”

“I can be there next week. Tuesday work?”

“Tuesday works. And Dillon? I'd start thinking about how to assembly line bovine C-sections. I think Jenna's staring down a rough calving season.”

He hung up and set the phone down.

At the pinochle tables, the cards had stopped moving.

Walter leaned toward Ruth. “Did he say Jenna Foster's calves are the wrong breed?”

“Something about the sperm being wrong.”

“Whose sperm?” That came from Irma Brown, Rose's part-time waitress, who was refilling coffee at the next table and not even pretending she wasn't listening.

Ruth waved a hand. “The bull's sperm. The Foster cows are pregnant with the wrong kind of calves, and they're going to be huge. Did you hear him say over a hundred pounds? That's the size of a Labrador retriever.”

Walter snapped, “Labs don't weigh a hundred pounds, Ruthie.”

“My cousin had one that topped out at a hundred and ten.”

Walter snorted. “That wasn't a Lab. That was a pony.”

“The point is Jenna's cows are in trouble. And the Lawton boy figured it out.”

Walter shook his head. “That's modern science for you. One wrong test tube and the whole herd's in trouble.”

Gray, who actually was a scientist, a geneticist to be specific, bit his tongue. The pinochle posse didn't know the half of it. If he was right, getting Jenna's cows through calving season was going to be a nightmare.

But he'd done all he could for now. Dillon would be here next week, and the two of them would get answers then.

He went back to his fire textbook and continued reading.

Bonnie Watson came through the front door of Rose's Diner at ten minutes to noon, the cold following her inside like an unwelcome guest. March 1st in Montana was a liar—sunny and thirty-eight degrees, which felt like spring until the wind hit you.

She unwound her scarf and hung it on the hook by the door.

Rose looked up from behind the counter. “Hey, Honey. The usual?”

“Just coffee today.” Bonnie slid onto a stool at the counter. “And a cinnamon roll if there's any left. Cassidy and Noah have a half day of school today, and the bus is dropping them off here shortly.”

Rose poured the coffee black because Bonnie drank her coffee the way she ran the town: no frills, no nonsense, and strong enough to get the job done. She might technically be Mayor Lucas Shoemacher's secretary, but everyone in Cobbler Cove knew who did the real work of keeping the town organized.

Speaking of which, Rose asked, “How's Lucas doing? He back in the office yet?” The mayor had had a scary heart attack right here in the diner about a month ago.

Bonnie wrapped her hands around the mug. “The doctor’s only cleared him to come to work two days a week and wants him to take it easy. But taking anything easy isn't exactly in Lucas’s vocabulary.”

“And how are you doing?”

“Busy. You know how it is when the boss is out—everything comes to me.”

The truth was Lucas Shoemacher had been a bear to work for since his heart attack. It wasn't public knowledge, but her boss had confessed to her in confidence that his doctor in Apple Pie Creek told him his heart was in bad shape. Very bad shape.

The mayor had responded not by resting, relaxing, and recovering but by becoming irritable, impatient, and increasingly difficult in a way Bonnie couldn't quite pin down. It wasn't just crankiness. Something was eating at him from the inside out, but she didn't know what it was.

She owed him too much to complain about it, though.

He'd given her a job two weeks after Brent's funeral when she'd been penniless and so hollowed out by grief and guilt that getting dressed in the morning felt like an Olympic event.

After hearing his secretary had up and quit her job without warning, Bonnie had walked into his office with her résumé, her two-year-old on her hip, and her four-year-old hiding behind her and asked for the job.

Lucas had looked at her, looked at the kids, and said, “Can you start Monday?”

She'd been loyal to him and worked hard every day since.

A burst of animated argument from the pinochle tables pulled her attention. Ruth Sanger's voice rose above the others: “—the wrong kind of calves . . . too big to be born . . . those poor cows . . .”

Walter Meeks sucked the inside of his cheek and chimed in, “Gonna a lose a bunch of them come calving time. I’ll bet half the herd doesn’t make it.”

Bonnie frowned. Jenna's cows? Her friend had mentioned being concerned about them just last week at the monthly potluck dinner of the Worn-out Widows Sisterhood, commonly referred to by its members as the WoWS.

She glanced around the diner and spotted Grayson Lawton in the booth by the far wall.

She'd talked to him on the phone a few times.

He'd called her office asking about getting a copy of the building permit for the Shoemacher property.

But she'd only met him in person once at the WoWS’s Thanksgiving dinner last fall.