Chapter Seven
Slowly opening her eyes, it took Cassidy a moment to remember why she was waking up in a strange bed, in a strange room.
Turning her head quickly, there was no sign of Kade.
At least not in bed. Craning her neck, she glanced into the adjoining bathroom.
No Kade. What time was it? Eight. Boy, folks sure got up and going early around here.
Then again, ranchers pretty much rose and settled in with the chickens. Whatever that meant.
Whipping the covers over to one side, she rose and hurried into the bathroom and dressed for the day.
Jeans and sweats seemed about as practical for ranch clothes as she could get.
Donning her sneakers, she took a deep breath and made her way downstairs.
On the first floor, she followed the scent of coffee and laundry detergent to a spacious utility room off the kitchen.
Alice Sweet stood among a mountain of towels, humming softly as she set aside a folded one. “Good morning, dear. Sleep well?”
“Very well, thank you.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. Once she’d finally fallen asleep, she’d slept like the proverbial baby. “Let me help with that.” Cassidy reached for a towel.
“Nonsense. You’re still a newlywed,” Alice gently shooed her hand away, “and newlyweds aren’t supposed to work. My brood are coffee drinkers. Would you like a cup while I whip up some breakfast for you?”
“No, thank you. I’m not very hungry this morning.” No point telling the woman she preferred tea for breakfast.
Kade’s mother studied her for a long moment, then gave a resigned nod. “Well, if you’re looking for Kade, he and Rachel are out in the barn.”
“Thank you. I’ll go…” She hesitated. Go what?
Lifting the folded towels in her arms, Alice Sweet chuckled. “I’m sure he’s anxious to see you. Go on.”
“Yes.” She had no idea if Kade wanted to see her or not, but she was too nervous to hang out with a woman who thought her son had fallen madly in love and was anxious to see his bride. Passing a fruit bowl on the counter, Cassidy grabbed an apple and headed outside.
The morning sky was that cloudless shade of blue she was starting to associate with Texas.
She had no idea why Montana was called Big Sky country.
From where she stood, Texas had to have the corner on the big sky market.
Forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other, almost at the open door, a knocking sound caught her ear.
Slowing her steps, she strained to listen.
By the time she reached the doorway, both Kade and Rachel were standing side by side, staring in her direction.
“I wondered who had Boots all worked up.” Kade smiled.
The horse she’d met last night had her head over the stall door, shaking and making funny noises, and Cassidy was pretty sure that knocking sound was the horse’s hoof hitting the door.
Holding a clipboard, Rachel smiled. “Looks like you’ve made a friend.”
“Can I give her an apple? I saw it on the counter and I’ve heard that horses like apples.”
“Sure.” Kade nodded. “Not that you need to bribe her, but feed her apples and she’ll be your friend for life.”
Approaching slowly, Cassidy pulled the apple from her pocket. “Hey, girl.”
Boots’s soft lips found the apple. Cassidy held her hand flat, smiling as the massive animal gently retrieved it, crunched away, and then moved her lips, tickling Cassidy’s palm, making sure she’d not left any morsel behind.
The horse nudged her and Cassidy began stroking her neck. “Such a sweet girl.”
“Especially when you give her what she wants,” Rachel called out without looking up from her clipboard. Kade stood beside her frowning at stacks of feed bags.
“I just don’t get it.” Rachel’s tone held a hint of frustration. “The numbers aren’t adding up.”
Cassidy stayed where she was, stroking Boots’s soft nose.
She didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but the barn was a cavern of sound, and their conversation carried.
They talked of feed bags, consumption rates, and herd sizes.
It was a language she didn’t speak, a world she didn’t know, but the core of their problem was something she understood intimately: numbers.
She let them talk for another minute, her own mind quietly running the calculations, turning the variables over.
Gently patting the horse’s neck, she whispered, “I’ll be right back,” and the way the animal barely dipped her head made Cassidy think the mare actually understood.
Slowly moving closer, she glanced at the papers. “What’s going on?”
Rachel gestured to the feed bags. “Preston’s in town dealing with the feed supplier, and we’re trying to figure out our supply levels.
We’ve got this new delivery; plus what’s left from last month, and…
” she trailed off, looking at the stacks like they might rearrange themselves into something more comprehensible.
Kade tapped his pencil against the notepad.
“Trying to calculate if we have enough to get us through till the next scheduled delivery. Consumption rate per head, weight variations between full and partial bags…” He scrubbed a hand through his hair.
“I don’t know, it looks like we have enough for maybe two weeks? Three?”
Cassidy’s eyes moved across the barn, counting stacks automatically, her brain already categorizing: full bags here, three quarters there, that one’s maybe half.
She’d been doing it since she walked in, not even consciously, the same way she used to track cards at the table.
Looking down at the notes, she pointed to one set of numbers. “Is this how many head of cattle?”
Kade nodded. “And these are the horse numbers.”
Cassidy walked closer to the stacks. Full bags were easy, she’d seen the labels—fifty pounds each.
The partial ones took a bit more estimation, but her brain had always been good at that.
Weight, volume, the slight sag of a bag that was two-thirds full versus half.
She looked at the notes, at the scratched-out calculations, the numbers that didn’t quite add up because they were trying to do too many variables at once.
Her finger traced down the page. “Is that your consumption rate? Twenty-eight pounds per head per day?”
“Yeah. Average, anyway.”
The math assembled itself in her head like cards falling into place. “You’ve got nineteen and a half days’ worth. Twenty if you stretch it. You’ll need to reorder in about two weeks to be safe, just in case there are delivery issues.”
Lifting her gaze, she spotted Kade and Rachel staring at her, jaws slightly open, eyes round as golf balls.
The barn went quiet. Even the animals seemed to stop their movements at Cassie’s mathematical analysis. On the fly analysis. Kade turned slowly. “Come again?”
“Nineteen and a half days.” She pointed to the full bags.
“Those are sixteen days right there if they’re all fifty-pound bags.
The partial ones add another three and a half, maybe four if you’re conservative with feeding.
Twenty days if you cut back slightly on the horses’ grain and supplement with more hay. ”
Her eyes still perfectly round, Rachel snapped her jaw shut, then opened it again. “You just calculated that? In your head?”
Cassidy shrugged, her gaze lowering to the floor before lifting her head again. “It’s just math. Multiplication and addition.”
“Just math,” Kade muttered, remembering she’d mentioned something about being able to remember numbers, but calculating on the fly was more than remembering numbers.
“We’ve been working on this for almost an hour.” Rachel looked down at the paper, scribbled some numbers, glanced at the bags and then back at her. “I think you’re right.”
“I count cards,” she said simply, as if that explained everything. And maybe it did. “This is easier. The variables don’t change as fast.”
Rachel handed her the clipboard. “You’d better write this down for Preston. I’m sure he’s going to like your numbers better than anything we came up with.”
Cassidy took the notepad and pencil, wrote out the calculations, showing her work in neat columns. Days of supply, consumption rates, the buffer for unexpected needs. “Is this okay?”
“Okay?” Kade shook his head. “It’s amazing.” Before he realized what he was doing, he’d pulled her against him and gave her a hard peck on the lips, then surprised by his own movements, took a quick step back. “Thank you. You’ve been an enormous help.”
“Any time.” Her cheeks blushed light pink and he had to resist the urge to kiss her thank you again.
“Don’t think we’re not going to take you up on that,” Rachel shot back, shoving the clipboard at her brother. “Now that this little dilemma is resolved, I’m heading back to the house. I have a few calls to make and pray I don’t have to go into the office.”
Kade set the paperwork aside. Cassie had already turned and walked back by Boots’s side. “She likes you.”
“I like her.” She offered her first sincere smile of the day.
Funny how a city girl could relate so easily to Boots. Usually, the massive size of working horses would scare the dickens out of city folk, but Cassie just took to Boots. “Have you been around horses before?”
She shook her head.
“Well, you could have fooled me. You knew she’d like apples, you knew to keep your palm flat. You’re standing in just the right spot so she can see you and doesn’t get spooked. And there’s no hesitancy in your touch.”
“I remember things.”
“Like counting cards.”
She nodded.
“I have a feeling I’m going to have to be on my toes around you.”
Her head snapped around, eyes wide.
The sudden shift in her expression had him chuckling. “Nothing bad, but I’ve never known anyone quite like you.”
“I hope that’s a good thing. Wouldn’t want to get kicked out before the year is up.”
“Not a chance, even if you couldn’t do math.” His gaze followed the tender way her fingers stroked the horse. “Would you like to take her for a ride? A short one?”
Now her eyes widened not with fear or concern but with excitement. “Can I?”
“Yeah. Let me show you how to saddle her up.” Focusing on the task at hand, he pulled a thick, woven blanket from a rack, the familiar weight of it settling in his hands.
“First things first, the saddle blanket.” Placing it high on Boots’s withers, he slid it back into place.
“You want to ensure the horse’s coat lays flat and smooth underneath. ”
Listening intently, she nodded. Her attention absolute, her movements mirroring his when he removed the blanket and gave it to her to try again. There was no wasted motion. No hesitation.
“Excellent. You did good.”
“I watched you.”
That she had. He was beginning to understand just how much she could learn by merely watching. Not just cards and numbers, but apparently, horses too.
Next came the saddle. She hadn’t flinched at the heavy weight, just positioned herself and swung it onto the horse’s back with a surprising, efficient grace.
“All right, now the cinch.” He moved to the other side, keeping his voice low and steady, and talked her through the process of tightening the leather straps, his hands occasionally brushing against hers in the tight space.
Each touch an accident, a necessity of the lesson, but it sent a jolt of awareness through him nonetheless.
With Boots and his mount saddled, they led the horses out into the sunlit paddock.
“Here we go.” He cupped his hands to give her a leg up.
She placed her foot in his hands without a second thought.
A simple act of trust that struck him as anything but simple.
With his gentle boost, she settled into the saddle like she’d been riding her whole life.
Covering her hands with his, he positioned her fingers on the reins.
“If you hold them loosely, she’ll move forward.
If you pull them to your left, she’ll turn left. If you pull to the right—”
“She’ll turn right,” she repeated with a knowing smile.
“Guess that was pretty obvious.”
Grinning, she nodded. “And pulling both together at the same time will tell her to stop.”
“Exactly.” He frowned, wondering how she’d figured that one out on her own.
“I used to love reruns of Gunsmoke. Whenever the horses came to a galloping stop, you could see that the riders were tugging hard on the reins. They also kicked with their heels to make the horses go, and sometimes slapped the reins from side to side to make them run faster.”
“Yeah, well,” he rubbed his hand along the back of his neck, “that pretty much covers it. But with Boots, the slightest tap of your heels will get her going faster.” He glanced down at her shoes.
“Which reminds me, we’ll have to see if any of Jillian or Rachel’s boots will fit you until we get you your own pair.
The last thing anyone wants to do is step in something unpleasant if you’re not wearing proper footwear. ”
Her knowing nod told him she understood exactly what he meant.
Turning to his own mount, he swung up and on, and took the reins.
Keeping his pace slow as he led the horse in a wide circle around the enclosure.
He watched her, the initial stiffness in her posture giving way to a relaxed, easy rhythm in perfect synchronization with the horse’s movement.
A genuine, unadulterated smile lit up her face.
A look of pure, childlike joy that made his own chest want to puff out with pride at helping put that grin on her beautiful face.
“This is amazing.” Her gaze swept over the sprawling pastures.
“It is.” In that moment, bathed in the warm Texas sun, she didn’t look like a blackjack dealer from Vegas. She looked like she belonged right here. And wasn’t that food for thought.