Page 1 of Home Hearts Hooves

Chapter one

DEAN

WELCOME TO THE RANCH OF MOOS, MEN AND MISFITS

“Thegiraffeisinthe pool again!” Mrs. Parker, the guest staying in cabin four, yells the second I answer the phone. I massage the back of my neck with one hand and take a breath before responding. We don’t keep giraffes, we’re a ranch, not a zoo, though sometimes, I feel like I run a zoo with the random shit I have to deal with on a daily basis. Like this. I can guarantee you that no other rancher in the country, actually, probably in the world, gets phone calls every other day about a lama that refuses to get out of the pool.

“I’ll be down in a few minutes,” I sigh,alreadyreaching for the carrots.

“Where are you off to?” Nial, my younger brother and partner in this craziness, asks.

“Fucking Chewie is in the pool again.”

Nial shrugs like this is a totally normal fucking thing to be dealing with.

“Ya’lltheone who said yes to taking them in. Preston told us they were a bit…special.”

That is true. He’d used the word “quirky,” I think, but Ican’t be sure, because just like any other time I get around the local vet, Preston Knight, I struggle to actually listen to his words and end up just nodding agreement to everything he says or speaking in gibberish. Totally hot, right?

Ever since we were young, I’ve crushed hard for that man. He always did what was right, even then, as a child. He’d come with his father to the ranch whenever we had a sick or injured animal, and it was he who convinced his father to save my horse, Bucky. Bucky had gotten himself out of the paddock and stuck in the riverbedthat runs downbeside the far-right acre. Gramps, Perry, and a few other farmhands managed to pull him out, but he broke his leg, either on the fall that landed him in there or on the way out.

Gramps was expecting to have to put him down. The vet, Preston’s dad, was thinking the same when he arrived. I could tell by the look on his face. But it’s his words that I remember most: “He might never be the same.”I remember that, and I can recall perfectly Preston looking at me, his cheeks stained with tears, likely matching my own, clutching at his father’s hand and begging him to save my horse. It took six months for Bucky to fully heal, and Preston was with his dad on every visit to the ranch during that time. I was almost as tongue-tied around him then as I am now. Almost.

“I’m pretty sure he never said I’d be wrangling one of them out of the pool every other day,” I tell Nial, grabbing an apple from the kitchen table and taking a bite. “I’ve fixed the enclosure twice this week. We should have called him Houdini, not Chewie, with how easily he seemsto be ableto escape that thing,” I mumble.

“We already called the dog Houdini.”

“But he couldn’t escape a paper bag. Stupid thing got stuck in the bathtub yesterday. He was just sliding around as he kept trying to get out. I swear, Gramps is going to visit and second-guess giving us this place when he sees the collection of misfits we’ve amassed this year.”

Beaker Brothers Ranch has been in our family for generations.It was namedforthe first brothers in the familyrunning the ranch, and even when Gramps was the only Beaker here, the name stayed the same.He was raised on the ranch, thenheraised us here, too, and when Gramps could no longer run the place, he sold a parcel on the back of the property, bought an apartment building in Savannah, and gave the rest of this place to us. By us, I meanme,and my siblings. Nial, my younger brotherwhoruns this place with me, our sister, Kelly, and our baby brother, Alan. Both Alan and Kelly are in Savannah with Gramps. Alan’s a baseball player with one of the new Banana Ball teams, and Kelly’s a substitute teacher for first and second-grade kids. She says she loves it, but I’d rather be here with my misfit menagerie than in a room of twenty-five six- and seven-year-olds.

“Gramps is the reason we have Gordon, remember,” Nial reasons, waving his spoon my way before dipping it into the chocolate milk powder and adding a ridiculously large helping to his milk. “You can’t blame Preston for that one. And I’m pretty sure that a donkey that thinks he’s a dairy cow is probably always going to be the weirdest one of the bunch.”

He’s not wrong there. Gordon is about twenty and spendsevery daywith the cows, eating, sleeping, and milking with them. Except he can’t be milked, because he’s a donkey. A male donkey. He was orphaned at birthandGramps, in a last-ditch effort to save him, brought him to one of the dairy cows that lost her calf the day before. By some miracle, she accepted him. Butthenas Gordon grew up, he became super clingy, refusing to leave the cows when they went into the milking sheds, so Gramps took apart an old milking kit and added a strap that could be looped over Gordon to stay in placewhilehis cow familyweremilked beside him. To this day, if we try to keep him out of the shed, he’ll headbutt and kick the doors until we let him inside.

“Grab that old camera of yours,” I tell Nial, heading for the door. “Set it up in the enclosure while I coax Chewie out. I want to see how this fucker is escaping.”

I get to the poolandSky, our youngest farmhand, is already trying to wrangle the lama. He’s looped a rope around Chewie’s neck, but the stubborn shit won’t budge. I can’t help but laugh as Chewie yanks his head to the side and Skye almost goes headfirst into the water.

“I’m trying to get him out, boss, but he just won’t budge,” Skye says when he spots me.

Skye stands out on the ranch more than thelamain the pool with his bright pink hair and penchant for colorful workwear. Today, it’s bright blue boots and striped green coveralls. He’d been turned away from four other ranches before he came to see us. Apparently, some of the older ranchers think there ought to be some kind of dress code out here. Me, well, I don’t give a shit what anyone wears, as long as they actually do wear clothes. Something Atlas Summers, our horse wrangler, had to come to terms with real fast. He can be a nudist all he likes when he’s in his trailer, but the second he steps out onto my ranch, there better be more than a light breeze between what God gave him and the guests.

He keeps trying to convince me to host a nudist week on the ranch. It took a lot of convincing to prove to Gramps this place wasn’t going to lose what made it special by adding some cabins and a pool.If he showed up and we had a bunch of people walking around in the nude, he mightjusthave a heart attack.

The pool was the most recent addition to the ranch, and I think Gramps would havetotallyhated it if we hadn’t had it designed to look like a pond. Large natural stones border one sideanda fake man-made cave sits at the otherend. It had to be man-made to fit the components for the waterfall featurewe haverunning over the top of it and into the water. But you wouldn’t know to look at it that it wasn’t carved from the same natural stone found all over these grounds.

“Chewie, the pool is for the guests, not for you,” I say as I check the lock on the gate. It’s secure, so not only is this shithead getting out of his enclosure, but he’s also figured out a way to bypass the security gate around the pool.

I would think one of the guests’ kids was letting him in here, but even when we don’t have any guests, thisshitwill find a way. Chewie looks anywhere but at me, that isuntilI pull the carrots from my back pocket. Then I have his full attention.

“You’re not getting these unless you get out. Come on.”

He jumps in the water, splashing for a few seconds beforewalking slowlyup the stairs and over to me. Skye still has hold of the rope, and as I lead Chewie out, I pass Skye the rest of the carrots so he can keep leading him back.

“Where does the vet-man find these things?” Skye asks as we make our way toward the lama enclosure.

“The Morris farm was bought outandthe new owners didn’t want to keep anyof theanimals. They’re building some fancy retreat spa thing, I think. Most of the livestock were sold off to other farms, but these guys were…less appealing, I guess.”

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