Page 7 of Cabins Cows Critics
It’s why we keep a bucket of them in here during sessions.
“I’m going to cuddle Miss Moo,” Poppy calls, climbing out of the section just as more children slip free from their parents’hands as they walk down the drive and bolt toward the cuddle cove.
“Give her a good squeeze from me,” I say, and then the two-hour session flies by in a blur of noise and laughter and fun, and as I lead Lulu and Cuddles up to the house for dinner after another successful day, I glance back at the ranch that has become my home. The sun is setting over the mountains, casting a beautiful warm glow over everything.
“Are you coming in?” Atlas asks from the doorway of the main house.
“Yeah, I’ll just be a minute,” I say, not wanting to give up this view just yet. The mountains and rolling hills, the lands of hard-working people just like my new family here on Beaker Brothers, bring a warmth to my chest like nothing else in my life ever did. While my family was in beef, we didn’t actually run ranches. We paid people to do that for us. We did visit struggling farms looking to sell. Looking back, I hardly recognize the person I was, and while that hole I was chasing to fill has shrunk down to a marble, it’s not completely gone. But at least it’s not all-consuming either. That’s what made me run in the first place.
The hole used to be all-encompassing blackness that I could only drown out with drunken nights surrounded by noise and women and parties and play. The only problem with that was that the hole was never really filled. It was masked, and as soon as the effects of the antics wore off, it was just as big and dark, and that’s why I made the decision that ended up becoming the catalyst to my running away from it all. I went on television. A Millionaire Matchup, the show was called, and over the course of six weeks, I flirted and fooled around with twenty women, all hand-picked to be my perfect match. If my grandfather was going to make me marry, I was going to make the process as uncomfortable for him as I could. But then I met Joey, a young producer, and he opened my eyes to a truth I’d inadvertentlybeen running from my whole life. I couldn’t find my match in the women I met because it wasn’t a woman I was looking for; it was a man.
Joey wasn’t the one, if there is a one to be found. I couldn’t choose between the final two women at that last jewelry ceremony. Offering them expensive jewelry to continue through to the next week through the series was culminating with a diamond ring at the final live-streamed episode. The producers told me who they wanted me to pick, who the fans wanted me to be with, but as I stood there, her small hands in mine, I couldn’t bend to my knee and offer her a future I no longer wanted.
I didn’t think about the camera and the people at home watching. I was just looking at this hopeful woman in front of me who had found a place in my heart. I loved her, I really did, but the way you love a friend, not the person you want to spend your life with. I told her I was sorry, but that if I were to ever choose a woman to spend my life with, it would be her, but that I couldn’t. Her eyes welled with tears as she looked over at the producers, confused about what was happening. I pulled out the ring box and put it in her palm, laying my hand on top of it, and told her that she deserved a man who could love her completely, and then I told her that I now understood that I was searching for the same thing. Then I kissed her on the cheek and walked away.
Joey ran after me, angry, screaming at me to get back there and propose like I was meant to. But I couldn’t. My phone was blowing up with messages and tags online. I couldn’t handle it, so…I ran. I disappeared, made my way through small towns and middle-of-nowhere America, hoping for a new start, but sooner or later, someone always figured out who I was, and the media storm that followed had me running again.
Beaker Brothers is where I’ve found my passion, found myself. And while I know they need to promote the ranch to keep the place going, I’m terrified that one day a reporter who’sdoing what probably started as a puff piece will recognize me and it will turn into a whole thing about finding the missing millionaire. I’m not a millionaire. Not anymore. My access to the family money stopped the second the news broke about me. My grandfather was pretty clear about his views. I think it was less than a week after he’d named my cousin Gareth as his successor. I didn’t care. I don’t want that future. I didn’t want their name. I became Connor Walker, and yes, that last name came from watching old television shows. Connor is my middle name, so it was pretty easy to get used to hearing it. The name I left behind was far longer, and every time it appeared in the news, they made a point of putting the whole fucking thing in there, too. The writers probably get paid per word, so I get it, but fuck me, if I had to see Theodore Connor Brewer Richmont the Third one more time take up my phone screen, I was going to explode. That’s the life I left behind in order to find the one I have here. With the Beaker Brothers. With Atlas and his weird horses, and Skye wrangling llamas from the pool. I want to sit around the table with them all while we eat Sally-May’s home cooking and listen to Perry, her husband and longest-working guy on Beaker Brothers, tell us all stories about how it used to be back when he was a young’un working the ranch with Dean and Nial’s gramps. I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep my past a secret, because leaving this place would crush me. How could I ever leave the only place that ever really felt like home?
Chapter four
Hayden
MAKING AN IMPRESSION
“Arewethereyet?”Wendy asks in her most childish whining voice. We’ve been in the car for two hours now, and for the last twenty miles she’s asked the same question.
“Do you see me pulling into a ranch?”
“Well, you said this place was in Bellerelle, well, we’re in Bellerelle, the sign back there welcomed us in big blue letters, so where is this ranch then?”
“It’s about twenty minutes outside of the town.”
“Urgh, I’m starving. Let’s stop to eat.”
“They will have food there. It’s an all-inclusive stay.”
“Yeah, but I’m hungry now. Look over there, I see a big coffee cup sign. You love coffee, come on, I’m sure they have some super sweet country bumpkin blended thing you can try,” she begs, and I know if I don’t stop, I’ll have to listen to her complain for the next twenty minutes, and my brain just can’t handle that.So I pull in front of a butcher three stores down from the cafe and climb out.
The air is crisp, even with the sun out, and I pull my coat tight around me, praying the cafe has the heaters on inside.
“Oh, this place is so cute,” Wendy gushes, turning in a circle as she walks beside me. “Can’t you just imagine yourself moving out of the city one day to a place like this?”
“No,” I reply deadpan.
“Really? I think it’s adorable. I can just picture us in rocking chairs on a cute little porch sipping iced tea and remembering the good old days.”
“So we’re on this porch together?”
“Sure. I mean, after my third husband had died and left me with all his money, you’ll need someone to help look after you.”
I laugh. “And that will naturally be you?”
“Who else?”
“I don’t know, maybe my husband?” I reply, pulling open the cafe door for her to pass. The warmth from inside rushes past me, and I hurry in after her so that I can close it before we lose too much heat to the bitter winter chill outside. “And let me guess, the third husband will die mysteriously in some kind of freak accident?”
She shrugs. “Either that or he’ll contract some kind of virus and pass quietly in his sleep.”
