“That only means that one of us is going to end up very unhappy.” Zach narrowed his eyes. “I’m committed to that person not being me.”
“I hear you.” He gave a nod toward his sister and called out. “You looking for me, Emma?”
“Yes. Dutch is bringing a breech to the barn and he needs your help.” She pulled her horse up next to them and adjusted the black Stetson at the back of her head.
“Can you two monitor the rest of the herd?” Travis asked.
“I’m good.” Zach nodded.
“Then I guess I am, too,” Emma said as Travis headed back to the barn. The grim set of her lips and the expression on her face offered an uneasy détente. She’d work with him for the good of the ranch.
“Where are the twins?” Zach asked as his gaze skimmed over her. Despite the tension between them Emma was relaxed in the saddle. She wore a long-sleeve black T-shirt with the ranch logo on the front pocket. With a gloved hand, she pushed a single plaited braid of long dark hair off her shoulder. He stared, mesmerized for a moment, before returning to his senses and quickly averting his eyes.
“I’ve hired a sitter for a couple of hours every afternoon so I can help out, since Lucy can’t ride,” Emma said.
“Everything okay with your sister?”
“Apparently, you haven’t seen Lucy yet. My big sister is having a baby.”
“Whoa. Is everyone getting married and having babies around here?”
Emma laughed. “There does seem to be an epidemic, now that you mention it.”
“Her first child?”
“Her first pregnancy. She and her husband, Jack, adopted triplets last year.”
Zach opened his mouth and then closed it again. “I have no words.”
“Most people simply say aw when they see seven-year-old triplets.” She gave him a long look. “You’re helping Travis out?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s hardly a vacation.”
“In my world it is.”
Emma shook her head and led her brown Appaloosa with white spots toward the outside of the pasturing herd. Zach followed, riding the flank.
“How long’s this one been in labor?” she asked, pointing to a heifer reclining near the fence.
“Not long.”
Silence stretched between them as they circled the pasture.
“Who’s your App?” he asked with a nod to the Appaloosa.
“This is Rodeo.” Emma patted the animal’s neck as she continued to ride at a slow pace, eyes never leaving the herd.
“Rodeo? Does that mean you’re still barrel racing?” Zach asked.
“No. I was never really much of a barrel racer.”
“I thought you were.”
Emma’s face pinked at his words and she shook her head. “AJ is our resident barrel racing expert, though I try to get in some practice when I can. Sometimes I bring the twins to watch. I want to get them comfortable around horses right away.”
“Good idea.”
She pulled up on the Appaloosa’s reins. “We have one dropping over there.”
“Where?”
“There.” She moved right and Zach followed. “The head is pushing through.”
They held back at a distance, waiting and watching.
“Come on, little momma, you can do this,” Emma murmured. “You were born to do this.”
“There she goes,” Zach said. The calf slid to the grass minutes later.
“That calf isn’t breathing,” Emma cried.
Zach’s pulse kicked into overdrive at the alarm in Emma’s voice. He made a clumsy dismount, forgetting for a moment that his knee had no plans to cooperate. Zach caught Zeus’s saddle, barely escaping a face plant.
“Are you okay?” Emma asked as she, too, dismounted.
“I’m fine. Worry about the calf, not me.”
Steps ahead of him, she slipped to the ground next to the calf. Pulling her shirttail free from her Wranglers, Emma swiped the animal’s face, and then tickled the nostrils with straw.
The calf sneezed, spreading a shower of fluid all over her.
“Oh, yuck.” She grimaced, wiping her face with her sleeve. “Thanks a lot, little guy.”
Zach laughed. “Nice job. He’s breathing all right.”
Emma stood and backed away from the heifer as the mother sounded a grunt of protest and took over cleaning her calf.
“Whoa. Momma wants you out of there, Emma.”
“Yes. I’m going.” Emma moved and kept moving until she could grab Rodeo’s reins and hoist herself back onto the horse.
Zach carefully swung his leg over Zeus’s saddle, his gaze already taking in the rest of the herd.
“How could you leave all this?” Emma pulled out a bandanna and wiped her face again. Despite her disheveled appearance, there was a wide grin on her face.
“I know you don’t understand, but it wasn’t easy. Toughest decision of my life.”
Their gazes connected and Zach swallowed hard.
“Then why did you?” she asked softly. “We’d been friends since I was seven years old, and suddenly you left without a backward glance.”
He kept his mouth shut, unwilling to open that particular can of worms here and now.
“I guess there’s no point asking why you’ve stayed away for three years, either,” she continued.
Another heifer released a loud mournful wail and Zach turned his horse around. “Saved by the heifer.”
“You can run...” Emma murmured. “But it seems to me that you and I have a lot to talk about.”
Yeah, she was right. If he was going to be here until January, eventually he and Emma would have to talk.
Zach shook his head as he carefully headed toward the birthing cow.
Why was it that although he never gave a second thought to heading into danger as a navy SEAL, the thought of going toe-to-toe with his brother’s
