Page 76 of Second Chance with the Rancher

“Speak of the busy, heartbreaking devil,” Asher said with a chuckle as they watched Mieka bounce toward them with an enormous grin on her face, Bruno right behind her. “So, you’re a lawyer that moonlights as a dancer, or a dancer that moonlights as a lawyer?”

Her smile was sweet and her cheeks filled with pink. “In addition to dancing on the ships, we took part in dinner theater. I participated in a lot of murder mystery nights and got pretty good at acting. I honestly didn’t even really think about it before I was telling him I was your lawyer.” Her eyes glittered and she bowed. “Normally, I play a Southern belle, or a French artist,” she waffled between a drawl and a French accent. “Playing a lawyer was new, but I hope it did the trick.”

Asher chuckled. “I think it did.”

Mieka’s lips twisted and her eyes went wide as she gave a goofy shrug. “Obviously, we’ll hire a real lawyer if that asshole comes back with a lawsuit.”

“He won’t,” Asher said, shaking his head. “His wife was berating him something fierce as I escorted them off the property. Even his grandchildren were mad at him. I think—I mean I hope—he’s learned his lesson.”

Mieka nodded, then pivoted her gaze to Nate. “How are you doing?”

He glanced up at her and met her eyes. Concern swirled through the brown flecked with gold. “I’ll be fine.”

Nate’s brother snorted. “Dude, the barn nearly caught fire, and then you hauled off and punched a guy—a customer. In front of other customers. I’d say you’re not as fine as you think you are.”

Clearing his throat, Nate broke his gaze with Mieka and glanced at Asher. “I’ll be fine. I just need to process. I’ll get super baked tonight, have a couple of beers or an ounce or two of whiskey, a soak in the hot tub and I’ll pass out and sleep too heavy to dream about this nightmare.”

“Thattaboy.” Asher slapped him on the shoulder. “Weed: it solves all the veterans’ problems.” His tone was chock-full of sarcasm as he stood up and shook his head again. “We can handle barn shit for the rest of the day, maybe just make yourself busy with other stuff until we get the charred remnants of the lean-to removed, huh?”

Glaring at his brother, Nate stood up. “I’ll be fine. I’m not afraid of charcoal.”

Mieka cleared her throat and stepped closer to him. Her presence was grounding and made the sadness and frustration that was swirling around inside of him like a cyclone, calm down—a little. “More goats were born last night. Can I name them? You know this is my jam. I was born to name animals.”

Even though his heart was heavy enough to keep him sitting on the porch steps for eternity, he mustered up enough strength to plaster on a smile and approach her. “You were born for this, huh?”

She nodded and her grin grew even wider as she linked her fingers through his, giving his hand a squeeze that went all the way to the center of his chest and made the strings of his heart pull tight. “I was. We both know it. Can I name them? Twin girls.”

He squeezed her fingers, too. “Let’s go see these little kids then, hmm. Figure out what to call them.”

“Oh I already know what I want to name them,” she said, adding a little skip to her step. “I told you, I was born for this.”

He smiled at her and squeezed her hand. “I agree. I really do think you were born for this.”

Chapter Seventeen

“Dear God, I can’t wait to scrub this arm until the skin is practically raw,” Mieka said, holding out her left arm which was now in just an air cast and not the plaster cast. Even though Triss had offered to drive Mieka to Denver to get her cast changed, Nate said he would drive her. He had to pick up some stuff anyway, plus, he just wanted to spend more time with her.

It’d been six days since they’d gotten back from the cabins and the catastrophic excitement of the shed fire, and even though Mieka had moved up to his bed and they made love every night, he still missed her. They were both so busy during the day that he rarely had more than twenty minutes with her until dinner time. Ten minutes in the morning for breakfast and ten minutes for lunch. Then they saw each other at dinner and in the evening, but he missed that time with her in the middle of the day that he’d had at the cabins.

Which was why he insisted that he drive her to Denver.

“So are you going to keep the baby goats that were born this year or sell them?” she asked, sipping her milkshake from Gus’s. They’d stopped again for burgers, fries, onion rings and milkshakes, since Nate couldn’t go into Denver without stopping at Gus’s. But Mieka had opted to get a smaller burger and smaller sizes of her fries and onion rings than last time.

“We’ll keep a few, but we can’t keep all of them. We sell the majority.”

“Will you keep Chrishell and Amanza?” she asked, referring to the twin females that she’d named the day they got back from the cabins. Apparently, those were the names of two of the stars on Selling Sunset, a reality television show she was obsessed with. Nate had merely shaken his head and rolled his eyes when she told him the origin of her name choices.

“Yeah, we’ll keep them. They’re pretty docile, so they’ll be a nice addition to the herd.”

“Do you have any cats around?” she asked, peering out the window.

He nodded. “Yeah, we have six or seven barn cats that keep the rats and other rodents in check. They’re feral though, not allowed in the house.”

“What are their names?”

Wrinkling his nose, he gave her a strange look. “They don’t have names.”

The face she made had him bursting out laughing. It was as if he’d just told her that he’d committed murder. “They don’t have names?”

---