Page 29 of Cabins Cows Critics
“One, how is it you know that? And two, you don’t have cameras on him?”
“I’m the king of useless animal facts, and we tried a camera a few times already, but he spots them and knocks them down before he escapes.”
“Wow, so he’s like the supervillain of llamas,” I joke, and he laughs, opening the enclosure gate to let me pass and dropping my hand into the cool winter air, so much colder than I remember from only a few minutes ago.
“He’s fast becoming my nemesis.”
“All the things you know about animals aren’t useless. I’ve seen you with them. You… connect.”
“They’re easier to be around than people… well, most people, anyway,” he says, tying a rope around the gate to make it extra secure.
“So…I started my book,” I say, and he turns toward me as we walk up to the main house.
“Really? Wait, didn’t your friend say you have been writing it for years?”
“That was a different one. This is new. I…was inspired after last night’s….”
“Experience?”
“Yeah.”
“So is there a big, strong, handsome cowboy?”
“Actually, yes.”
“And it’s a romance?”
“Yeah, but with a twist.”
“What kind of twist?” he asks, with genuine interest in his tone. Wendy is always supportive of my writing, but she doesn’t hide the fact that she’s more interested in the potential for movie rights and who would be playing the main characters. Usually, she chooses one of the Hemsworth brothers, though I can’t really blame her. Ripped blond gods seem to be my type, too.
“You’ll just have to wait to find out.”
“Can I bribe you with coffee?” he asks with a cheeky smirk on his lips as we reach the old white porch steps that lead past Sally-May’s container home and into the back door of the main house. They creak under his feet but appear solid enough. The paint is rough under my hands, though freshly painted, it’s peeled and cracked showing the layers underneath. It’s actually nice that it holds some of the signs of the years it’s been here, welcoming the Beakers and countless others into this house.
“You already promised coffee,” I say, peering up at the old, weathered house. It’s two-stories high, with wooden-framed windows looking out over the ranch.
“Rats, I did, too. I’ll just have to think up something more enticing to bribe you with.”
“You do that,” I reply with a smirk.
I follow him through the door into the kitchen, and he takes his hat off with one hand as we pass the threshold. He quickly scrubs his fingers through his mess of blond locks to break the impression the hat left, and it’s kind of adorable. The kitchen isn’t huge, but it’s double the size of the one in my apartment and has a large wooden butcher’s block in the middle of the room with pie trays and bags of ingredients laid out waiting for Sally-May. There’s a huge old stove that is ivory and brass, and has five burners on top and three doors underneath. The wrap-around benches are all stone, not sure what kind, but they sparkle a little, so I am guessing some kind of quartz. Under the window looking out over the garden and ranch is a double farmhouse sink, also ivory and showing its age, with cracked enamel along the bottom edges and faint cracks snaking their way up the front in thin lines that actually make it feel more homey.
Everything in my apartment back home was brand-new. I was the first person to use the stove, the sink, sit at the table,and run the bath. Everything in here has a history to it. It’s been touched by generations and carries their memories with it.
“What are you thinking?” Connor asks, laying his hand over mine, that I only now register is resting on the rounded edge of the old sink.
“Nothing.”
“You can tell me,” he says, and his voice is like a calming wave that washes over me, giving me a quiet confidence.
I shrug. “I guess I was thinking it must have been nice to grow up here.”
“I thought the same thing the first time they welcomed me through the door.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. My childhood wasn’t so…warm,” he says with a sadness in his eyes I don’t like.
