Chapter 3 #3
Sawyer shook his head and stared out over the pasture.
Gina had stopped dead in her tracks. Big Bertha stood about a foot away, her bovine nostrils sniffing the air, curious about the interloper crossing the field.
The old Angus was well past her production days, but had more than earned her keep on the ranch.
Grandpa Dalton had never been sentimental about his breeding herd. When his cows stopped producing calves, he culled them. But Big Bertha had worked her way into his heart and he’d turned her loose on the ranch to live the rest of her days, grazing under the Sierra foothills sun.
Nice work if you could get it.
“What’s she doing?” Cash watched Gina with a quizzical expression on his face.
“I think she’s afraid of Big Bertha,” Sawyer said.
She continued to stand in the grass with one arm extended as if she was warding off a mugger in downtown LA.
“Hey, Justin,” Jace called. “Go shoo Big Bertha away from our guest.”
Justin, who’d been practicing his lasso skills on a roping dummy, stopped, and like the rest of them squinted out over the pasture. “Is that her? The movie star?”
“That’s her,” Jace said. “Go help her out.”
Justin trotted across the field while Sawyer laughed his ass off. “I don’t know what my mother was thinking sending her here. She’s afraid of a goddamn cow.”
Jace shook his head but did his best not to join in Sawyer’s laughter. Cash being Cash took the high road.
“Leave her alone,” he said. “She’s clearly not used to ranch life.”
They stood, watching as Justin and Sherpa herded Big Bertha away and as Gina continued to totter across the field.
Jace did a double take as she got closer. “Is she wearing high heels and a skirt? You better tell her about the tick problem here.”
The woman already had Lyme disease of the brain. “Who the hell wears high heels to hike across a cow pasture?”
Charlie and Aubrey slipped between the fence railings to welcome her. And the three women huddled together, talking.
“You’re burning the steaks.” Cash nudged his chin at the grill and Jace quickly flipped the fillets.
Sawyer turned his attention to Gina. Despite dressing like she was on her way to happy hour instead of traipsing through cow shit, she looked sexy as hell.
Long, shapely legs and today she had her hair down and had actually combed it.
It fell in soft waves just above her shoulders. And those blue eyes…they glittered.
Charlie brought her over and introduced her to Jace and Cash. “She brought her famous strawberry shortcake.”
Sawyer’s cousins greeted her with handshakes.
Gina eyed the setup and Sawyer noted the gleam in her eyes.
Before his grandmother died, Grandpa Dalton had built the summer kitchen, which rivaled most people’s indoor kitchens.
Sleek stainless-steel appliances, a pizza oven, wood grill, and smoker.
Big log gazebo and a bar. For big events, like Jace’s election fundraisers, they set up rows of barbecues to accommodate the crowd.
But for anything under a hundred guests, this was more than sufficient.
“I thought you had something else today.” A gentleman would’ve kept his mouth shut and been gracious. But for some reason she pushed his buttons.
“I didn’t want to be rude,” she said, as if she was doing them a great favor by gracing them with her presence. Bringing the cake, though, had been nice. And unexpected. Gina DeRose struck him as a taker, not a giver.
Maybe he was making a snap judgment based on a paltry two meetings—at least the second one had been more positive than the first—but he was a trained observer, after all. And so far he took her for a narcissist. Weren’t most celebrities?
“Gina, you want a steak or a burger?” Jace put a row of burgers on the grill and began to arrange the buns.
“A burger would be great.” She slid a glance at the patties resting on the top rack where they could cook slowly without burning.
Jace was merely adequate in the kitchen, but his burgers were legendary. At least in Mill County.
“How do you want yours?”
“Medium rare,” she said and gestured at the patties. “How’d you prepare them?”
“Egg, pepper, garlic salt, chili powder, and my secret weapon.” When she arched a brow in question, Jace said, “Panko instead of bread crumbs.”
Sawyer watched her nod approvingly. The women pulled her over to the picnic table, where they plied her with questions about FoodFlicks.
No one mentioned the elephant in the yard and Sawyer couldn’t help but wonder whether she was still seeing Danny Clay.
Whether they were in love or just having sex.
Cheating sex.
“She seems nice,” Cash said.
Sawyer just shrugged and changed the subject. “Any news on Beals Ranch?”
Randy Beals, their neighbor, was upside down on his cattle spread.
The Bealses and the Daltons had been friends for generations.
But like everyone else who ran cattle in the Sierra foothills, the struggle to keep afloat during drought years was slowly killing them off.
Unlike Grandpa Dalton, Randy had borrowed against his land to keep his operation alive instead of culling his herd.
Now he couldn’t afford to pay the monthly mortgage bills.
“Haven’t heard anything,” Jace said. “I expect one day we’ll drive by and there’ll be a sold sign on the gate. What happens after that is anybody’s guess.”
“Anybody’s guess?” The vein in Sawyer’s neck pulsed. “What’ll happen is a big-ass development. You know it, Cash knows it, everyone on Dry Creek Road knows it.”
Cash let out a breath. “Not much we can do about it, Sawyer. It is what it is.”
“We can buy the damn place ourselves. Randy said he’d give us first dibs when he was talking about selling last winter.
” But even as he said it, he knew how unrealistic it was.
Beals Ranch was twice the size of Dry Creek Ranch and twice the price.
They could barely afford the bills on what they already owned.
“Let me know when you win the lottery.” Jace sandwiched the burgers between buns and brought the tray to the trestle table, calling, “Food’s up.”
The kids raced over and Sawyer grabbed the medium rare burger and brought it to Gina. The steaks followed and everyone helped themselves to sides.
“Nice spread.” Gina sidled up next to Sawyer. “Does your family do this a lot?”
“Most Sundays, as long as everyone’s here. Jace is the county sheriff and Cash is an investigator for the Bureau of Livestock Identification, so they get called out fairly often.”
“What does a livestock investigator do?”
“Among other things, solve cattle rustling cases.”
“Is that even a thing outside of old Westerns?”
“Like I told you, beef is a billion-dollar business in California. So, yeah, stealing livestock is a thing.”
“No need to get huffy about it.”
“Huffy?” Sawyer quirked a brow. “There was nothing remotely huffy about that statement.”
“Good, then can I borrow your kitchen tomorrow?”
At least this time she was asking. “Why? You planning to go into the catering business now that you’re unemployed?”
“Ha-ha, very funny. I’m testing a new recipe and it took me two hours to bake a simple sponge cake in the cabin’s poor excuse of an oven.”
“Don’t show up before one. I’ve got writing to do.” If she was testing, he was tasting. A guy had to eat, right?