Overprotective Cowboy - Elana Johnson Page 0,10
Emma. “Are you okay?”
It was Jess’s voice, and Ted shrank back another step, as if he’d be able to hide. Jess reached Emma, and the two of them looked at him like he was a monster.
“I’m fine,” Emma said. “I just got surprised.”
“Sorry,” Ted said again, though he’d not really done anything wrong.
Jess looked back and forth between him and Emma, and she said, “We’re meeting around the corner in about ten minutes.”
“Okay,” he said.
Jess nodded and left the two of them standing there. Ted turned and took a few steps to where the bottle lay on the ground. He stooped and picked it up, turning back to Emma. He approached her slowly and asked, “Why do they have to be fed with a bottle?” He took in the three foals in the makeshift pens and looked at Emma.
Every moment brought more light into the stables, and someone opened the door on the other end of the aisle, and Ted could see her clearly then. She took the bottle from him, though it was empty, and said, “This one is a twin, and his brother is a little bit of a bully, so he doesn’t get as much milk as he should. So he just needs some extra. His name is Second Best.”
“Oh, wow,” Ted said. “Harsh.” He chuckled, glad when Emma smiled. She was just as made up this morning as she’d been at lunch yesterday, but Ted felt like he could see her more clearly.
She moved down the row and looked at the next horse, a brown and white animal that Ted felt an instant connection with.
That surprised him, because while he’d always liked dogs, he’d never thought of himself as a horse person.
“This one’s name is Patches,” she said. “He just didn’t take to his mother. So we still put them out together every day, but he has to be hand-fed.”
“Gotcha.”
“And this is Ruby,” she said, smiling down at the red-coated filly in the next pen. “She’s just hungry all the time, and her momma didn’t have enough milk for her.” She reached over the fence and stroked the horse’s nose. “She’s almost weaned though.”
“And you take care of them?”
“I only do this little bit for the babies,” she said, looking up at him. “Yes. Twice a day. Jess’ll have someone else take them out with their moms and teach them how to ride and all of that.”
“What if there are no babies on the ranch?” he asked. “Then what do you do?”
“I’m the ranch manager,” she said. “I do all the behind-the-scenes stuff that keeps the ranch going.”
“Wow,” Ted said. “How long have you been doing that?”
“Ten years.” Emma tucked the bottle under her arm as Ruby started sticking her tongue through the holes in the fence to lick it. “You’ve had yours,” she told the horse.
Ted looked down as the blue heeler passed him. “And what about the dogs? How many of those live on the ranch?”
“Oh, five or six,” she said. “They roam with the horses and help herd the boars in when we have our boar hunt.”
Ted had no idea what planet he’d landed on. “Boar hunt?”
Emma smiled at him, and everything in the world got a little brighter. “It’s a long story, and I think your meeting starts soon.”
“Right,” he said. “Okay, well, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I know,” she said, and she seemed ten times softer now than she had even a few minutes ago.
He reached up and tipped his hat, something he’d done yesterday as he’d left too. He hadn’t even known how to do it, but the motion had been natural then, as it was now. “All right, well, I’ll see you later, Emma.” He looked down at the dog. “And….” He looked up at her, expecting her to fill in a name.
“Oh, we don’t name the dogs,” she said.
“What?” he asked. “You name the horses, but not the dogs?”
She shrugged with another perfect smile on those lips. “Ginger loves horses.”
Ted crouched down and scratched the blue heeler, feeling the dirt in his hair. “Well, he deserves a name too. I’m gonna call him…” Nothing came to mind, and he looked up at Emma for help.
“Don’t ask me,” she said, giggling again. “I’m not having any part of this.”
“I’ve never named a dog before,” Ted said, and he couldn’t believe how hard it was. He looked at the heeler again, and blurted, “Simon.”
“Simon?” Emma asked, and she burst out laughing.
Ted straightened, and he couldn’t keep the smile off