A buzzing roared low in my stomach, and for the first time since shit went down, the anger that normally blazed hot in my veins began to simmer down instead of boil. My entire focus rested on her, locked onto her. Damn… Was this what Mikey felt the moment he saw Scottie? And Griffin with Jane?

“By the way,” she added as I released the reins from my fingers. “I’m assuming that grumpy-ass man you mentioned was him over there.” Kat raised a finger and pointed at the gentleman who now sat atop his own horse. A horse with a blue coloring to its coat.

“Yeah,” I grumbled and then raised a brow as suspicion settled in me. Scanning the man once more, my shoulders sagged. “He’s your dad, isn’t he?” I sighed.

She laughed again. “And you just called him a grumpy old ass.”

With a smirk on my face, I whipped back around and gazed up at her. “Good thing I’m not trying to impress nor flirt with his daughter.”

Her blue eyes narrowed, and something that had me confused flashed across her face. “Good thing,” she politely said without an ounce of warmth in her voice, and then quickly spun her horse away and trotted off, leaving me in a cloud of dust.

I cocked my head, watching her stop on the far side of the pen, all by herself. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that interaction. Maybe Duncan’s death rattled me more than I’d expected, and my flirting didn’t sound like flirting to her. I felt really off my game, really lost.

Really lost in general.

She looked everywhere but across the herd of cattle at me, where I remained still, simply watching her. Where I studied every single curve, every line, every rounded, full-figured part of her body. I shouldn’t have stared like I was, but I couldn’t help it.

At this moment, before all the chaos began and I would be thrown into something I’d never experienced in my life, I lapped up a woman who’d just waltzed into my life and who I knew was about to upset it all.

In a good way.

In a way that I needed and longed for. In a way that had me anxious and very much leery of my own impulsive tendencies.

The distraction from all of the destruction that I’d been through by a beautiful woman sounded very nice, however, and a smidge of disregard for that caution drummed within me. Though a faint tick at the back of my mind warned me she was more than a distraction. That she held the key to something I’d long since let go of as an option for me.

I tipped my head as her eyes drifted across the horizon. They locked with one of the cowboys seated near her father, and a flash of pain rippled across her face. Something haunting filled her soul and then she sighed and looked away.

Through my peripherals, I watched the cowboy with dark hair and upturned brown eyes smirk, then chuckle with one of the guys sitting near him. They whispered about something and then nodded subtly toward Kat once more.

She, on the other hand, did not seem to notice their exchange, and something snarled deep within me.

But there was no time to sit and figure out what the fuck that interaction had meant as the calm whipped into a frenzied madness of wild animals. Not a second existed for me to gain my bearings as the gate opened and hands waded into the cattle, darting in and out of the herd on horseback. The dogs nipped at heels, whistles from the other cowboys guiding them as the pets helped separate mom from calf just long enough for the rest of us to do our jobs.

A job that, while I eventually got the hang of, I sure wasn’t too happy about doing. Calf after calf, roped and laid on its side, met the end of my emasculator. Most of them were too old for them to be banded, which wasa relief, but it didn’t stop me from wincing every fucking time I had to slice out a pair of nuts and toss them into that bucket.

Spinning on my heel, I swiped the back of my hand across my forehead at the sweat staining my skin and rose with a pair of testicles in the other. A quick jog over to the bucket where I opened my fingers and they plopped into the receptacle.

“Another one for you, Redhead,” one of the cowboys shouted.

As quickly as I could, I weaved through the crowd and knelt beside my next victim. “Sorry, buddy,” I muttered, tipped my head, and sliced through the bottom part of his scrotum. The bull calf bellowed a gut-wrenching cry.

“Are you apologizing to them?” Kat asked. I briefly glanced up. Seated on her horse, she grinned and adjusted the rope wrapped around her saddle horn that had caught the calf I was working on.

“Do you have a set of balls?” I asked and sliced with the emasculator.

“Does it look like I have balls?” she sassed.

“Nah, but you sure act like you have a fucking huge pair,” I answered in kind and braced against my knees. Raising my gaze to her, I offered a smirk.

She chuckled. “Would it change things if I did?”

I winked. “You might be a bit taller.”

“Then why aren’t you?” She pinched her brows together as I threw my head back and laughed.

“There is no correlation between height and the size of a man’s nuts.” I rose to my feet and stuffed the emasculator in my back pocket while keeping the freshly removed pair of rocky mountain oysters in my otherhand. “Besides, I am a solid five-foot-eleven inches, which makes me plenty taller than you are.”

“And what if I was, like, six feet?”