Page 8 of Cowboy Falling Hard

Sometimes having someone work with cattle who didn’t know what they were doing was worse than doing it by oneself, but in her years of working at the sale barn, she’d spent a lot of time wishing they had more help, and as a general rule, they never turned an offer down.

“Okay. Come on down, and I’ll give you instructions when we get there.”

She wasn’t even tempted to remind him to just do what she said. She figured he’d remember, since it was obvious he was embarrassed he’d let all the animals out.

She was right in her assumption.

While Dwight obviously had no clue how to herd animals, he listened immediately to anything he was told to do and did it to the best of his ability. Although, his ability wasn’t always enough to keep animals from escaping or to get them to go where they wanted them to, it was obvious he was trying.

She ignored the look Lavender gave her when they first started working together, and she also ignored the odd feeling in her chest as she watched him, mistakes and all. She might have been able to chalk it up to someone giving them a hand, like often happened when they were shorthanded.

But it felt like more than that. Although she couldn’t explain in what way.

As they loaded the last cow onto a trailer and said good night to the last farmer Lavender came over.

“Mom needs to drive out to the Heinisch farm and leave our trailer there so they can load their cows in the morning. She was going to leave the truck, rather than trying to unhook the trailer in the dark. She wanted me to go pick her up. Can you close things up here?”

“Of course,” Orchid said, knowing that Lavender wasn’t really asking her if she could do it, she was asking if she would, and she was expecting that Orchid would not turn her down.

Of course not. It was her job.

But as Lavender walked away, Orchid’s eyes fell on Dwight, who stood with one foot on the second rail of the gate, his forearm resting on the top, his posture relaxed, like this wasn’t his first time helping, and he was totally at ease.

She took half a second to admire the way he looked. Not necessarily the strength in his forearms, the way his T-shirt pulled across his shoulders, or even the long, jean-clad legs and boots.

It was more the way he just seemed so comfortable in his own skin. Or maybe it was the way he was looking at her. No one ever looked at her like that before.

Too bad when she talked to him, he only ever seemed to talk about himself. Or to be showing off. Even tonight as they had worked, while he had taken every order and had done his best, she always felt like he was putting a little extra movement into everything he did, trying to catch her eye or impress her. It was almost like he was bragging with his actions.

It was a negative way to look at someone, and she tried not to think about it. It was probably her imagination.

“Thanks so much for helping this evening.”

“I enjoyed it. I’ve always liked things that challenge me physically, and this does.”

“Yeah, there’s a lot of physical work involved. But once you figure out what animals typically do, it makes it a lot easier.”

“That’s a lot like baseball,” he said, and he launched into a description of how baseball was a mind game and how he’d figured that out.

He followed her around while she turned out the lights and closed doors and left the office, and by the time they were out in the parking lot, she hadn’t said much more than, “okay,” or “really?”

He finally stopped as they stood beside her car.

“Thanks again for your help.”

Again, she tried to push away the feeling that he had been saying everything he was about baseball to impress her. That he wanted her to know how knowledgeable he was. Or something.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested in what he was saying, it was just... She wasn’t sure.

“I was hoping you might go out with me on Friday night.”

She didn’t laugh, but she was tempted to. At the beginning of the night, she had expected this, but she’d forgotten, and he caught her off guard.

“No” was on the tip of her tongue, and then she remembered she had decided she was going to say yes. To give him a chance. Maybe, once he got more comfortable with her, he wouldn’t feel like he needed to try to impress her. If that was what he was doing.

Beyond that bluster, or whatever it was, she felt like he had a good heart. And Lavender had said he was a man of character. That was the most important thing.

“I can’t do it Friday night. I’m helping Daphne with her daughter.”

---