“Whoa. Who does those?”

“Pop Pop,” she said absently, searching through large cabinets.

“Cool.”

“It really is,” she said, briefly gracing me with that clever smile. “I help him with each one. I have since I was little. Well, as long as I wasn’t in school.”

“Get out.” I studied her. “Ever done one by yourself?”

“Never,” she admitted. “I’ve only done three, but Pop Pop was there talking me through it.”

“Still,” I said, more than impressed.

“Got it!” she said, pulling out a large bottle of something.

I edged near her. “What’s that?”

“Ceftiofur crystalline free acid. It’s a sterile suspension. I’m going to try it on a few of the cows in the barn. See if we get a positive reaction. Doc suspected pneumonia from the symptoms we told him over the phone.” She looked at me. “He’s out of town. It’s respiratory for sure, I’m just not sure it’s pneumococcal.”

She grabbed a few more vials and we trekked it out to the barn. She readied syringes and stuck the bovines with ease, rubbing out the muscles where she pricked them, and moving from cow to cow, like she played doctor every day, talking about nonsense all the while. She floored me.

“Done,” she said, disposing of the vials and the syringes.

“What now?” I asked.

“The boys have probably already mucked out the stalls. Let’s mount a few horses and check the fields for any more sickly calves or cows.”

I nodded, invigorated by her determination. I almost forgot about my insane dream. Almost.

Piper invading my dreams brought forth the memories of all my detestable sins—ending with Lola and the photographs and Las Vegas. They ran through my thoughts on a never-ending cycle and completely deflated me. I recognized a goodness in Cricket that appeased those haunting reflections and knew from then on, I would always want to be surrounded by her. Something in her staved them off, and I was determined to find out her secret.

We saddled up and rode out into the field nearest the ranch. It’d snowed over a foot throughout the night and Eugie was having trouble lifting his joints through the height, so I lifted him onto my saddle and he sat cradled in front of me. Cricket shook her head at me.

“You’ll spoil him,” she said with a smile.

“So?” I challenged.

She rolled her eyes in jest and trotted forward toward a calf laying down.

“Oh no,” she quieted under her breath.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her, confused.

She dismounted. “They shouldn’t lie like this,” she explained. “They get hypothermia and die quickly this way. She must be sick too.”

“What should we do?” I asked, dismounting myself.

“We’ll have to take her back with her mama. Put her in the barn with the others. If the new mix of antibiotics works, we can start treating the herd and prevent more deaths.”

We took the calf back to the barn then headed right back out into the blistering cold, Eugie all the time cosseted in my lap. We discovered three more in the herd like the last and two more dead calves.

“This is bad, Spencer,” she said when we happened upon the second corpse. She threw her leg off her horse and settled her boots into the deep snow. I followed suit, dropping Eugie beside me. She looked on me for a moment.

“If I could fix it for you, I would,” I told her, feeling beyond helpless.

She smiled softly. “I know,” she said. She looked at the lifeless calf and sighed. “Pop Pop will not be pleased.” I shook my head in response. “We’re relying heavily on this being an excellent year for us. We’re depending on it.”

This felt beyond foreboding. Cricket was confiding in me her family’s secret fears.

“What will happen if you don’t make it what you need it to be?” I asked bluntly.

She looked at me with glassy eyes. “I couldn’t even begin,” she said.

“Then we will make this year what you need it.”

She smiled sadly. “Easier said.”

We skipped breakfast that morning, too busy with the crisis of the ranch, but lunch was a requirement. We’d burned so many calories working and because of the cold, Cricket started to look ill.

“Come on,” I told her when she locked another calf and its mother in a stall.

“No,” she said, heading back toward the carriage house.

I tugged on her jacket. “Nope, I insist. Lunch. Now.”

“I can’t, Spencer, I’ve got—” she began but I cut her off by dragging her through the barn doors against her will.

I had to admit, manhandling someone so small delighted me to no end. She couldn’t even put up a decent fight. Although her bony hands did annoy just a tad when she feistily punched at me, but I only laughed at her monstrous effort and the tiny effect it truly had. She laughed as she fought me down.

“I can’t get a grip,” she complained.

“Yeah, that’s it,” I laughed before turning to a mock seriousness. “Quiet,” I ordered. “Ellie will kill me if I let you go any farther. You look pale.”

“Uh,” she said, staring up at me as I tossed her tiny figure around like a rag doll. “I hate to break it to you, but my skin is naturally this transparent.”

“You’re pale, I grant you, but your face always has a bit of rosy in its cheeks, and I’ve never seen your eyes this dull.” She stared at me and I stopped abruptly, setting her down for a moment. She haughtily adjusted her clothing. “I mean, from what I’ve observed. You know, in passing,” I told her, continuing on again. My neck started to heat under my bandana.

“You, uh, notice those things about me, do you?” she asked, as we ascended the staircase and began to round the deck toward the dining hall.

“It’s no secret I’m attracted to you, Cricket.”

Her face got a little bit of its color back. “Don’t do that,” she breathed and considered the ground.

“I won’t do anything about it, Cricket. I fully recognize you’re with Ethan.”

Her head whipped my direction. “You-you won’t?” she asked. Did I detect a hint of disappointment? Click.

“No, I won’t. I’m not in the habit of breaking up relationships,” I informed her before amending the statement. “Well, not anymore.” I winked at her and she shook her head.

“Good,” she asserted, but it felt weak and that made me happier than I could possibly say.

“Good,” I repeated with strength.

“Good,” she said again, but this time with a hitch.

“Great,” I challenged, stopping and peering down at her.

“Excellent,” she said, facing me, her hands on her hips.

“Outstanding,” I declared, a brow raised.

“Wonderful,” she hesitated.

“Brilliant,” I nearly shouted.

“Peachy,” she countered, but her hands fell at her sides.

I leaned into her and whispered, “Phenomenal.”

She swallowed. “S-super,” she stuttered, staggering back a bit.

“Sensational,” I responded, inching closer.

She glanced to her right, toward the door, then back at me, licking her lips.

“You want to kiss me right now, don’t you, Cricket Hunt?”

Her eyes blew wide. “I-I do not,” she insisted, stepping back from me.

I leaned closer, inch by slowly painstaking inch, and her eyes began to flutter close, making me smile, pausing outside her lips when they fell slightly apart. My stomach clenched. I closed in farther, but instead of kissing her, I spoke into her ear. “Good.”

Click.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The third combination of antibiotics ended up working, but not before seventeen more calves perished over the course of three days, much to the ranch’s discouragement. The workload tripled during the calving season, and I could not believe how tired I was at the end of the day, not that that stopped me from visiting Cricket every night to talk and watch her work.

We didn’t speak about our expectations or lack thereof since the day on the deck. She knew we were playing with fire and although I wouldn’t have minded getting burned, she was taking every precaution to keep clear of the flames. Whenever I would get near her, she would not so subtly steal away from me. If Ethan was around, she was particularly clingy to him, all the while staring at me.

Jonah, Ethan, Cricket and myself shared a schedule and stayed fairly inseparable. Much to my dismay, I was really starting to like and respect Jonah. And much to my absolute horror, I was finding Ethan more than tolerable. To be honest, I found him to be a much better person than I was, which pissed me off beyond belief even if he was entirely too serious for someone like Cricket.

Two weeks after calving season began, we were finishing our Friday off by breaking down the horses and cleaning out their stalls, readying them for a night’s stay. The weather had turned bitter, and I was grateful to be indoors.

“Dude, I am so exhausted I could fall over and sleep right here next to Patches,” I told Jonah.

He laughed. “That’s too bad,” he said.

I made a face. “What are you up to, dude?”

He leaned on his rake handle. “Every once in a while during calving season, Grandma makes us leave the ranch for a few hours. Tonight is one of those nights.”

“Why?” I asked him, spreading pellets out with my own rake.

“She says it’s not normal for young people to be this worked without at least a little bit of mischief.”

This made me laugh because it sounded exactly like something Ellie would say.

“Well, what does everyone end up doing when she demands this?”

“We drive into Kalispell while the older hands watch the fields.”

I laughed to myself. “What do you all do for fun around here? Do you drive the strip? Visit the malt shop? Split an Eskimo Pie?” I said in my best impression of Kenickie.

“Nah, too much snow, and sometimes, if Rizzo has a couple of quarters.”

I glanced up at him in disbelief before I realized he was joking with me and he chuckled. “You’re an idiot.”

I smiled. “All right, so say I go with you into town?”

“There’s a little pub-like grill off Main that we like to frequent. It’s laid back and plays a few tunes. They’ve got a jukebox, sometimes the girls get up and dance on the peanut shell-covered floor.”

“Girls?” I asked, mockingly looking around me. “What girls?”

Cricket and Bridge were the only young women on this ranch. It was a wonder the guys there didn’t trip over themselves to get to them. It probably helped that they’d grown up with Cricket and that Bridge had her own personal bodyguard in the linebacker we all knew as Jonah.

“There’ll be girls,” he said quietly, almost fearfully, which made me want to burst out laughing. “They come from the nearby little towns. Also, Kalispell has enough of them to go ’round.”