The Pretender (10 page)

Sage was finishing up the
last of the milking when his dog told him he was about to have company. The border collie got up from where he’d been stretched out in the barn doorway in the sun and stood looking off down the lane with his tongue hanging out and his tail waving slowly back and forth. Sage took the milk bucket into the cold room and put it through the strainer, then went to see who was coming. Although he was pretty
sure he knew.

She’d stopped beside the corral fence about halfway down the lane, and was doing some sort of stretching, warming up routine. He wasn’t sure what made him do it, but when he realized she hadn’t caught sight of him yet, he stepped back into the barn shadows and just watched her.

She was wearing jeans and athletic shoes, and a cotton knit zip-up thing with a hood hanging
down the back, nothing that showed her body off, for sure. And yet, watching her bend and twist and reach and turn, stretching those long legs of hers, he felt stirrings in parts of his body that had been dormant for a long time. A lot longer than he’d realized.

Not good, he told himself. He didn’t know what Sam would think of him having wicked thoughts about his granddaughter, but he was
pretty sure he didn’t want to find out.

He waited until she’d finished her workout and came on up the lane, and the dog went bounding out to meet her, then he moved into the sunlight. She saw him and lifted a hand in a wave of greeting. He watched her come closer, a tentative smile on her face, not out-of-breath, just flushed and windblown, strands of pale hair straggling out of the knot
she’d made of it on the back of her head. He’d have sworn she didn’t have on a speck of makeup, and yet, as he looked at her, his stomach coiled and made hungry noises, although it hadn’t been that long since he’d had breakfast.

Sorry, Sam,
he thought. He could curb his thoughts, up to a point, but there wasn’t much he could do about his body’s natural responses.

“Hi,” she said.

He nodded back to her. “You’re up early.”

“Evidently not as early as everybody else around here.” Her smile was wry.

He gave her back one like it. “You’ll get used to it.”

She made that scoffing sound. “Don’t count on it. I’ve been a night owl for a long, long time.”

“How’s your little
tuugakut
this morning?” he asked, moving beside her as she ventured into the barn, looking
around like a tourist venturing into a jungle.

She pulled her gaze back to him from the barn rafters, eyes still wide with wonder, and he had to catch his breath. Something different about her this morning, he thought.
Can’t quite put my finger on it…

Then she smiled—really smiled—and he thought:
I know what it is. She’s not afraid.

“She’s fine, thank you. And by the way, thanks
for the litter box.”

“No problem.”

She’d gone back to scanning the barn and everything in it—a big stack of alfalfa hay and a bunch of spider webs and rusty tools, mostly. “Where are all the cats? You told me you have tons of them.”

“Ah…well, they’ve already been fed,” he said, “so they’re pretty well scattered now. Hunting…hiding…sleeping…”

She looked disappointed, but
only for a moment. Then she turned to him and her face lit up like an eager child’s. “Well, Josie told me you could show me the animals, so…I’ve come to see animals.”

He found himself smiling back at her, the change in her making him feel easier in her company. “You make it sound like a zoo or something. These are just your basic farm animals.”

“Hey, I’m a city girl, remember? What
do I know from farm animals?”

He laughed and said, “Seriously?” Then he realized she was. “You’re telling me you’ve never seen farm animals? Not even horses…cattle…”

“Oh, well, I’ve seen horses, sure. The cops in Central Park ride horses. Hey, I’ve even petted one. Plus, they pull tourists around in these open buggies. Uh…that would be the horses, not cops,” she added, and he laughed
with her again. Then her forehead creased in a thoughtful way. He found it completely charming. “Cows…I’ve seen them, too. I saw lots of them just yesterday, remember?”

“Yeah,” he said, making a challenge out of it, “from a distance. How about close up?”

“Are you nuts? No.”

“Come here…” He touched her elbow and brought her with him to the barn’s back door. No flinching this time.
In fact, the warmth of her arm, even cloaked in cotton, seemed to melt and flow into his hand and from there into other parts of his body. Fortifying himself against the pull of physical attraction, he slid the heavy door open, and heard her gasp.

She halted and whispered, “Oh, my God.”

He moved to one side and watched her—eyes wide and brilliant as stars, strands of golden hair lifting
in the wind, hands pressed against her mouth—and he couldn’t have described what he was feeling if his life had depended on it. All he knew was, it felt like something bottled up inside his chest, looking for a way out.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Pet one.”

Her head jerked toward him. “Really? They won’t…I mean—” she gave a breathless laugh “—my God, they’re so big.”

“No bigger than
horses.”

“Yeah, but horses don’t have horns.”

Though even as she said that in a fearful whisper she was moving slowly toward the stanchions, where the three cows he’d just milked were finishing up the last of their hay. The only one with horns had lifted her head, still munching, to study the stranger with lazy curiosity.

“That’s Black
Betty,
” he said, tucking his hands in his
pockets and leaning against the barn door frame to watch her. “She’s gentle.” It felt good, being there with her, out of the wind, warm in the sunshine, senses filled with the sights, sounds and smells of healthy animals.
And a beautiful woman named Sunshine…

Giving himself a mental head-slap, he straightened and went to join her at the stanchions.

Abby was determined to show no fear.
Animals, she had heard, could
smell
fear.

“Uh…where, exactly, do I…you know—
pet
her?” she inquired, without taking her eyes off the beast, who was regarding her with apparent unconcern with eyes the approximate size and color of chocolate cupcakes.

“She likes to have her poll scratched,” Sage said, in a lazy cowboy-type drawl.

“Her…poll.”

“Her head—the part between the
horns.”

“Of course she does,” Abby muttered and, pushing up her jacket sleeves, stretched out her hand to touch the recommended part of the cow’s anatomy. The part between those enormous horns.

The cow sort of bobbed her head, but didn’t appear annoyed.

Abby let out a relieved breath and burrowed her fingers into the tufts of coarse black hair. When that didn’t produce a negative
response, either, she gave the mound a tentative scratch. And from somewhere deep inside her, a smile seemed to blossom. It grew and burst onto her face, and she turned triumphantly to Sage.

“Look, I’m—” She got no further. The cow lifted her head and bumped Abby’s forearm with her nose. Her very large, moist, rubbery nose. Abby jerked her hand back, but only a little, because the cow still
didn’t appear threatening in any way.

A long grayish tongue snaked out and lashed across her hand. Her breath caught, then stopped altogether. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, “that is so cool.” She looked up at Sage, and found his gaze resting on her, a quizzical half smile on his lips. Her breathing resumed with a little hiccup of laughter. “It feels like sandpaper.”

His smile grew,
and he shook his head and looked past her into the hazy distance. She could see his body shake with silent laughter, and her own body felt suddenly shaky, too, but with a warm and melty center.

“Hey, what can I say? I’m a city girl,” she said indignantly to the cow. Who, having evidently decided Abby wasn’t bearing anything good to eat, had already lowered her nose back into the pile of
hay. Struggling to hide her own smile, not to mention the shaky, melty feelings, Abby scratched earnestly at the hairy mound between the cow’s horns, then patted the broad flat space between her huge brown eyes where the hair seemed to grow in a whorl from a center point. “Yes…you are just a great big old sweetie pie, aren’t you?” she crooned. “And so beautiful…Black
Beauty,
that’s your name.
You are beautiful—
big,
but beautiful.”

Behind her, Sage cleared his throat and said in a gravelly growl, “Not so bad, right?”

She straightened and dusted her hands, striving for nonchalance. “Yeah, okay, but she’s still awfully damn big.”

“How about if I show you one in a smaller size?”

She cocked her head to look at him against the sun, shading her eyes with a hand. His
black eyes seemed shadowed, brooding, mysterious…but his teeth showed white with his smile. Though she tried not to, she couldn’t seem to help smiling back. “Little ones? Babies?”

“They’re called calves,” he said as he opened a gate in the wooden corral fence and held it for her.

“I knew that,” she replied with a snort, and heard his soft laughter as she slipped past him.

Passing
so close to him almost overwhelmed her senses: that warm, husky laugh…the musky scents of hay and animals and clean clothes and man…the rich brown tones of his skin, that somehow seemed to hold the warmth of the sun inside…the sleek black hair, like the glossy hide of a well-groomed animal. A panther, she thought.
Or a magnificent—

She stopped herself there, shaken by her own thoughts. But
she didn’t regret them.

He closed the gate after her, then led her through a dusty passageway between two high steel fences. At the end of the passageway was another gate that matched the first, which he again opened and held for her.

“Watch your step,” he warned as she slipped past him.

She nodded without really registering what he’d said. She was utterly enchanted. They stood
in a large pen, with a wide gate at the far end that was closed, now, but could be opened onto that beautiful green meadow dotted with yellow flowers. The other end, close to where they’d come in, adjoined another barn, this one smaller than the one she’d just come through, with its high arching roof and stacks of baled hay. This one was painted red with white trim, like a barn in a child’s picture
book, and it had a big sliding door that stood open to a mysterious shadowy interior. In the adjoining pen, a half dozen or so baby cows—calves!—watched them with soft brown eyes.

“Oh…” Abby murmured, making the word a sigh, “just look at them. They’re…
beautiful.
”

Sage cleared his throat, laughed a little, and muttered, “Yeah, they are, aren’t they.”

He hadn’t expected that word.
Beautiful.
Cute, maybe. That was what girls usually said.
Ooh, they’re so cute.
Which for some reason always set his teeth on edge. But
beautiful?
He agreed with her, but hearing her say it made his chest go warm inside.

He stood with his arms folded, hands tucked against his sides, and watched her venture on her own, farther into the calf pen. Watched one little black guy with a white spot
on his nose—the rejected twin he’d brought in day before yesterday—totter out to meet her, muzzle outstretched. Hoping for another bottle, probably, although Sage had been working with him trying to get him to suck Black Betty for two days, now. When the calf took the outstretched fingers Sunny offered and started sucking on them, and she laughed out loud, laughter came tumbling out of him, too.
He began to feel as though his arms were holding back something that might be too big for him to handle if he ever let it loose.

She turned her face to him, eyes glistening in a way that made him think of rain. In a hushed voice, she said, “They look so shiny…like they’re brand-new.”

He drew in an uneven breath. “Well, I guess he is pretty new. Just about…three days old.”

“Three
days? So…where’s his mother?” She’d turned her attention back to the calf, who was nuzzling hopefully at her pants leg.

“He’s a twin—his mother rejected him.”

She gave a shocked gasp and threw him a look of outrage.

He shrugged. “Happens sometimes.” He waved a hand at the other calves, two of whom had come to see whether the tall, light-haired stranger had anything interesting
to offer. “These are all leppy calves—means they don’t have mothers, for one reason or another. That one there,” he said, nodding at the brown bull calf that was regarding Sunny suspiciously, head down, front legs planted wide, “we found him down in one of the winter pastures in the valley. Who knows how long he’d been surviving on his own, stealing from whatever cow he could, fighting off coyotes…
We never did figure out who his mama was. But he’s a survivor, for sure.”

She threw him a look and asked, “So, what do they do for food? Do you give them bottles, or what?”

“We usually have to start them on a bottle, but as soon as we can we like to get them to nurse one of our milk cows. Like Black Betty, there. She’s got way more milk than her own calf can drink, so we put a couple
of these little ones on her. She doesn’t like it much—they don’t like to let strange calves nurse—so we have to restrain—”