“About thirty head in the next week to ten days, I think. Probably another fifteen that are two weeks out.”
“And it’s not yet peak birthing season. What kind of numbers are you looking at in March?”
With her nearly five thousand acres, Shane guessed she was running around seven hundred cows. That translated to seven hundred births a year. A lot could go wrong.
“It’s not as bad as it seems. We split the herd into spring and fall calving. So we’re only dropping three to four hundred calves at any one time. This cuts down on the number of short-term ranch hands I need to hire during calving and keeps me from losing a year if a breeding doesn’t take.”
“It’s still a lot of work.”
Brandee shrugged. “We do like to keep a pretty close eye on them because if anything can go wrong, chances are it will.”
“What are your survival rates?”
“Maybe a little better than average. In the last three years I’ve only lost four percent of our calves.” She looked pretty pleased by that number. “And last fall we only had two that were born dead and only one lost through complications.” Her eyes blazed with triumph.
“I imagine it can be hard to lose even one.”
“We spend so much time taking care of them every day between feeding, doctoring and pulling calves. It breaks my heart every time something goes wrong. Especially when it’s because we didn’t get to a cow in time. Or if it’s a heifer who doesn’t realize she’s given birth and doesn’t clean up the calf or, worse, wanders off while her wet baby goes hypothermic.”
Over the years he’d become so acclimated to Brandee’s coolness that he barely recognized the vibrant, intense woman beside him. He was sucker punched by her emotional attachment to the hundreds of babies that got born on her ranch every year.
This really was her passion. And every time he approached her about selling, he’d threatened not just her livelihood but her joy.
“My dad used to go ballistic if that happened,” she continued. “I pitied the hand that nodded off during watch and let something go wrong.”
“Where’s your dad now?”
Her hat dipped, hiding her expression. “He died when I was twelve.”
Finding that they had this in common was a surprise. “We both lost our dads too early.” Although Shane suspected from Brandee’s somber tone that her loss was far keener than his had been. “So, your dad was a rancher, too?”
She shook her head. “A foreman at the Lazy J. But it was his dream to own his own ranch.” Her gaze fixed on the horizon. “And for us to run it together.”
Shane heard the conviction in her voice and wondered if he should just give up and concede the wager right now. She wasn’t going to sell her ranch to him or anyone else. Then he remembered that even if he was faced with a fight he could never win, there was still a good chance she’d sleep with him before the two weeks were up. And wasn’t that why he’d accepted the wager in the first place?
* * *
At around two o’clock in the afternoon, Brandee knocked off work so she could grab a nap. It made the long hours to come a little easier if she wasn’t dead tired before she got on the horse. Normally during the ninety-day calving season Brandee took one overnight watch per week. She saw no reason to change this routine with Shane staying at her house.
Brandee let herself in the back door and kicked off her boots in the mudroom. Barefoot, she headed into the kitchen for a cheese stick and an apple. Munching contentedly, she savored the house’s tranquillity. Sharing her space with Shane was less troublesome than she’d expected, but she’d lived alone a long time and relished the quiet. Shane had a knack for making the air around him crackle with energy.
It didn’t help that he smelled like sin and had an adorable yawn, something she’d seen a great deal of him doing these last three days because she’d worked him so hard. In the evenings he had a hard time focusing on his laptop as he answered emails and followed up with issues on The Bellamy job site.
Today, she’d given him the day off to head to the construction site so he could handle whatever problems required him to be there in person. She didn’t expect him back until after dinner and decided to indulge in a hot bath before hitting her mattress for a couple hours of shut-eye. It always felt decadent to nap in the afternoon, but she functioned better when rested and reminded herself that she’d hired experienced hands so she didn’t have to do everything herself.
Since receiving Maverick’s blackmail notice, she hadn’t slept well, and though her body was tired, her mind buzzed with frenetic energy. Disrupting her routine further was the amount of time she was spending with Shane. Despite questioning the wisdom of their wager, she realized that having him in her house was a nice change.
Four hours later, Brandee was fixing a quiet dinner for herself of baked chicken and Caesar salad. Shane had a late business meeting and was planning on having dinner in town. He’d only been helping her for three days, but already she could see the impact he was having on her building project at the camp.
He’d gone down to the site and assessed the situation. Last night he’d studied her plans and budget, promising to get her back on track. As much as she hated to admit it, it was good to have someone to partner with. Even if that someone was Shane Delgado and he was only doing it to make her fall in love with him.
There’d been no repeat of him making a play for her despite the way she fixed breakfast every morning in her nightgown. Standing beside him in the kitchen and suffering the bite of sexual attraction, she’d expected something to happen. When nothing had
, she’d felt wrung out and cranky. Not that she let him see that. It wouldn’t do to let him know that she’d crossed the bridge from it’s never going to happen to if it didn’t happen soon she’d go mad.
Shane returned to the ranch house as Brandee was getting ready to leave. Her shift wouldn’t begin for an hour, but she wanted to get a report on what had happened during the afternoon. As he came in the back door and met up with her in the mudroom, he looked surprised to see her dressed in her work clothes and a warm jacket.
His movements lacked their usual energy as he set his briefcase on the bench. “Are you just getting in?”