What a Bride Wants (8 page)

“
Thought that was you?”

“
No, I’m third in line – behind the bulls. I just get shown off a little more often than the other two because I can talk.”

But Ella
didn’t do much talking the rest of the trip, and Sawyer was content to save his breath, enjoy the ride and the feel of Ella in his arms, and the sense of purpose that came of heading out to tend an animal that was in Ella’s care.

Responsibility and ownership. How long since he
’d felt the weight of that particular combination? Oh, he’d go in and take responsibility for a broken business and nine times out of ten he could turn it around, but he never took ownership. Not in the way Ella and her father had taken ownership of this place. Not in the way his own father had agonized over decisions regarding the brewery and probably still did.

They reached Ella
’s stranded cow a good fifteen minutes later. The cow was lying on her side, all stretched out, and Ella stifled a curse and was off the snowmobile, sinking into the snow and cursing before stomping her way to the sled and cutting the string on the bale of hay moments later.

“
She won’t want to eat but if you put some by her head, I’ll do the back end and see if I can figure out where she’s at with delivering.” Ella gathered up an armful of hay, so Sawyer did the same. The cow mooed at him and tried to sit up as he tromped toward her. He tromped a little more gently so as not to frighten her more.

“
Hey, girl,” he murmured as she craned her neck to see what Ella was doing.

Ella
, who was spreading hay out over the snow and moving in close to examine the cow’s rear end and then cursing up a storm – to be specific.

“
We have feet,” she said when he joined her. “Hind feet instead of front feet. The calf is breech. Which does explain why mama cow is taking her time.”

“
What do we do?”

“
Pull.”

Ella stripped off her gloves and started taking off her coat.
Then she took off the plaid shirt he’d teased her about on the phone, leaving just a short sleeved T-shirt and hopefully some kind of thermal wear under that. The shirt went over the seat of the snowmobile, the coat went on the ground on top of the hay and then Ella knelt on the coat and, without further comment, slid her hand over the feet of the calf and into the cow.

Her whole hand.

Then up to her elbow.

Then more
until she was almost in up to her armpit.

“
I hope you’re not squeamish,” she offered with a grimace, as she blew a strand of wayward dark hair out of her face. She followed her words with a quick gasp of pain as the cow’s stomach rippled and the cow out-and-out groaned. “It’s mighty squeezy in here when they start contracting.”

“
Uh huh.” That was pretty much all he had by way of comment. Long time since he’d been lost for words.

Then again
, he’d never before seen anyone use a cow as a hand puppet.

“
The good news is that the calf’s not that big and the front legs and head are where they need to be. Heart’s still beating. You just need a bit of help, don’t you, baby?”

Ella withdrew her arm
slowly, to the accompaniment of more contractions. She rubbed at her wrist and took a deep breath, let it out, and reached for the two little sticking-out feet. And then she braced
her
feet against the rump of the cow, waited for the next ripple of the animal’s belly and pulled, using her entire body as leverage. She gained an inch or so of back legs.

And the m
inute the contractions stopped, they slipped back to where they’d been before.

“
Okay, then.” Ella slid him an assessing glance. “So. We have a couple of options. Want to get your gloves off and join me? I’ll direct, you pull, and come the next set of contractions I think we might be in business.”

He took his gloves off. Took his coat off too and draped it around Ella
’s shoulders. “I know you said you wanted to get down and dirty with me, but this wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”

“
It’s not exactly my first preference either, but at least I get to see those muscles of yours at work. There’s a bonus right there.” She made room for him and he settled down beside her on the coat atop the hay and then the snow. She put her hands on his, and they were cold and sure and ever so slightly sticky as she guided them toward the legs of the calf. “You want to get a good grip just above the hock, and instead of pulling up toward the tail, we want to pull out and down a little as the pelvis appears. Don’t pull until she’s pushing. Try and work with the cow.”

“
Got it.” He had two warm and slimy little hocks in his hand and a woman at his side that he wanted more than ever. He was hopelessly out of his depth. “Work with the cow. I’ve never worked with a cow in my life. What does that even mean?”

Ella grinned and snugged in alongside him, sharing her warmth and part of the coat.
She’d bracketed his waist with her thighs, her legs tucked up under her as she leaned in against his shoulder and set the palm of her hand between his shoulder blades. “Just have a little tug. Test the resistance. Get a feel for it.”

“
Have a little tug, she says. It’s like my favorite fantasy ever. Minus the cow.” And the hay. And the cold and the storm front coming in. And the life or death situation.

Ella
ran her other hand down his forearm and rested her fingers around his. “I love this stuff. Makes me feel useful. Okay, here we go. You need to pull hard and smooth, and don’t stop until I say so. ‘Cause she’s getting ready to push.”

Push the cow
did, and Sawyer took a deep breath, took a firm grip and pulled.

And then pulled that little bit harder
.

“
Steady,” Ella murmured. “Nice and even, just a little bit more. Out and down. Yes, just like that.” And then the cow kicked and shifted, and then the calf’s back legs were out and then the pelvis and then the rest. One slimy, limp little calf, and Ella was moving forward, putting the palm of her hand to the baby’s chest, just behind its front leg, and then that hand was moving again, pulling mucous away from the mouth and stripping it from its nose and then the calf was moving, and coughing and Ella was calling it a good girl and moving away, cleaning her hands and arm with snow, and then the hay, and then finally wiping her hands on her jeans before reaching for her shirt. “I
will
shower before dinner. I promise.”

Sawyer
laughed as he got to his feet in order to avoid being trampled by one very eager mama cow who was up and turning toward her calf. Moments later she was nosing and nudging and licking its little face. “What now?”

Now we wait for the calf to get to its feet and have a drink. Ella glanced at the sky, her eyes narrowing.
“And then I think we might help dry the calf off and put it on the sled, and get them to shelter with the others. The cow will follow.”

Ella picked up her coat and shook it out, put it on and shoved her hands into the pockets.
“Brrr. Bit chilly out.”

“
And you do this how often?” he asked politely.

“
Not that often.” She looked bright eyed, rosy cheeked and utterly content. “You did well, bartender.”

“
What would you have done if I hadn’t been here?”

“
Used the calf pullers strapped to the sled. But a hand-pull has more finesse, and besides, I wanted to see what you could do. You’ve a strong and steady way about you, Sawyer, underneath all that charm. You made it look easy and I know for a fact that it’s not. Gonna make a cowboy out of you yet.”

“
Let’s not get carried away.”

“
You don’t want to be a cowboy?”

“
Put it this way… did you ever dress up as a kid?”

Ella nodded.
“Annie Oakley, sharpshooter.”

“
I was the fireman.”

It had turned five by the time they’d got cow and calf settled with the others, all of them protected from the worst of the incoming storm by a stand of trees and a horseshoe shaped hill. It was the most protected corner of the ranch when the weather was coming in from the south east and was a godsend when it came to winter calving.

Sawyer had followed her lead, easy as you please, when it had come to g
etting the calf onto the sled. He’d held the calf in place, with Ella driving and the anxious mother cow bringing up the rear. Not too fast and not too slow, with one eye on the encroaching weather and the other eye on all concerned. They unloaded the calf and the rest of the hay once they reached their destination, and Ella waited until cow and calf had settled before bumping shoulders with Sawyer to get his attention. “Now we can go.”

He nodded, and she took him the fast way back to the barn, stopping only
for Sawyer to open and close gates along the way. Driver drove, passenger got the gates. It was a time honored tradition – ask anyone on the land. And still…

“
Am I bossy?” she asked once they were back at the barn and she’d parked the snowmobile and sled up against the western wall, just shy of the big double doors that now stood closed. Fat flakes of snow drifted down on them, not a blizzard yet, but not far off. Sawyer’s pickup would get them the house with this amount of snow on the ground, no problem. Hard to say whether it’d get them to Marietta tonight though. “Did you find me bossy out there?”

Sawyer glanced her way, his gaze disconcertingly direct.
“If you’re talking about telling me how to pull a calf, I needed direction and you gave it. Doesn’t make you bossy. It makes you strategically resourceful and me grateful.”

“
Strategically resourceful,” she grumbled, even as his words filled her with pleasure.

“
It’s a compliment. Confident, capable, strategically resourceful women are incredibly hot.”

“
Even ones who’ve just had their hand up a cow?”

“
It was more like your entire arm.”

“
Yeah.” Ella sighed. “Really not the image I was hoping to present.”

“
Ella.”

They
’d reached the passenger side door of his truck. Next second he’d opened it for her, reached for her hat and tossed it inside. He smiled down at her with those crinkly eyes and the dimples and Ella couldn’t help but smile back. It was a tentative smile though, maybe even anxious. She knew who she was, good traits and bad, and sometimes she wished for more subtlety and finesse, and sometimes she wished that her mother had lived long enough to teach her how to be less of a cowhand and more of a lady.

She
had
wanted Sawyer to see who she was and the world that she loved.

She
’d also been hoping to break him in a little more gently.

“
That memory of you with the cow is going into the memory bank alongside the one of you presiding over Grey’s Saloon.” He tugged his gloves off and tossed them in the truck too. “And the one of you sitting in the snow making sandwiches, and the one of you getting altogether lost in a kiss. And now I have one of you with snowflakes in your hair. It’s a collage, this picture I’m building of you.” He kissed her, sweet and fleeting, and then he set his lips to the spot on her cheek where a snowflake had just landed and Ella felt like melting right along with it. “And it’s amazing.”

“
I bet you say that to all the girls.” How could a few muttered words and a whisper of a kiss make her feel this gooey inside?

“
No.” He pulled away, his smile crooked and his eyes troubled. “I don’t.”

They reached the house and Ella
took him through the side entrance, straight into the mudroom where they shed their coats and boots and hats and anything else that was wet. Sure, he was a visitor, but he’d also been a cowhand for the afternoon and hopefully they were past standing on ceremony with each other. From there she took him through the huge galley kitchen, with its bank of east facing windows and from there she showed him through to the adjacent wash room; the one with the super pressure and the oversized shower head. She gave him towels and fresh soap. She may even have sighed wistfully as she’d watched him close the bathroom door behind him.

“
I’m going up to another shower,” she said, loud enough so that he could hear. “Help yourself to tea, coffee or whatever else you want when you come out.”

“
Okay.”

Ella went to her room and set her own shower to scalding and then she got in and scrubbed
everywhere, twice, before declaring herself squeaky clean and starting in on her after shower care. Lotion. Comb. Teeth. Towel wrapped around her while she stood in her walk-in-closet and wondered what to wear for a night out at a restaurant or a night snowed in here, the latter seeming more likely by the minute given the way the snow was coming down outside.

She stood there for a full five minutes, undecided, before stalking back out to her dresser and picking up her phone. Hopefully Sawyer had his phone on him
too.

He picked up
on the second ring. Guess that was a yes.

“
I’m still in the bedroom, trying to decide what to wear,” she told him without preamble. “And I usually don’t much care what I wear. It’s very odd, this desire to please you. Do you think it has something to do with the lust?”

“
Everything to do with the lust,” he told her dryly. “You want to hope that the level of lust fades as you get to know me better, otherwise you’re going to want to please me
all the time
.”

“
I can see how that would get tedious, but back to the now. What shall I wear?”

“
You’re really task oriented, aren’t you?”

“
I think it’s a family trait. I’m also standing here in a towel and it’s getting chilly. At this point, clothes would be good.”

S
ilence.

“
Sawyer?”

“
I’m trying to decide if you’re torturing me deliberately.”

“
Rest assured, that is my intention.”

“
Wear whatever’s comfortable, Ella.” There was a smile in his voice. “Rest assured you’re going to torture me anyway.”

Ella grinned as she went back to her
wardrobe. She narrowed her eyes and gnawed on her lower lip before finally reaching for her favorite pair of jeans. They were low slung, soft to the touch and perfectly comfortable.

B
onus points for being blue.

S
he had a yellow top in there somewhere, with three-quarter sleeves and a pretty sweetheart neckline. Team it with a burgundy, hot-pink and grey plaid shirt and she still looked country but not staggeringly so. Add a ring for her forefinger – a wide white-gold one – and a yellow band for her hair and she figured she looked ready for just about anything, which she was, and relaxed, which she most definitely was not.

How many times had she
shown visitors around the house? Too many to count.

How many times had she fretted about what to wear while doing so?

Never ever before.

Cameron Sawyer was a bad influence. And that was before she factored in
all the naughty things she wanted to do with him.

Ella
found him in the kitchen, looking freshly washed and smelling of pine and lime soap. A tall glass of water sat beside an almost empty bag of Sage’s ginger strips. He’d made himself at home, but not overly so and she liked his restraint, his awareness of borders.

“
I made the mistake of opening them before I left Marietta, and then eating them all the way here,” he said, pushing the chocolates toward her in silent invitation.

“
We’ve all made that mistake.” She took
one
, and vowed to resist the rest. “You want a tour of the house? People usually do. The architect was a Norwegian who settled here as a young man. He had a thing about honoring the landscape and the materials it provided. Revolutionary back then.”

“
A tour would be fine.”

“
And then we should probably decide what we’re going to do this evening.” Not that she was being directive. Or bossy. Or anything.

Much.

Ella swung into tour guide mode, leading Sawyer through the house to the front door. The tour started on the wide entry porch that had been built to look imposing and to complement the landscape and the stunning mountain views that the house commanded. She showed him the reception room with its rough-hewn wooden furniture and exposed wooden beams. She drew him through into the lounge for more exposed beams and a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows. She took him into her father’s study where her mother’s portrait hung, for no other reason than that she wanted her mother to get a good look at this man with his wide shoulders and dimpled smile, this man who Ella was in lust with.

Sawyer studied the portrait
openly before looking back at her with a question in his eyes.

“
Cameron Sawyer meet Caroline Grace Emerson. My mother.”

He didn
’t comment that her mother was very beautiful, which she was, or that Ella favored her in looks, which she did. He didn’t talk about the diamonds and sapphires at her mother’s throat and in her ears.

“
She looks happy,” he murmured.

“
I think she was. She and my father were so very much in love. At least, that’s how I remember them. What about your parents, Sawyer? Are they still in love?”

“
I don’t know.” Sawyer smiled faintly. “They seem well suited. Compatible.”

“
Is your mother happy?”