Reece (Stud Ranch 4)

I went to climb on the back of the ATV again, but then paused. “All right, so I guess if I’m gonna be doing this I should get comfortable driving this thing, huh?”

The sooner I could do this myself, the sooner I could get out of his proximity. Plus, I wanted to be useful, not have a babysitter.

He tossed me the keys. “You’re up, Captain.”

“Oh,” I said, only just managing to catch the keys. A good thing, considering there was a cow pie on the ground right in front of where I stood.

I climbed on the front of the ATV and put the keys in, turning it on. Reece gave me a brief rundown on how to work it. It had a button shifter on the handle, hand and foot brakes. Nothing too hard. Plus, driving it looked… well, fun.

The only moment I got a little trepidatious was when Reece climbed on behind me. He didn’t put his arms around my waist or anything, but I was suddenly very aware of the inside of his thighs cupping the outside of mine.

“Okay. Where to?” I called over my shoulder.

He reached forward, bringing his face into near contact with mine, so near I could smell the mixture of mint from his toothpaste mixed with his morning coffee. “Up over the ridge. You’ll see there’s a sort of trail that’s been worn down between the grass.”

I had the ridiculous thought of how easy it would be to turn my head and kiss him.

Which was one of those absurd, fleeting thoughts that just turned your face red and made you think: what the hell?

And simultaneously made me think with a sort of wonder—holy crap, was this what attraction felt like? When being close to a person feels like a torture and a tease both at the same time? It had been so long, I’d forgotten.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yup!” I said too quickly, in a voice that was a little too squeaky. I cleared my throat. “Just… I mean, I’m ready when you are.”

He chuckled, a warm sound in that husky voice of his. “Ready to go, Captain.”

I pushed on the gas with the handle and the ATV launched forward with such suddenness that Reece’s arms immediately grabbed for my hips. He let go a second later, as if he’d been as surprised by the four-wheeler’s quick takeoff as I was. Not that I let up. This was way too much fun.

We couldn’t be going faster than ten or fifteen miles an hour but it felt exhilarating to be flying across the pasture with the air rushing against my face and through my short hair. We came up to another group of cows and Reece tapped on my shoulder.

“Slow down,” he called out in my ear from behind, his chest pressed up full against my back.

I nodded and down-shifted with the button like he’d shown me, slowing us, still a good distance from the cows. “What is it?” I asked him.

“We want to watch to see if any of them look like they’re about to drop a calf.”

I pulled the ATV to a stop. “How do you tell? What are the signs?”

He shrugged, eyes still examining the herd. “You start to learn how to tell.”

“Not helpful. If I’m supposed to be out here looking for this by myself, I’ll need more to go on.”

“Okay, well, legs hanging out of a cow are a pretty good sign.”

“Gee, thanks, I’d have never figured that part out for myself.”

He chuckled again. “But there are some other tried and true ways.”

“Such as—” I waved a hand.

“Well, if you see a cow acting weird. Not like herself.”

I could feel my eyebrows lift. “How am I supposed to know how cows normally act?”

“You’ll learn.”

He spoke so confidently. And as if I’d be around long enough to learn the ins and outs of cow behavior.

“I’ll still come out twice a day the first week to teach you what to watch for. But it’ll be helpful to have you doing all the other trips so I can work with Jer to get the ranch up and running. Your job will be with the newborns, checking on them like we just did, making sure they’re up and moving. Plus keeping an eye on the moms who are laboring. Some days it’ll be busy and some days we might not have any newborns at all. But since the calves are the most important part of the ranch, we try not to lose a single one.”

I nodded, suddenly feeling a little wowed that they were allowing me to be part of such an important task. And then immediately worried. “Wait, don’t you think you should give this job to someone who has more experience? Like Ruth?”

Reece just smiled. He had a bad habit of doing that, especially since his smile was particularly lethal to parts of me I’d rather not acknowledge at the current moment. Okay, my nether regions, it was my nether regions. Every time he smiled at me it made me go liquid. Not helpful for my concentration.