Page 40 of A Gift for the Hopeful Cowboy

Pulling on his leather work gloves, he entered the barn. Maybe if he kept his head down and didn’t draw attention to himself, he could complete today’s work without being confronted by his boss.

“Rob, there you are. I was wondering if you were going to show today.”

Dang it!

Rob turned to Brent as the man approached. He offered a wide smile. “I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep well last night and couldn’t drag myself out of bed this morning.”

“Your shift started thirty minutes ago.” Brent kept his cards close to his chest, not showing a hint of what he might be thinking.

Confusion jolted Rob. He straightened, tempted to argue his case. His job was to be out here at six-thirty. Why would he need to be here early?

Wait—on cattle herding days, work started earlier than usual. Great. He’d already lost the chance to fly under the radar the second he had forgotten about the earlier shift.

“I’m sorry, sir. It slipped my mind.”

Brent tilted his head as he continued to scrutinize Rob. “You said you weren’t sleeping well. Are you coming down with something?”

“No, sir.”

His boss kept looking at him. Before he could say anything more, the men who’d been saddling their horses came forward. “We’re ready, boss.”

Rob released an exhale of relief. If they were on horses and working in the pastures, then Brent wouldn’t have a chance to grill him on what was really going on. The ironic thing was that at any other job, his boss wouldn’t have bothered. But they’d grown up together in summers past. They had a different kind of connection.

It was starting to look like he shouldn’t have come to work for the Duncan family out in Texas after all.

Over the next few hours, they worked at herding the cattle to new grounds. The handful of men, along with a couple of dogs, worked as one machine gathering all the stragglers and getting the cattle to a place where they’d have more space to graze.

The whole time, Rob continued to think about Pippa, fluctuating between wanting to apologize for his own idiocy and his desire to get back into her good graces. He wasn’t fool enough to go to her and tell her that he wanted something serious when she wasn’t ready to accept him for who he was, but he wanted to bridge the gap between what they’d been to what he wanted to become.

“Okay, I know this might be out of my jurisdiction, but something is obviously bothering you, and after Christmas, we have some more intensive things to do. I can’t have your head be somewhere else.”

Brent’s voice shook Rob out of his thoughts, and he glanced over his shoulder at his boss.

Their horses plodded along behind the cattle they were working with. Rob couldn’t make the excuse that he couldn’t hear Brent and as much as he didn’t want his boss to know what was going on between himself and the man’s sister, it was what Brent said next that pushed him over the edge.

“Is it about Pippa?”

Rob shot a sharp look at his boss. “Did she say something to you?”

Brent chuckled. “No, but Jackie might have mentioned something about the two of you getting close. Don’t get me wrong, I have zero interest in playing matchmaker for my sister. That being said, I know she can be… difficult.”

Rob snorted.

“I take it that I’m heading in the right direction.”

Rob’s eyes cut to the man again. “It’s not really that big of a deal.”

“If you’re losing sleep over it, then I’d say it’s a big enough deal that you should talk about it. You can talk to me… or find someone else to confide in. It’s no skin off my nose. But you really ought to get through this—and soon because I’m going to need your help in a few weeks to get the cattle their vaccinations.”

At least he wasn’t going to get fired. Brent wasn’t so upset that he wanted to make an example out of him. Rob stared straight ahead, all his frustration rising to the surface.

“Why do women think they know everything?”

Brent let out a boisterous laugh. “What?”

“You can’t tell me that Jackie doesn’t butt in when she has no business doing so. She’s probably got opinions that don’t align with yours.”

He laughed again. “Okay, sure. Is that what this is about? You two got close and Pippa overstepped?”

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