Page 23 of Shame the Devil
“Oh, yeah?” Owen had answered. With a smile, considering that Dyma was eating a hamburger at the time.
“Just taking my chance while I’ve still got it,” she said. “Also, this is grass-fed, even though that’s totally not enough. How can you see what happens in feedlots and raise cattle? And, OK, even with grass-fed—what about slaughterhouses? And how they’re transported in those horrible trucks, and all the hormones and antibiotics? How can you let them suffer like that?” She looked at her hamburger and made a face. “And I’m such ahypocrite.I can’t believe I’m eating this. Seriously, I can’t. We watchedFood, Inc.in my AP Bio class last month, and I got sick. How can I pretend to care about animals and still be part of letting that happen to them?” She set her hamburger down, put a hand on Owen’s huge forearm, and said, “How can we do this? Seriously. How can we?”
“I can’t, I guess,” he said. “Must be why my ranch is Global Animal Partnership certified.”
She grabbed his arm tighter. “Really? You’re kidding. Not that I know what that is.”
He said. “You could look it up. I bet you’re great at research.”
Jennifer wanted to tell him,Stop saying things like that. She’s already halfway infatuated with you.She wasn’t going to say “in love.” This wasn’t “in love.” This was,Oh, my god, he’s hot. I can’t believe this is happening.She knew, because she felt the same way.
Sheat least had an excuse.Shewas a little drunk. Dyma, though? Dyma was just being Dyma. Was there anything more dangerous to a mother’s peace of mind than a girl like this, with too much confidence in her brains and not nearly enough knowledge of what the world could do?
Dyma wasn’t checking for her mom’s reaction, no surprise. She was all about Owen. She asked, “Are you just telling me that? Messing with me?” Proving she hadsomecaution, at least.
“No,” Owen said. “I’m not.”
Dyma said, “OK, first, I have absolutely no idea what it means, but I’m assuming it’s some kind of humane thing. Why? I mean, how did you decide to do it? And how canyou be a rancher? You’re barely older than me. Oh, wait. You mean you work on a ranch, except you can’t, because you wouldn’t make much money doing that, and these rooms are three hundred bucks anight.Look around. We’re the youngest people here who aren’t somebody’s kids. Well,I’msomebody’s kid, but never mind.So is it that your family has a ranch?”
“No,” he said. “Or yes and no.” Fortunately, he was still looking amused. Although,unfortunately, he was also looking at Dyma like he wanted to pick her up and put her in his lap, and not in a what-a-cute-kid way. More in a this-girl-is-too-adorable-and-I-want-to-kiss-her-bad way. Jennifer was very familiar with that look. Dyma was right, that probablywasone reason she’d stayed with Mark. If anything, Mark found Dyma a little annoying. Which, come to think of it, wasn’t all that great. Why had she settled for that?
(She checked Kris. No I-need-to-kiss-this-girl look. He wasn’t annoyed, either. He was just amused. Good.)
Dyma asked, “What does ‘yes and no’ mean? Also, does it work? I mean, is it profitable enough? I thought the whole reason for factory farming was that you can’t afford to do it the other way, especially if you’re not corporate and don’t have economies of scale.”
Owen asked, “What order do you want me to answer those in?”
“Any order,” she said. “Oh—do you have pictures?”
“Of what?”
“Of the ranch. Ranches alwayssoundlike they’d be amazing. ‘Ranch’ is a great word. Romantic. Argentina, cowboys on the pampas with the snow-capped Andes in the background, all that. But I doubt they’re actually like that. Have I ever been to a ranch?” She considered that, and Owen let her. “No, I have not. I’ve only seen them in the movies. I believe the houses have generally been made of logs, and there’s been a corral somewhere. Also a bunkhouse. So there you go.”
“Well,” Owen said, “the first answer is that my mom and dad and my brother and his wife work the ranch with me, but I own it, yeah.”
Jennifer’s eyes were narrowing. This sounded like such a line of—well, bull. A bit like, “Well, yeah, my mom and dad live in this house too, but it’s actually mine.”
She glanced at Kris, and he must have been able to tell what she was thinking, because he said, “He does own it.” Which still made no sense. If you inherited something, it would comefromyour parents. If it came from your grandparents, your parents would inherit it. So—no.
Maybe Owen had won the lottery. Had anybody in the history of ever, though, won the lottery and bought a cattle ranch? And actually worked it? No.
Next idea. Tech wunderkind. Nobody said they allhadto be skinny and pale, right?
She surveyed Owen. Plaid flannel shirt. Jeans. Boots. Workingman’s hands. No-nonsense haircut and close-cut, non-hipster beard. The enormous size and obvious strength of him, and something in the way he sat that told you he didn’t sit a whole lot.
Not a tech wunderkind. Even with a standing desk. Just no.
“And the second answer is,” Owen said, “that you can sell humanely raised beef for a higher price, that’s how. Don’t get me wrong, though, there’s still not much glamour to it. You’re talking alotof manure, and a whole lot of freezing mornings checking your fence line. Gotta love it to do it, or you wouldn’t do it at all. And the third answer …” He pulled out his phone and swiped around. “This is my place.”
“Oh,” Dyma said blankly, peering at the phone intently. “Youdohave horses. And a log house. And mountains.”
“Well, yeah.” He was still looking amused. “Horses kind of go with the territory. That’s why they’re on the license plate. And I don’t have mountains, not on my land. They’re in the background, but they sure look nice there, don’t they? Got some real nice high country, though, with white marble cliffs that are about the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen. You could quarry the stone out, but it always seems like a shame to do it.”
“So you can ride a horse?” she asked.
He smiled some more. “Hard to be a rancher out here if you can’t. Got to be a pretty big horse, of course. Good thing horses come in different sizes. Here. This is my best horse. Grizzly. Crossbred Percheron. He’s big, but a whole lot faster than he looks, and a pretty good cutting horse, too. The Percheron was a war horse. Heart of a lion.”
“Kind of like you,” Kris said.
