Chapter One:
Cache Bryant sat on the front steps of his cabin, his acoustic guitar across his lap as he watched the sun rise in front of him. The golden rays filled his soul with light and peace, and he loved this time of the morning.
Before dawn, he didn’t have to worry about his tasks for today. He didn’t worry about the bills he had to pay, or the cows he had to train, or the woman he wanted to impress.
Cache enjoyed the moment while he could, because he had a lot to do today. Scarlett, the owner of Last Chance Ranch, had been hounding him about getting the cow cuddling up and running. She simply had no idea how much work it took to make a bovine lay down and be petted. It wasn’t natural for cows, though Cache had found that they liked it.
But cows were stubborn, and the training had taken longer than he’d anticipated. Than anyone had anticipated.
As they were wont to do, his thoughts wandered first to his family’s dairy farm in Nevada. They’d lost it a couple of years ago, and Cache had come further west to Last Chance Ranch while his brother and father had gone east to Shiloh Ridge in the panhandle of Texas.
Maybe he just needed to go visit them. Get a change of scenery for a few days. He wasn’t sure, but the funk he’d fallen into recently seemed to be plaguing him for longer than usual.
He liked his job here at Last Chance Ranch. He did. He loved the people, though he was feeling particularly lonely now that Sawyer was married and Dave had started dating Sissy. Cache felt like so much of his life had passed him by, while he watched the sun rise and dreamed of milking cows.
But it was his life, and he actually enjoyed it—most of the time.
He sighed as he got to his feet. After taking his guitar inside and propping it in the corner against the coat closet, he grabbed his work gloves from the end table near the couch and headed out.
“Mornin’,” Dave said as he moved down his front steps too, and Cache smiled at him.
“Yep, it’s morning again,” Cache said. They started down the road together, though Dave sometimes drove his truck over to the stables where he worked. Cache had worked jobs all over the ranch, but he’d traded out his time on the south side of the ranch with the bigger animals to administer meds to the horses for the large care vet. And when he wasn’t doing that, he worked in the Canine Club or with his dairy cows.
Last Chance Ranch wasn’t really set up to be a dairy operation, and his cows’ milk had dried up a while ago. They grazed, and lowed at the chickens that got out of their coops, and hopefully, Cache could start getting people into the pasture for the cuddling.
“How are the cows doing?” Dave asked, and it seemed that was all anyone asked Cache.
“Great,” he said. “How’s the new dog?”
A smile spread across Dave’s face. “Awesome. I might get another one.”
“They’re all over anyway,” Cache said, smiling. A couple of cars turned onto the road behind them, and Cache moved to the side. “Goat yoga this morning.”
“I don’t understand it,” Dave said.
“Yeah.” Cache said nothing about the cuddling. Until they were ready to launch the program, Scarlett had sworn him to secrecy. She wouldn’t even tell Karla, the ranch’s marketing director, and surely she’d need time to put together something for the announcement of the program.
Cache wasn’t sure. What he knew was limited, only what he could glean from a couple of articles online about a farm in New England. Connecticut, if he remembered right. If there were other farms or ranches picking up on the idea, he hadn’t heard of them.
“Band practice Friday?” Dave asked.
“Yeah,” Cache said, wishing he had a date on Friday night. He could ask someone, he knew. Plenty of women came to the ranch each day, from volunteers to regular employees like the new veterinarian technician Scarlett had hired a few months ago.
“Got any new songs?” Dave asked, and Cache finally started to feel more like himself.
“Yeah,” he said. “And Sawyer’s said he’ll have one too. Apparently, being awake in the middle of the night with a baby has helped his creativity.”
Dave chuckled with Cache. “Yeah, I bet.”
“Cute baby they brought home,” Cache said.
“Totally,” Dave said, keeping his gaze down the road as they passed in front of the homestead.
“I’ll see you later,” Cache said, detouring to the right while Dave kept going. The administration building was down that way, and Dave had taken to stopping by that building in the morning since he’d started seeing Sissy more often.
Cache hadn’t asked him specifically about her, but Dave had been in an increasingly good mood the past month or so, and Sissy had been the only thing in his life that had changed. Cache could put two and two together.
He cleaned out the watering troughs for the llamas and refilled them, enjoying the crisp start to the day. He took a deep breath and got to work measuring the medicines Blade needed that day.
Everything about a living, breathing, working ranch enthralled him, and always had. He loved the circle of life, even when sometimes he lost a horse or a cow or a dog.
After getting all the medicines to all the right equines, he headed back toward the homestead, where the twelve dairy cows he’d been training were housed in a huge field across the dirt lane from the cabins that bordered the backyard of the homestead. The rest of the bovines were kept in a different field between the homestead and the Goat Grounds.
He couldn’t help glancing to the row of cabins there. Gramps lived in the end one, and Cache loved the old man as if he were his own grandfather. Adele and Carson lived in the one in the middle, and Karla Jenkins lived in the third.
Karla Jenkins.
The woman Cache had been trying to impress for a while now. He’d invited her to the Halloween carnival eight months ago so she could see his band. She’d come, and she’d clapped and laughed along with everyone else.
But she hadn’t gushed over him the way the girls did to Dave. Cache could sing too, but his first love was the guitar. His second was these insufferable cows, and he jumped over the fence to join them in the pasture.
He whistled at them as if they were dogs, and several turned toward him. “Cookie. Daisy. Come on, girls.”
Some of the cows he’d named and could tell them one from another. Only about eight or nine of them, the ones he’d been working with tirelessly to get them to lay down on command.
His cows lumbered toward him, all but two who stayed stubbornly out in the field a ways, already lying down. He didn’t whistle again, as he’d been working for months to get Jenny and Flower to lie down and stay there.
He went to them instead, starting to talk to them the closer he got. “What’s going on with you two?” he asked. “Are you sick?”
His other cuddlers came with him, their footsteps heavy in the grass. He avoided a spot of cow manure, asking, “Flower, what are you doing?” He reached the cow and ran his hand down her side. She didn’t seem to be bloated.
“What—?” It was then that he saw the sandy blonde hair of a woman curled into the cow’s chest.
Karla Jenkins herself tilted her head back and looked up at him. A smile sprang to her face, and she looked like a bright ray of heaven. “Morning.”
“Good morning,” he said, glad it was a natural reaction and he didn’t have to think to do it. Karla Jenkins, out in his cow pasture, cuddling his cows. He had no idea what to make of it.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, staring openly at her. She’d been in his dreams for months, and yet she’d never really indicated that she was interested in him at all.
“Scarlett told me you were training your cows for a cuddling thing,” she said. “I thought I’d try it. Is this how it’s done?”
Cache wanted to blurt that her cuddling into Flower’s side was one of the sexiest things he’d ever seen. Instead, he just nodded. “They’ve only had me to practice with,” he said.
“I’m happy to volunteer as a test subject,” she said.
“You could get kicked.”
She smiled at him again. “Oh, I don’t think so. This cow is nothing but a sweetheart.” She patted Flower’s ribcage.
Cache chuckled, some of the awkwardness between him and Karla leaking away. It didn’t seem fair, though, that she had to be here, looking so soft and lovely and cuddling with his cow.
Maybe he could just ask her to dinner. He’d never really come out and asked. Maybe he was absolutely terrible at flirting and needed to be more forthright.
“Cache,” she said, and he blinked himself back into focusing on her.
“Yeah?”
She stood up and brushed dirt and grass from her clothes. She wore a pair of khaki shorts and a cute T-shirt with lemons on it. “I didn’t mean to step on your toes.”
“You didn’t,” he said. “I was just surprised. Scarlett didn’t want anyone to know about the cow cuddling.”
Karla ran her fingers through her hair, driving Cache toward the brink of madness.
“You wouldn’t want to…I don’t know. Go to dinner with me. Would you?” Cache swallowed, and he swore Flower sighed as if to say, Oh, buddy, bad idea.
Karla blinked, shock traveling across her face in slow waves. “Dinner?”
“Yeah, dinner,” Cache said boldly, refusing to look away. No more games. No more dancing around this woman at the meals she cooked for the whole ranch.
The longer she stood there and stared at him, framed by his lounging cows, the stupider Cache felt. Was she going to say anything? He’d even take a no at this point. At least then he’d know.
Still, she said nothing.
