Page 68 of Cabins Cows Critics
“Okay, we’ll get you the pinecone, then we should try to find this yellow flower. Maybe it’s a fake one in the house. There can’t be flowers outside with all the snow,” Wen says, tucking the book and candle away in her basket.
“Actually, have you ever heard of a snow crocus?” Connor asks, and we all look confused, shaking our heads.
“You’ll love this,” he says, and we follow him outside. He takes us around the front of the main house and over toward where the fence for the horse paddocks runs.
“It’s pretty dark up there,” Wen says, and he chuckles.
“Worried I’m going to lead you to your deaths?”
“I am now,” she replies, and we laugh, then Greg turns on his phone flashlight.
“Thanks,” I say, and he nods, though I think he did it just as much for himself as he did for me and Wen.
“You are giving off big serial killer vibes right now,” I say, and Connor reaches back to take my hand.
“Trust me.”
Surprisingly, I actually do. He could lead me anywhere, right now, and I would follow, light or no light.
“Look up ahead,” he says, pointing with his other hand, and Greg angles his phone in that direction to try to see better. With it and the moon overhead, I can just make out, along the road just past where the fencing ends for the horse paddocks, what appears to be small yellow and purple flowers.
When we reach them, Connor kneels in the snow, picks one, and holds it up to me.
“Will you accept this snow crocus?” he says, and I cover my heart with my free hand and pretend to swoon.
“Why, yes, kind sir, I will.”
He stands, kisses me just once, soft and sweet, then slides the flower to sit behind my ear.
“Beautiful,” he says, gazing into my eyes, and the flurry that swarms through my gut reassures me he doesn’t mean the flower.
Chapter twenty-seven
Connor
THE PROMISE OF SOMETHING REAL
WendyandGregwonthe scavenger hunt, with a free weekend at the ranch in spring as the prize. She squealed with delight and wrapped her arms around Hayden when Dean called her name. Greg shot them a weird look, but it disappeared as fast as it came.
“This is nice,” I say as Hayden snuggles by my side in front of the large bonfire.
“Do you think they’re cold?” he asks, and I follow his gaze to where Brutus and his new pen buddy Pip sleep inside one of the shelters. Pip was a new purchase Nial made late last year after they decided to retire Brutus. From the first day we put Pip in the pen beside Brutus, they appeared to become friends, if that’s what you can call it when two bulls don’t want to kill each other. Nial thinks it’s because we’ve stopped breeding with Brutus, like maybe he’s happy to retire now and hand over the task to the younger ones. After two weeks of both of them hanging close tothe fence that ran between their pens basically ninety percent of the time, we did a test run, Preston at the ready with his tranquilizer gun, and as soon as the railing went down between their sections, they huddled up and walked the grounds together without even the slightest indication they were going to go for one another.
“Cattle build up a thicker coat in the winter, and those shelters are layered with fresh dry straw every day,” I tell him, and he pulls my arms tighter around him.
“I guess those two also have each other to snuggle up with.”
“You can bet they’re nice and toasty in there.”
Each bull pen has three shelters, all simple three-wall structures, with solid roofs that are positioned so that the openings face a different direction. I worked for three days on the new double-sized structures in their shared pen under the sweltering summer heat. They just looked on from the shade of one of the larger trees, like they knew I was doing it for them, and left me to it.
“I met with a guy from the Richmont Group today,” I say, and he shifts to face me.
“That didn’t take them long.”
“Turns out they already knew where I was. They’ve always known.”
“And they’ve only just shown up now?”
