Chapter 9
COLE
Cole was not the sort of person to second-guess himself regularly.
On the contrary, he tended to act with decisive confidence in almost everything he did.
Even with the trouble he was in now, though it came from an impulsive choice on his part, he did not doubt his own decision.
It had been the right thing to do under the circumstances.
Of that, he was sure. Today, though, at least once every hour, he couldn’t help thinking, I was too hard on her.
No matter how many times he told himself the thought was wrong, he still couldn’t stop thinking it.
He felt terrible. Her expression had been one of remorse, and he’d just had to rub it in a little more.
If she was someone who didn’t learn from her mistakes, then maybe his reaction would have been justified.
But there was no evidence that was the case.
The truth was, he had reacted in frustration without much justification outside of it.
He finished feeding the calves their medicine and went to find Kat. He had every intention of apologizing to her—without admitting fault, of course—but when he finally found her, she didn’t even let him start.
“Can you help me find a reputable seller of lambs?” she asked. “I don’t want to make the same mistake again, and you seem to know what to look for.”
His apology died on his tongue. She didn’t need it, not even a little bit. She wanted his help more than anything. “Of course, I’ll help. But why lambs?”
“Kids seem to like them,” she answered, and she flashed a quick video she’d been watching on her phone.
In it, a couple of small children were fawning over a lamb at a petting zoo while their parents filmed them.
“So, they’d be for the petting zoo. The cabins should be ready soon, so we should have the animals comfortable and socialized, right? ”
“Do you know how to take care of sheep?” he asked.
She pulled up an e-book she had also been reading. “I’m learning.”
“You know you’ll have to shear them, right? Even if you don’t plan to use their wool.”
“Can you help me learn that, too? I feel like some hands-on experience might be better than a video tutorial.”
Although she was surprising him, he thought he probably shouldn’t be surprised.
He’d noticed her willingness to learn early on.
She may have been pretending she wasn’t listening, but the spark in her eyes as she mentally noted down every piece of information he gave her was obvious. “Are you free tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
“It’s the right season, so I think I’ll be able to find someone,” he said. It felt like setting up a date, but he shoved that feeling right back down where it belonged and finished the work he was in the middle of doing.
As soon as that was done, he immediately started searching. He quickly found a couple ranches within an hour that sold spring lambs. When the vet called to see how the calves were faring, Cole asked about the ranches and whether the vet had a recommendation.
Cole barely got his daily work done because of the effort he put into this one assignment.
He couldn’t tell whether he was more excited about the new challenge or just spending more of the day with Kat.
It didn’t matter in the end, so he put it out of his mind.
All that mattered was that he hadn’t been too hard on her, or if he had, she hadn’t let it get her down or stop her.
Instead, she was more energetic than ever in her fight to see her dreams come to life.
The following afternoon, he and Kat were on the road together, towing a trailer to the ranch to look at and potentially purchase a couple of healthy lambs. It was going to be a long trip, but Kat didn’t wait to bring out the snacks she’d packed. “Popcorn?” she asked.
He took a handful and thanked her. “Shouldn’t we save the snacks for later?”
“Mm,” she said through a mouthful of popcorn. “We should, but I never do. What’s the fun in that?”
“Are you a one marshmallow now over two marshmallows later kind of kid?” he asked, laughing.
“Oh, I’ve heard of that!” She sat up straight and took a sip from her travel mug, which he assumed was full of coffee.
“That’s that thing where kids can choose to have one now or two later, and it says something about their restraint or something, right?
I think I’m both. I’ll take the marshmallow now, but then I’ll try to scheme to get the two later.
Three is better than one or two. Don’t you agree? ”
He shook his head. “Not if you’re trying to avoid sugar.”
“What kid is trying to avoid sugar?” she asked, popping another two fluffy kernels into her mouth. “Never heard of such a thing.”
“They do exist,” he said, “as a matter of fact. Often there’s a health issue involved.”
She went quiet after that, thinking, clearly. He wondered what she was thinking about, and he was just about to ask her when she answered his question for him. “We should have sugar-free snacks in the gift shop, don’t you think?”
“That’s a trick question,” he answered. “I don’t think there should be a gift shop at all.”
But she was already noting down her new idea in her phone, mumbling, “Sugar-free snacks in the gift shop,” as she did.
When she was finished, she started munching on popcorn again and asked, “Have you always been this cynical? Because I’m picturing a small boy who trusts no one, and it’s both sad and cute. ”
He knew this moment was inevitable. She was always going to start questioning him about his past at some point. All he had to do was keep his answers short and vague. “Nope.”
“Hmm…” She made a show of thinking about his answer. “I wonder what it was that broke your spirit then. One big thing or a series of little things?”
He sighed but answered, “Neither and both. And what about you? What made you the way you are?”
Thankfully, she took the bait. “What do you mean the way I am?”
This kind of question was a trap, and he knew it, but it was better than getting into the nitty-gritty of his own life, a topic he was eager to avoid, no matter how much it cost. “You know,” he said without looking away from the road, “stubborn. You never give up, even when you definitely should. What made you like that?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shrug.
“I don’t know. I can probably blame Uncle Roy for that.
He always made me get up and try again every time I failed.
He said that you only fail when you give up.
If you never give up, then you haven’t failed yet.
” She smiled at the memory of her uncle, and Cole briefly wished he could have met the man. He sounded like a decent guy.
“Do you believe it?” he asked her. “What your uncle said, do you think it’s true?”
“I don’t think it matters whether it’s true or not.
It’s a mindset. If you give up, you’ll never accomplish what you tried to accomplish.
That’s a sure bet. But if you don’t give up, then you still have a chance.
If telling yourself you haven’t failed yet keeps you from giving up, then it’s a strategic mindset, and it doesn’t matter if it’s not one hundred percent true. ”
Cole laughed under his breath. “You really are something else, aren’t you?” He couldn’t get over how resilient she was, this city girl who had inherited a ranch and dove right in without assurances, experience, all the things most people would rely on before trying something new.
Though he’d given her a hard time about it, the truth was he was a little jealous of her ability to believe in herself despite the opinions of the naysayers around her.
Truly, it was admirable, but he wasn’t about to tell her so, at least not yet.
He knew he wasn’t going to be around for a long time, and he didn’t want to give her the wrong impression.
Even so, he would do everything in his power to set her up well before he left.
In his determination to do the best he could for her while he was here, he had set up a surprise with the rancher who was selling the lambs.
Kat had asked Cole to teach her to shear sheep, and he was going to do her one better.
Sure, he could handle a job like that, but why not learn from an expert?
So he’d asked the seller if he would be willing to teach her for a small fee.
The seller agreed, and so it was set. Kat had no idea.
When they arrived, she immediately went to meet the lambs, and Cole took the seller aside and paid the extra fee for the lesson. “Don’t tell her it was on me, OK?” Cole said. “Go ahead and take credit. Say it’s for the lambs or something.”
The seller nodded in understanding and pocketed the fee Cole had paid him.
In the end, Kat was thrilled. The seller let her watch him shear one of his sheep with a pair of powerful clippers on the end of a long, jointed, metal arm.
He was so quick about it that Cole worried Kat might not actually hear much of what he was saying, but she had apparently logged all of it away because, when it was her turn, she seemed to know exactly what she was supposed to do.
She struggled a bit getting the sheep into position initially, but some gentle coaxing by the seller gave her the tools she needed to make it work.
When she was finished, there was a pile of wool on the ground in front of her and a sheep that looked like it had some kind of punk haircut.
Cole couldn’t help laughing. She’d done so well for her first try, but it was still amusing.
“Dye that sheep a few different colors, and it’ll be ready to go clubbing,” he said.
The seller laughed along good-naturedly. “She’s never looked better.”
Kat was blushing furiously, and Cole couldn’t help noticing how cute she looked when she blushed. “I did my best,” she said.
“You did better than I did on my first try,” Cole said.
It surprised him that the words came from his own mouth.
He’d never been the type to offer comfort unnecessarily, but he wanted to make her smile.
And for some weird reason, he wanted to keep her spirit alive.
The more he became convinced she would never give up, the more he wanted to see her dream through to the end, even though it was impossible.
She muttered her response, “Liar.”
“No, I’m telling the absolute truth here. You should have seen the first sheep I sheared. It looked like a kid with scissors had gotten hold of it. Yours at least looks halfway stylish.”
“Thanks, I guess.” She smiled and nudged him playfully. He was glad she hadn’t taken his joke too hard. More and more, he wanted to be able to loosen up around her. He wanted to open up to her and joke around with her, but he had to remain guarded.
In the end, they bought two lambs, both female and siblings.
They had white bodies with black legs, noses, and ears.
He had to admit they were visually appealing little lambs.
She’d chosen the right pair for a social media campaign, which he knew she was already preparing because he’d seen her taking a video of them prior to purchase and again when they were loaded into the trailer.
“So what’s your plan for these girls in the long run?” he asked Kat as they were driving back to her ranch.
She thought a moment before offering her answer.
“Well, at first, I was only thinking of having them for the petting zoo and to sell wool items in the gift shop. But today gave me a couple more ideas. We could include shearing the sheep as one of the classes we teach. It’ll be seasonal, but I bet people would pay for an experience like that, don’t you think? ”
Instinctively, he wanted to answer that it was a bad idea, but then he thought about it for a moment.
Hadn’t he just paid good money for a sheep-shearing lesson?
Of course, people would pay for something like that.
He was beginning to see why her uncle might have entrusted this ranch to her.
She had instincts when it came to business.
It might not have been exactly how he would have handled a failing ranch, but it was still a method that could work.
From now on, he decided he would do everything he could to help her out.
It would be his good deed, his good karma in his mess of a life.
“Hey, kitten,” he asked after they turned onto the highway, “do you want me to teach you how to milk a cow?”
She grinned over at him and nodded enthusiastically. “And goats, too. I want to make cheeses for the gift shop.”
Instead of criticizing her this time, he smiled and said, “I think that sounds like a pretty good idea.”