had never really thought about his job the way Fee had just pointed out. Sure, he liked animals—liked working with them and being around them. He wouldn’t be much of a rancher if he didn’t. But he had never really thought about what he did as heroic. To him, taking good care of his livestock was not just part of the job description, it was the right thing to do.
“Oh my goodness,” Fee said suddenly when the calf began to emerge from the cow. Her expression was filled with awe. “This is amazing.”
Confident that the animal was going to be able to have the calf without further intervention on his part, he used his cell phone to call ranch headquarters. He needed to get one of his men to come out and watch over the heifer until she and the calf could be moved to one of the holding pens close to the barn.
When the calf slid out onto the ground, Chance walked over to make sure it was breathing and checked it over while the heifer rested. “It’s a girl,” he said, grinning as he walked back to Fee.
“Is the momma cow going to be all right?” Fee asked.
He nodded as he draped his arm across her shoulders. “I think she’ll be just fine. But Slim is sending one of the boys out here to see that she gets back to the ranch, where we can watch her and she can rest up a little. Then she and her baby will rejoin the herd in a few days.”
Fee frowned. “Why was she out here by herself to begin with?”
“Livestock have a tendency to want to go off by themselves when they’re in labor,” Chance explained.
“For privacy.” She nodded. “I can understand that.”
He watched the cow get up and nudge her baby with her nose, urging it to stand, as well. “She had probably done that yesterday when the men moved the herd and they just missed seeing her. Normally, our cattle calve in the spring, but she apparently got bred later than usual, throwing her having her calf to now.”
“But they will be back at the ranch house and I’ll be able to see the calf again?” she asked, looking hopeful as, after several attempts, the calf gained her footing and managed to stand.
“Sure, you’ll be able to see her.” He grinned. “But I somehow got the impression you didn’t like big animals all that much and might even be a little afraid of them.”
“This one is different,” she insisted, her voice softening when the calf wobbled over to her mother and started to nurse. “It’s a baby and not all that big yet. Besides, the fence will be between me and her momma.”
Seeing the cowboy he’d called for riding toward them, Chance led Fee over to Rosy. “Our replacement is almost here. Are you ready to mount up and finish checking on the grazing conditions before we head back to the house?”
“I suppose,” she said, lifting her foot to put it into the stirrup. “This would be a whole lot easier if Rosy was shorter.”
As he stepped up behind her, Chance took a deep breath and got ready to give her a boost up into the saddle. Touching her cute little backside when she’d mounted the mare the first time had damn near caused him to have a coronary. He could only guess what his reaction would be this time.
The minute his palm touched the seat of her blue jeans, a jolt of electric current shot up his arm, down through his chest and straight to the region south of his belt buckle. His reaction was not only predictable, it was instantaneous.
Feeling as if his own jeans had suddenly gotten a couple of sizes smaller in the stride, he waited to make sure Fee was settled on Rosy before he caught Dakota’s reins in one hand and gingerly swung up onto the gelding’s saddle. He immediately shifted to keep from emasculating himself. Fee hadn’t been on the ranch a full twenty-four hours and he was already in need of a second cold shower.
As they started toward the north pasture, Chance decided it was either going to be the most exciting two weeks of his life or the most grueling. And he had every intention of seeing that it was going to be the former, not the latter.
* * *
While Chance called his mother to make arrangements to take Cassie for ice cream the next day, Fee helped clean the kitchen after dinner. “Gus, it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. He knew exactly what to do and everything turned out fine for the momma cow, as well as for her baby.”
She still couldn’t get over the efficiency and expertise Chance had demonstrated with the pregnant cow. What he’d had to do to help the animal was messy and disgusting, but he hadn’t hesitated for a single second. He had immediately sprung into action and taken care of her and her calf to make sure they both survived.
It was hard to believe how many facets there were to Chance’s job. He not only had to keep extensive records on all of the livestock, he had to be a land manager, an experienced horseman and an impromptu large-animal veterinarian. And she had a feeling that was just the tip of the iceberg.
“Don’t go tellin’ him I said so ’cause I don’t want him gettin’ bigheaded about it,” Gus said, grinning. “But that boy’s got better cow sense than even his daddy had. And that’s sayin’ somethin’. When Charlie Lassiter was alive there was none better at ranchin’ than he was. He knew what a steer was gonna do before it did.”
Fee remembered Chance telling her that his father had run the ranch when he wasn’t out on the rodeo circuit. “How did Chance’s father die? Was he killed at a rodeo?”
“It was one of them freak accidents that never shoulda happened.” Gus shook his head sadly as he handed her a pot he had just finished washing. “Charlie was a saddle bronc and bareback rider when he was out on the rodeo circuit, and a damned good one. He always finished in the money and other than a busted arm one time, never got hurt real bad. But about three years after he stopped rodeoin’ and went to ranchin’ full time, he got throwed from a horse he was breakin’. He landed wrong and it snapped his neck. Charlie was dead as soon as he hit the ground.”
“That’s so sad,” she said, drying the pot with a soft cotton dish towel before hanging it on the pot rack above the kitchen island.
“The real bad thing was Chance saw it all,” Gus said, his tone turning husky.
“Oh, how awful!” Fee gasped.
Gus nodded. “After Charlie started bein’ at home all the time, that little kid was his daddy’s shadow and followed him everywhere. It weren’t no surprise to any of us that Chance was sittin’ on the top fence rail watchin’ Charlie that day.”
Fee’s heart broke for Chance and it took a moment for her to be able to speak around the lump clogging her throat. “How old...was Chance?”
“That was twenty-four years ago,” Gus answered. He cleared his throat as if he was having just as hard a time speaking as she was. “That would have made Chance about eight.”
She couldn’t stop tears from filling her eyes when she thought about Chance as a little boy watching the father he idolized die. Although she’d never really known her father and hadn’t been all that close to her mother, she couldn’t imagine watching someone she loved so much die in such a tragic way. That had to have been devastating for him.
“Well, that’s taken care of,” Chance said, walking into the room. He had called his mother to let her
