rise on his hind legs and use his long narrow snout to flip open a latch. Then the dog scrambled aside and the cows finished the job by pushing the gate open and filing toward the barn. Only a calf failed to move. Bayou worked her toward the opening.
“You just get the one this year?” Jenna nodded at the reluctant calf.
“Two, but I almost lost that one. You see the way I’ve got her back leg all wrapped up over the hock?”
“What happened?”
“Damn coyotes almost dragged him off. Bayou about went nuts with the pack of them, but he did a good job saving her. I’m just lucky that little guy there didn’t get torn up any worse. We were tracking those creatures”—he referred to the coyotes like a curse—“when your idiot pilot damn near killed us.”
The force of his words startled Jenna, but then he smiled and raised his hands as if to quell his own outburst.
“I’m not complaining, not anymore. People have met under stranger circumstances. I meant to tell you when we were on the phone that I don’t usually carry around a rifle and handgun, in case you were wondering. It was for the coyotes.”
The news came as a relief. “You get any of them?”
“Nope. A big bird put a stop to that.” He was still smiling.
When they turned back to the house, their hands brushed. A second later their fingers knitted a pleasing pattern. She wasn’t aware of her role in this, and could scarcely believe that she’d let it happen; but the simple act of holding hands with him felt better than a lot of kisses she’d known.
Trust your instincts, she said to herself, putting off any consideration of an early check-in at the B&B.
He took off his boots in the mudroom and helped with hers. She was struck anew by the oddly intimate act of letting a man take hold of your leg so he can tug on the heel.
The house felt cooler than he’d suggested, a pleasure after the hard rays of late afternoon. She eyed an airy bathroom and slipped inside to wash up. Clean towels, floor, commode, and a newly enameled claw-foot tub. Not bad.
“In here,” he called when she stepped out.
She followed his voice to a dining room filled with natural light, and eyed blueberry earthenware and a white tablecloth. “This is so nice. You do like your light colors.”
“It’s the farming,” he replied. “You can go either of two ways, it seems to me. You can do what a buddy of mine did, which was take a sample of mud from his farm to the carpet store so he could match up the colors perfectly; or you can try to have a nice clean place to come home to at the end of the day.”
“Option number two for me,” she laughed.
He gave her a thumbs-up on his way into the kitchen, returning with a smoked turkey salad. “Sorry, but it’s too hot for turning on the range. Hope you like Gorgonzola. I traded a couple of gallons of milk to a cheese maker in town. Everything else,” he filled her plate, “used to come from my kitchen garden; but there’s no sparing water for that now. Another beer? Wine?”
“I’ll stick with this.” She was still nursing the pilsner. “So it’s off to Safeway these days?”
“That’s way too big city for us. We’ve got the Alverson Natural Food Coop. But the turkey’s mine. I’ve got a smoke shack back there.” He glanced out a wide window but all she noticed was the strong line of his chin.
“The turkey’s really good. So’s everything. Thank you.”
By the time they finished dinner, Jenna felt fully at ease. They cleared the dishes, and at his suggestion moved to the veranda to watch the sunset, an idyllic notion that lasted about thirty seconds before Bayou stood up next to Dafoe’s deck chair and barked as sharply as a car alarm.
Dafoe hurried around the corner of the house, Jenna trailing at a slower pace. Two attractive young women—early twenties, Jenna guessed—were climbing out of a salt-eaten Subaru wagon. Jenna hoped this wasn’t about to turn weird; she’d experienced more than one jealous girlfriend in her time.
“Come on, join us,” Dafoe called to the pair as he walked toward them. The taller one, sporting black braids and a brilliant sunflower tattoo that sprouted from under the shoulder strap of her fully filled tank top, called to Bayou and rubbed his ruff.