Shine Not Burn (25 page)

“What do your friends think of him?” she asked.

I stopped in the middle of gathering the forks back up and turned partway to look at her.

She finished washing out the sink and turned off the water to look at me.
 
“Did I say something wrong?
 
Am I prying too much?”
 
Her face fell.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
Angus tells me all the time I pry too much.”

I put my hand on her arm and squeezed gently.
 
“No, it’s okay.
 
It’s just a sore spot, actually.”
 
I sighed, my vision drifting off to scenes of my friends’ reactions to Bradley’s behavior.
 
“Truth is, none of my friends like him.
 
Even my secretary at work hates him.”

“Why do you think that is?” she asked, putting her rag down and taking the towel from me to finish drying the silverware.

I shrugged, leaning back against the counter.
 
“I guess he can be pushy.
 
I used to really dislike him myself.
 
Two years ago I used to mock him behind his back.”
 
I frowned.
 
“That’s really terrible, isn’t it?”

“How did you go from dislike to love and marriage?
 
Seems like a pretty big leap.”

I really didn’t have a good answer for her.
 
Even hearing the path to loving Bradley in my head made me kind of cringe.
 
After two years of putting everything I had into love, I’d gotten dumped by Luke in a cold and casual way.
 
I’d gone to Las Vegas and had a wild fling with a hot stranger.
 
Then I’d returned home on a mission to get my life back on track.
 
Bradley just seemed to fit the mold so perfectly, and he’d asked me out when I was feeling lonely and lost.
 
The timing was perfect, or so I’d thought at the time.
 
Why hadn’t I examined this more closely before?
 
Had I been so focused on my lifeplan that I’d missed something?
 
“I don’t know.
 
It sounds silly, but I guess … I guess it started when I got back from Las Vegas.”

“Las Vegas?”

“Yeah.”
 
I wasn’t looking at her.
 
I was staring at the floor, lost in the memories.
 
They were coming in clear for some reason, like it had just happened last week.
 
It was the first time in two years this had happened.
 
“My best friend Kelly was marrying a mortician.”

“A mortician?”
 
Maeve chuckled like I was joking.

“Yes, seriously, she was marrying Matty the mortician.
 
So my other best friend, Candice, organized a bachelorette party in Las Vegas.
 
I was dating a guy named Luke at the time and I was really busy with work, so I didn’t want to go, but they guilted me into it.
 
Or Ruby did.”

“Who’s Ruby?
 
Is she another friend?”

“No.
 
Yes.
 
She’s both.
 
She’s my assistant but she’s also like a mother, neighbor, and girlfriend all mixed up into one big ball of fire.”

“She sounds like fun.”

I nodded, warming with the memory of our last few hours together.
 
They were so much better than the last year had been.
 
“Yeah, she is.
 
She is
so
sassy.
 
But she’s real and she’s honest and she is the best damn legal secretary in the business.”

“Probably very valuable for a busy lawyer,” Maeve suggested.

“Yes, absolutely.
 
She’s not only valuable, she’s also pushy.
 
And she guilted me along with Candice into going to Las Vegas, so I went.”

“Sounds like fun.
 
Girls’ night out in Las Vegas.”
 
She kicked some shoes over in my direction.
 
They looked like moccasins.
 
“Here, put these on.
 
Let’s take a walk.”

I slipped my feet into the comfortably worn leather and followed her out the back door and down the porch stairs, only limping a little now.
 
My ankle felt much better.
 
The air was warm enough that I didn’t need a sweater, but Maeve handed me one that I put over my shoulders.

“So tell me about Las Vegas,” she said.
 
“I’ve never been.”

I walked next to her down a path, headed towards the sounds of cows mooing.
 
“Well, it’s loud and there are lights everywhere all day and night.
 
And there’s this air of excitement, like anything can happen and anything
will
happen.”
 
I couldn’t stop the smile from blooming on my face.
 
“It’s kind of a magical place in that way.”

“What did you do there?
 
Gamble?
 
I hear the buffets are fabulous.”

“We didn’t see any buffets, but we did gamble.
 
Or I should say,
I
gambled.
 
My friends ended up in the room most of the night.
 
I guess it wasn’t much of a girls’ night out in the end.”

“They were in the room all night without you?”
 
Her smile disintegrated into an expression of worry.

Shit.
 
Why am I telling her this?
 
“Um, yeah.
 
I was alone for a while that night, but it was okay.”
 
It was more than okay.
 
I had company.
 
My heart clenched at the memories.

“You said you gambled.
 
Which game did you play?”

I swallowed hard.
 
Maeve’s questions were starting to feel more like an interrogation, but it wasn’t because of something she was doing.
 
She was just getting too close to the part where her gorgeous son entered the picture.

“I played blackjack.”

“Oh, that’s Mack’s favorite.
 
He went to Las Vegas with his brother a couple years back, for Ian’s bachelor party, as a matter of fact.
 
He won over a thousand dollars … used it to buy a new horse.
 
Funny thing about that, now that I think about it…”
 
She turned to me with a weird expression on her face for a few seconds.
 
Then she smiled and the weird look fell away.
 
“Hey, maybe you were there at the same time.”

I tried to smile, but my lips were trembling too much.
 
Luckily the sun was in her eyes as it dipped closer to the horizon, making me think she couldn’t see me very well.
 
“Maybe,” I said.

Maeve sighed.
 
“That was a tough time for our boys.”

The sadness in her voice made me intensely curious, but it felt wrong to push her for information when it was very possible my interactions with Mack may have influenced the situation.
 
He’d spent at least part of the night with me.
 
If he’d been there for the purpose of celebrating his brother’s last nights as a single man, Ian would have been pissed to not have him around.
 
Maybe Ian knows what happened.
 
Maybe that’s why he’s so rude to me.

I was just about to ask her for details when we turned a bend in the path and came upon a huge group of cows, fences, and men, and the men were in the process of doing things that were making the cows very nervous.

Chapter Twenty-Three

MAEVE MOTIONED FOR ME TO sit with her up on a fence that gave us a good view of what was going on but wasn’t actually close enough to get in the way of what the men were doing.
 
I climbed up next to her with a little difficulty, my ankle not excited about lifting my weight like that.
 
Once we were settled, Maeve began to explain what we were watching.

“All these calves need to be treated with vaccines, branded, and castrated before they get too big, so that’s why the men are working so late and Boog’s here to help.
 
We have several hundred head to get through, and it’s exhausting work.”

The smallish animals were being led down a path between metal rail fences with encouragement from Ian to a small, square, fenced-off area set up where Mack was waiting.
 
When the calf made it into that area, Ian would shut the entrance to trap the calf inside a smaller box made of bars.
 
Mack pulled levers to trap their head and then their body.

My heart leaped into my throat as I watched Mack move another lever and flip the entire calf over on its side in the contraption.
 
The show of brute strength was unexpected and thrilling in a pure animal lust kind of way.
 
“Oh my god,” I half-whispered, unable to tear my eyes away.
 
“What is he doing?”

“He’s getting the bull calf into position so they can do the work on him.
 
That metal box he’s in now is called a squeeze chute.
 
Believe it or not, it calms most calves to be held in it like this.”

“What work are they going to do on him?”

“You’ll see…”

Mack opened up a small door near the calf’s neck.
 
Ian came in at the same time and grabbed the calf’s back leg, pulling it out straight.

Angus walked over next with something in his hand, standing over the calf’s neck.

“What’s Angus doing?”

“He’s going to vaccinate the calf and then brand him.”

“Does it hurt?” I asked, ready to cry on the animal’s behalf.

“The vaccination?
 
No, not at all.
 
They inject them just under the skin, like the vet does with a cat or dog.
 
The branding might hurt a little.
 
Usually they just lie there, but sometimes they bawl a tad or kick once.
 
It’s normal.
 
They get up and move on like nothing happened right after, though.
 
They’re tough little buggers.
 
It’s the castration that hurts, but not as much as you might think.”

“Who does that part?” I asked, feeling sick to my stomach again.

“Boog.
 
He gets paid in testes, and he’s as gentle and skilled as they come.
 
We’re lucky to have him and so are the animals.”

I swallowed with effort, my voice coming out strained.
 
“I think I might have misunderstood.
 
I thought I just heard you say you pay him with
balls.”

She chuckled and patted my knee.
 
“No, you heard right.
 
You’ll see why soon enough.”

I didn’t respond because I was quite sure I would never see how testicles could be considered a paycheck.
 
Besides, arguing would be a waste of breath; they obviously worked on a different set of values around here.

The calf kicked a little and then seemed to give up, relinquishing his will to that of the men who held him down.
 
Mack’s forearm muscles flexed under his skin and his thighs bulged through his jeans with the effort of flipping the calf and operating the machinery.
 
He had the baseball hat on instead of a cowboy hat, and somehow managed to make it look sexier than I would have thought possible.
 
I was definitely sick or something.
 
Every time I looked at him I felt dizzy and out of sorts.

“What’s the matter, Andie?”
 
Maeve was staring at me.

“Oh, I was just thinking I might have a fever or something.
 
I feel a little light-headed.”

“It’s probably just the idea of castration.
 
It’s not exactly after-dinner conversation, is it?”

Angus walked up with something on a cord and stopped at the animal’s back end.

“What’s he doing now?
 
And do I even want to know?”

“Branding. Some ranchers use ear tags, but we find them a problem when the animals get too high in the mountains.
 
Lots of branches and things for them to catch on, and then we get maggot problems.
 
Plus, they’re easier to remove by rustlers.
 
Branding is easy, quick, and less likely to cause problems later, so that’s what we do.”

Angus pressed the end of the iron into the side of the calf’s upper hip.
 
A huge cloud of smoke rose up to surround Angus’s head, making me really glad I wasn’t close enough to smell the burning hair and flesh.
 
“That poor baby,” I whispered, my hands curling into fists.
 
I pressed them into my mouth, unable to tear my eyes away from the operation.
 
Angus stood and moved out of the way.

“We take good care of our animals and branding is part of that,” explained Maeve, pride in her voice. “Without it they’d be easily stolen, and people who steal animals generally don’t take very good care of them.”

I wanted to stay mad at Mack for holding down the calf and allowing it to be hurt like that, but the simple fact is that I like hamburgers.
 
My sense of fairness and accountability told me it was wrong to hate the process and participants when I was a willing beneficiary of it all.
 
“I suppose if you do your best by the animals when they’re in your care, that’s the best you can do.”

“We follow the Temple Grandin methods out here as much as we possibly can. We’re big believers.”

“Temple Grandin?”

“She’s a brilliant scientist who’s done a lot to contribute to the livestock industry and animal husbandry.
 
You should check her out online.
 
She’s a pretty amazing woman.”