Page 68 of Wild, Wild Cowboy

Hannah:

I get cold.

Zack:

Are you wearing your glasses?

Hannah:

I put them on to read your text.

Zack:

Fuck, duchess. This won’t take long.

It should have been a shitty morning. I woke up exhausted. I never slept well, but last night had been the worst night I’d had in a long time. Even after I’d fucked my own hand, imagining flicking open the buttons on Hannah’s prim nightgown one by one, I’d laid awake for hours missing her.

Dropping her off at her bungalow and then continuing on to Lodestar Ranch without her had felt all kinds of wrong. I should have been sick of her company and eager for a night on my own to decompress, but no. Every two seconds I had looked around like I expected her to magically appear at my elbow, and when she failed to do that, it felt like everything was off kilter.

I’d had half a mind to drive out to Aspen Springs and crawl into bed with her, but that was dumb. She had to be at the library early today, and ranch chores started at dawn. I would have only had two or three hours in her bed before I’d have to be up and driving back to Lodestar.

The crazy thing was, I thought it was totally worth it. The only thing that stopped me was worrying about disrupting Hannah’s sleep.

So, yeah. It should have been a shitty morning.

But it wasn’t.

I didn’t wake up refreshed, but I woke up eager. Hurricane Red was here, and his health and wellbeing were now myresponsibility. I needed to see how he had done overnight and if the last week on the road had upset his stomach. I needed to get a vet out here pronto to check him for any communicable diseases and his overall health.

I moved slowly, my body letting me know exactly how much it was missing Hannah’s massages. It annoyed me a little how stark the difference was. She was right; I should have been scheduling regular rubdowns once my bones were healed enough. I would try to find some time to do something about it, even if Hannah’s hands were the only ones I truly wanted on me.

By the time I got to Hurricane Red’s quarantine pasture, the sun was low in the sky. Dew still clung to the grass and birds were calling good morning to each other. Adam was at the fence with Blaine, who had been working at Lodestar since he was sixteen. Now that he was in college, he was only with us for the summer.

I joined them at the fence. “Good to see you again, Blaine. How’s school going for you?”

Blaine rubbed a hand over his short black curls, then grinned. “Straight A’s.”

“Two more years, and then you’ll be heading to veterinary school?”

“That’s the plan.”

I nodded. Blaine’s dad was the only local veterinarian Aspen Springs had left, and I knew he was looking forward to his son joining him. The Gunnel family had been in Colorado almost as long as the Hales. They had come through here as freed slaves turned cowboys, moving cattle from Texas up to the north after the Civil War, and ended up sticking around, some settling here in Aspen Springs, and others going to Five Points in Denver.

“Speaking of plans,” Adam said. “What’s yours for Hurricane Red?”

I leaned forward, folding my forearms along the top rail of the fence. “Don’t really have one, I guess. I hadn’t thought much beyond getting him here.”

“Makes an expensive lawn ornament, doesn’t he?”

I smirked. “Didn’t pay a dime for him, actually.”

“Care and feeding isn’t free, you know,” Adam pointed out. “He’s, what? Five, six years old? Probably has a good twenty years left of eating hay and getting vet checks.”

My shoulders tensed. “So take it out of my pay.”

“We’re not going to do that, Zack. He’s your horse. Of course you can keep him here.” But he sounded grouchy about it.

“Real magnanimous of you,” I said drily.

---