Chef's Delight (Stories of Serendipity) Read Free Page B

She had goats to milk.
    Out in the barn, Jessica plugged in the CD player, and put in Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  The music was like a call to the goats.  They knew what it meant.  The needed some udder relief.  Especially this morning, as Jessica was almost an hour late getting out to them. 
    The barn was palatial.  Jessica had taken out a loan to have her dairy licensed, because it was necessary in order to sell any of her goat milk products for consumption, which meant in the barn, she had concrete floors and running water, among other things.  There was a separate room, where the babies slept.  They hung out with mama all day, but they slept in their own room at night, so the mama’s milk bags were full in the morning.  Jessica mixed up the milk in the multi-kid bucket feeders, and put them in the nursery for the kids to eat.
    After a few minutes, she could hear the girls coming in for their morning milking.  She put out some hay and feed, and got started.  First was Anna Marie.  While Anna Marie was eating, Jessica snapped the lead on her collar, and using the lead and a bucket of food, she led her over to the stanchion, cooing softly to her.
    When she had first started milking her goats, it took her almost 30 minutes per goat to get a half of a gallon of milk.  Now that everybody was used to the process, it only took about 10 minutes to get a whole gallon, and there was much less spillage.  After Jessica got the gallon from Anna Marie, she put the milk in the industrial sized refrigerator in the barn, and went to get Sweetness.  She had twenty goats to milk today, and she told herself to get busy.
    While she milked the goats, her mind was on last night.  She wondered if Chad would ever leave her alone.  She couldn’t for the life of her figure out what he still wanted from her.  Except fear.  She knew that he wanted her to be afraid of him.  That was how his mind worked, right?  The initial meeting had been over the threat of a ticket, which he'd let her out of.  Ever since then, he'd tried various ways to make her afraid, yelling, threatening, belittling, and finally, hitting.  She told herself again she would do something about him, soon.  Maybe if she went to talk to Judge Foster, he could do something.  That sounded an awful lot like tattling to Jessie, though, and she wasn't sure how effective that would be in getting Chad to leave her alone.  Obviously, ignoring him wasn't going to work.  It certainly hadn't so far.
    Jessie sighed to herself as she finished up with one goat, and moved on to the next.  She had never really known a man that was able to make her happy.  That was part of the problem.  She just jumped from man to man, not really expecting happiness from any of them.  She didn't need a man to make her happy anyways; she was doing fine by herself. 
    Besides, Jessie wasn't even really sure what kind of man could make her happy.  Her dad had never made her happy, not with his chronic alcoholism, his bigotry, or his philandering.  And her older brother had left home as soon as he was old enough and never looked back.  She didn't have any male role models to look to for examples of men that helped women.  Maybe there was something wrong with her, fundamentally, that kept her from finding the man that was supposedly out there for her.
    She was so focused on sinking into her downward spiral of emotions and the task at hand, she didn’t notice the pick up truck that pulled into the driveway, blaring Lady Gaga from the speakers.  Or the tall, sandy haired man with the tribal tattoos, who climbed out of the cab of the truck, looked around the yard, noticed the music, and started to amble out to the barn.
     
    Was that Smooth Criminal? Connor wondered as he walked out to the barn.  He looked around the property on the way there.  Not sure what he was getting himself into, he speculated about the occupant.
    The house was an older, sprawling ranch, which had not been