Cowboy Take Me Away Read Free Page B

just back the hell up instead of coming into her space. Having him so close—smelling him, seeing him, looking into his dark eyes as he spoke—it was too much. After trying to forget him for so long, suddenly every memory, every touch was rushing back so fast it was almost impossible to breathe.
    Hope inhaled deeply, the smell of cow dung way more calming than the citrusy scent of Chase. She glanced sideways, noticed the wayward curl of his dark hair. He’d kept it shorter in college, and now it was more unruly, but it suited him. Just a little too long at the back and around his ears, almost black, and so hard not to touch.
    Enough . She hadn’t thought about Chase in a long time and she didn’t need to start now. She was here for work and that was it.
    â€œWhat I need to do today is give them a work-up, make sure everything’s in order, then we can go about getting them in calf. You know the drill.”
    Chase cleared his throat. “I don’t want to sound like a jerk, but we only purchased a modest number of straws. Are we looking at a pretty high take rate?”
    Hope met his gaze, but she kept her body angled so she hadn’t turned her back on the cows. She had enough experience to know how easy it was to land a sideways kick.
    â€œUnderstood. Each insemination has to count, and I’ll only inseminate the ones that fit the criteria perfectly.” She nodded as she glanced over them all again, pleased with how they looked from the outset—a healthy herd of big young cows. “Although from looking at them I doubt we’ll find any obvious problems from the outset.”
    â€œNate’s riding me big-time over this so I need to prove it was the right decision,” Chase said. “He’d turn this whole place into an oil field if it wasn’t for me riding his ass to keep our stock numbers high.”
    â€œNate’s your oldest brother, right?” She was only making conversation, there was nothing about Chase she’d forgotten.
    â€œYep, that’s him.” Chase took a step back and leaned on the railings, his elbows pushed down, legs relaxed as he kicked them out, one ankle crossed over the other. “My granddad’s stepped down from the day-to-day running now, and Nate’s handling the business side of things with me in charge of the ranches. We have a couple other places nearby, too.”
    â€œSo you’re living the dream, huh?” she mused, ducking beneath the timber so she was no longer in the yard.
    â€œI guess, yeah.” Chase followed her back through, frowning when she turned to look at him. “What about you? What the hell are you doing living and working so far from home anyway?”
    Damn . She’d walked into that question all on her own. “Ah, things didn’t work out quite as planned.” Hope tried to look unconcerned, her natural reaction to make up an excuse and get the hell out of dodge to avoid Chase’s questions. But he didn’t know, couldn’t know , any of it, which meant she just needed to avoid the topic for as long as she could. If not forever. She could tell him about her ranch one day if she had to, but that was it. She’d moved on, dealt with what had happened, and what he didn’t know wasn’t doing him any harm. Hell, he’d probably forgotten all about her the day they graduated—she was a quick blast from the past for him and that was it.
    â€œSo your family…”
    â€œChase, have you thought about how many heifers you want me to do in the first round of inseminations?” she interrupted, desperate to get the topic off her and back on work. “We could do a few first, monitor the results before continuing on? Then we could let Nate see for himself how good these New Zealand straws are. I’m guessing that quality is more important than speed given what you’ve told me.”
    If Chase was surprised by how rudely she’d