Herd That (The Valentine Boys 1)

Chapter 1

Save a horse, ride a… bike. Nobody wants a fat ass.

U-Sports bottle

Codie

“Yes, Granddad,” I said through shivering lips. “I’m on my way. Yes, I’m okay. No, the truck’s not having any trouble pulling the trailer. Yes. No. Yes.”

I sighed in frustration when Granddad continued asking me questions. Obviously knowing I was driving in the rain didn’t much matter to him.

“Yes, I’ll look for Mr. Valentine,” I soothed. “I don’t know how to back up the trailer, so I’m going to ask him to do it. Do you think he will?”

“Yes,” Granddad immediately replied. “I think he will. Just make sure to say please. He’s very formal.”

Did I note a hint of satisfaction in his voice?

Whatever.

“Listen,” I said, spotting the sign for the Longview Livestock in front of me. “I’m almost there, and I’m about to turn. I love you.”

“Love you, too, Codie,” Granddad said in his shaky, aging voice. “Have fun.”

I smiled at the words coming from Granddad’s mouth.

He didn’t say ‘I love you’ very often, so when he did, it made the words all the more special to hear.

Dropping the phone into the seat beside me, I looked in my rearview mirrors and started to slow the large one-ton Dodge diesel dually, making a wide turn into the parking lot and coming to a stop almost immediately after pulling in.

“Where do I go?” I asked the empty cab.

My eyes took everything in at once, and my belly started to flutter.

“Shit,” I growled, turning right and keeping it slow as I accelerated.

I didn’t know how to drive a trailer, and I’d had to learn almost in a trial-by-fire type way.

Granddad had entered these cows into the show, and when he got sick, he couldn’t back out because he’d had a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with the livestock place, whatever the hell that meant.

I’d tried to tell him we could take them together next week, but he would hear none of it.

Take them, Codie. You can do it; I have faith in you. Plus, if you have any trouble, an old friend that lives on the next farm over will be there to help you if you have any problems.

Gritting my teeth, I followed the trailer in front of me to the back of the lot and swung a bitch at the very end of it, coming to a stop behind a pretty silver trailer.

Granddad had forced me to rent a trailer, and it looked ridiculous. Nothing could’ve signaled me as an inexperienced person more than the bright red trailer with ‘rent me’ on the side of it.

I’d tried to get Granddad to let me use his trailer, but he’d refused to allow me to even touch it.

“That’s a fifty-thousand-dollar piece of equipment. If you wreck it, then I won’t have anything to transport Shaggy in,” Granddad said.

Shaggy was my granddad’s prized bull, and the moneymaker of his farm at the moment.

At three years of age, Shaggy was the reigning champion, never been ridden for a full eight seconds, prize winner who was babied by my grandfather, and likely the cause of his heart attack.

Granddad tried to go to every event that Shaggy went to, and I loathed to admit it, but Granddad was no longer a spring chicken.

Something he’d had proven to him four weeks ago when he’d suffered a heart attack and been informed that he needed to take it easy.

That’d been my cue to come home, and I’d been with him ever since.

Four weeks of listening to my grandfather whine about not being able to make any of Shaggy’s games… or bouts…or whatever the hell they were called.

Then him saying he needed to get some work done, and sell some cows this morning, had come out of the blue.

He’d been so distraught about ‘bleeding money’ that I’d stupidly volunteered to help him any way I could. Which brought me to now, driving a trailer full of freakin’ cows, in a fucking thunderstorm.

Once I was fully in a stopped position, I put it into park and reached for my phone, typing out a text.

Codie (11:11 AM): I’m here.

Codie (11:14 AM): Where do you want me to go?

Codie (11:16 AM): Hello?

Growling in frustration, I snatched up my purse and hopped out of the truck, my new, pretty boots sinking about an inch and a half into a puddle of muddy water.

At least I hoped it was muddy water.

Placing the keys into my back pocket, I tucked the phone into my purse and started toward the big white building.

I smiled at a man who waved at me, his eyes taking in my attire, making me blush.

I was a city girl at heart.

I loved Kilgore, I’d grown up in the small town, but I wasn’t a rancher like my family had been before me.

I was a city girl who loved to wear flip-flops and high heels. I liked to wear dresses more than I liked to wear jeans, and I most certainly didn’t shovel manure unless I absolutely had to—i.e., never.