“How often do they surprise you?”
“More often than I’d like to admit. And that drives me crazy because there’s nothing wrong with nearly eighty percent of the calves we lose at birth. Most of the time they suffocate because they’re breeched or because it’s a first-calf heifer and she gets too tired to finish pushing out the calf.”
“How often do you have to assist?”
“On nights like this it’s pretty rare.” The temperature was hovering in the low forties; compared to a couple weeks earlier, it almost felt balmy. “It’s when we get storms and freezing rain that we have our hands full with the newborns.”
Shane yawned and rubbed his eyes. Brandee glanced his way to assess his fatigue and lingered to admire his great bone structure and sexy mouth. It was an interesting face, one she never grew tired of staring at. Not a perfect face—she wasn’t into that, too boring—but one with character.
“What?” he snapped, never taking his focus off the cows. Despite the shadow cast by the brim of his hat, Brandee could see that Shane’s jaw was set.
“I was just thinking it was nice to have your company tonight.”
For the briefest of moments his lips relaxed. “I’m glad to be here.”
She knew that showing she felt sorry for him would only heighten his annoyance. Big strong men like Shane did not admit to weakness of any kind. And she rather liked him the better for gritting his teeth and sticking with it.
“That being said, you can take my truck and head back if you want. I don’t think much of anything is going to happen tonight.”
“I don’t like the idea of you being alone out here.”
“I’ve been doing this since I was ten years old.”
“Not alone.”
“No. With my dad. On the weekends, he used to let me ride the late-night watch with him.”
“What did your mom say about that?”
“Nothing. She didn’t live with us.”
Shane took a second to digest that. “They divorced?”
“Never married.”
“How come you lived with your dad and not your mom?”
Insulated by her father’s unconditional love, Brandee had never noticed her mother’s absence. “She didn’t want me.”
It wasn’t a plea for sympathy, but a statement of fact. Most people would have said her mother was a bad parent or uttered some banality about how they were sure that wasn’t true.
Shane shrugged. “You are kind of a pain.”
He would never know how much she appreciated this tactic. Shane might come off as a glib charmer, but the way he watched her now showed he had a keen instinct for people.
“Yes,” Brandee drawled. “She mentioned that often after my dad died and I had to go live with her.”
Judging from his narrowed eyes, he wasn’t buying her casual posture and nonchalant manner. “Obviously she wasn’t interested in being a parent,” he said.
Brandee loosed a huge sigh and an even bigger confession. “I was the biggest mistake she ever made.”
Six
Shane’s exhaustion dwindled as Brandee spoke of her mother. Although he’d grown up with both parents, his father’s endless disappointment made Shane sympathetic of Brandee for the resentment her mother had displayed.
“Why do you say that?”
“She gave birth to me and handed me over to my dad, then walked out of the hospital and never looked back. After my dad died and the social worker contacted my mom, I was really surprised when she took me in. I think she wanted to get her hands on the money that my dad left me. He’d saved about fifty thousand toward the down payment on his own ranch. She went through it in six months.”