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That’s my girl.
I walked up to the barbed-wire fence and pointed at the pole looped through with wire to hold the fence up. “You push your shoulder against that, then move the wire up over the post. After that, you should be able to slip it out and move it to the side. But you’re in that dress. I can do it.”
“No way will I give Rhett more ammo to tease me with,” she said.
I laughed, hands up. “I knew you would fit right in.”
She grit her teeth and carefully lifted her arm over the barbed wire, pushing the gate post, and then lifted the wire over the top. “Easy peasy,” she said, pulling the gate to the side so Liv could drive the truck through.
“Hen’s a baddie!” Liv called on her ride past us.
Hen grinned, and damn, I was grinning too.
We slid back into our seats, and Rhett said, “Hen, if this dumbass doesn’t marry you, I will.”
He might have been joking, but I punched him in the shoulder just in case. No way was he coming anywhere near my girl.
She tossed her head back and laughed, and with the wind fluttering through her hair, she looked like she’d descended straight from heaven’s gates.
Hen held on to the oh-shit handle as we bumped over the pasture, and Liv pointed out everything around us. She told Hen about our neighbors who had been renting their grass to us for the last fifty years so our cattle would have plenty to graze. Then she showed Hen the copse of trees in the corner by the creek that ran in the summer or after heavy rains in other times of year.
As we crested another hill, the feedlot came to view. “This is where we feed cattle in the winter and after weaning,” Liv explained. “Since the grass has been eaten down, it gives us a chance to make sure they’re getting good nutrition and are well taken care of.”
Hen nodded, taking it all in. “It sounds like a lot of work.”
Rhett said, “Twenty-four-seven, three-sixty-five.”
Liv nodded. “It’s like having three hundred thousand-pound kids.”
Laughing, Hen said, “I imagine finding a sitter is difficult.”
“We trade off on the weekends,” Rhett said. “That way Dad can get a break from time to time.”
I tried not to feel guilty for not being around—being a part of this family had always meant helping out—but I reminded myself that it was Dad’s choice to keep the ranch small. One call to Gage and he’d have an investor to help expand the operation. They were both just too damn proud.
I must have been deep in my thoughts, because I jerked back when Hen said, “Windmill!”
I looked where she was pointing and saw our windmill in the corner of the far pasture. Its dark iron silhouette stood out against the background of the pasture, its spokes spinning quickly in the breeze.
Liv drove us up to it, parking on the worn-down dirt several feet away from the tank. She stopped the engine and got out. The country played its own kind of music. The drop of water into the tank. The clod of cows’ hooves on the dirt. The rustle of wind against the grass. It was my favorite song.
As we got closer to the cows, they backed away. Hen watched them with wonder. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cow this close up.”
“That’s crazy,” Liv said. “They should put them in zoos or something so people can see them.”
“Yeah,” Hen agreed. “I’ve only ever seen goats, chickens, and rabbits in a petting zoo. Never a cow.”
She looked away from the cows to the tank, tipping her head back to take in the windmill. “How tall is it?”
“About twenty feet,” I said.
Hen approached the tank and trailed her fingers through the water.
Liv did the same and said, “In the summers when the creek was dry, we’d come over here to cool off.”
Hen laughed. “I bet the cows love Griffen-flavored water.”
Rhett nudged my arm, whispering loudly, “Funny too? Get a move on, man.”