of the day wandering around, hoping to run into Jake after the supreme rejection he’d laid on me. The time it took me to milk Alice was occupied with rattling annoyance with the whole affair. Like me having to kiss him. Or that we had literally been a millimeter from a literal roll in the hay before he rejected me. While I dewormed the goats—which wasn’t as gross as it sounded, though no one enjoyed the process—I was just mad. Mad at his stupid, manchild, I’m sorry, but I can’t use words line. Mad at his stupid mouth for kissing me back like it did. Mad at his hips and the python between them that he’d promised but didn’t deliver.
But when I came inside without seeing him—thus giving me a place to actually dump my rage—my emotions dwindled down to sadness alone. Because I wanted Jake and not just for the hayloft. But he’d made it clear how he felt about me. About us. He’d left me crying in the barn with nothing but a halfassed apology and no explanation.
And I wanted an explanation.
Jolene and her rope went all blurry when my eyes filled with miserable, frustrated tears. So I got myself up, stuffed my feet in my rain boots, and marched toward the big barns. Somebody would know where he was.
White-topped barns stretched out in rows across a wide spread of land, bracketed by pastures. Each herd—between thirty and fifty a pop—had their own interior barn with access to grass and extended time in the pastures. I caught sight of a couple of our guys, one of them pushing a wheelbarrow. I must have been a sight, storming through the yard in sweat shorts, my boots, and my hair a mess, because they both stopped and stared at me like I might bite them.
Depending on whether or not the wind changed, I might have.
“Hey, Joey—have you seen Jake?”
They glanced at each other and had a silent drawing of straws.
Joey lost. “Heifer check. Barn F.”
F for fucking jerk. I was already stalking in that direction. “Thanks.”
“Don’t tell him I told you,” he called after me.
I gave him a thumbs-up without looking back.
You’d think that the vet would be the one to do heifer checks, but it was really the job of the overseer to make sure the upcoming calves were faced the right way—a task learned early. The vet had enough to worry about than checking the entirety of the pregnant herd. I’d only done it once—my arms weren’t quite long enough for me to be of much use.
When I rounded the corner into the partitioned portion of barn F, I was met with the most satisfying thing I’d seen all day—Jake’s face against a heifer’s ass with his arm buried up to the shoulder in a cow’s vagina.
F for funny.
I snorted, covering my nose with my hand when a couple of farmhands gave me a look.
At the sound, Jake’s eyes snapped to mine, and the hard eye contact stopped all illusion of being professional.
Laughter bubbled out of me as Jake gave instructions and they shifted the calf inside.
“What do you want, Olivia?”
I rolled my lips and bit down to try to stop my laughter.
“I’m kind of busy here.”
“I can see that.” I paused, contemplating my next move. “I don’t know if I can say what I need to say with your hand up Gertie’s lady parts.”
Another hard roll of his eyes.
“I mean, you are inside of her. She’s literally never seen so much action.”
“Jesus, Olivia,” he grumbled.
The farmhands snickered. Jake cut them a look.
“Seriously. Artificial insemination is about as anticlimactic as it gets, but this? Pretty sure you just got three cows over there pregnant.”
One of the guys cleared his throat to cover another chuckle.
“It’s indecent, Jake. Honestly.”
“Are you gonna tell me what you need or just stand there making stupid jokes?”
“You really want me to tell you now?” I folded my arms in challenge. “Right now, in front of Gertie and everyone?”
“I really want you to go away.”
“Fine. I need to talk about how you manhandled me in the hayloft and then ran off without an explanation.”
The room was still other than for Gertie, whose jaw was working a mighty lump in her mouth.
“You asked.”
Jake expertly removed his hand from the cow—only light slurping, squishing sounds—and peeled off a shoulder-length glove.
He jerked a chin at the farmhands. “Put Gertie out to pasture and bring me the next one in five minutes.”
Their gazes bounced between us, still suppressing smiles