Take the Reins (A Cowboy's Promise #2) - Megan Squires Page 0,40
reins hooked on the bridle of the bay horse. “There’s a first time calver out in the field that looks to need some assistance. I’m hoping to get to her before the storm gets to us, but we’ll have to hurry.”
Seth stooped with a bended knee and interlocked his fingers to give Josie a boost up and onto the horse’s long back. She settled into the saddle and tried to avert her eyes when he hiked his leg over his own horse in the smoothest, sexiest motion she’d ever seen. She shook her head. Maybe the impending storm was messing with more of her senses than she realized.
Josie had this unanchored feeling in her belly as they galloped out to the cows. It wasn’t excitement. It wasn’t dread. But it was a sensation that made her insides roil, this churning of weightless emotion each time she glimpsed Seth at her side. Tonight he wore his signature cowboy hat and the collar on his red and black plaid jacket peeked out the top of his rain slicker, snug up under his scruffy chin. His rope hung from the saddle horn, his reins were collected loosely in his hands, and his focus drilled into the pasture ahead, scanning the dusky fields for the calver in question.
He was all things cowboy. Rugged. Skilled. And irrefutably gorgeous.
Josie didn’t often get flustered by a handsome man. More often than not, God used up all the good parts on the outside and left little to be desired on the inside, anyway.
She didn’t get that sense with Seth. His character was even more attractive than his impossibly square cut jaw, his dark, deep-set eyes the color of rich, melted chocolate, and his perfect lips that were made for kissing a woman fully and deeply.
And it would be the sum of all of these combinations that would get Josie in trouble.
Platonic, platonic, platonic.
“There she is!” Seth spurred his horse and took off for the downed heifer at the far edge of the field. Reeds of waist high grasses enveloped the struggling animal, making her almost invisible in the rural landscape. Josie would have missed her altogether if it weren’t for the painful noises she emitted, the moos that bordered on moans of shear agony. Seth was right. This heifer needed their help and judging by the sound of things, they hadn’t arrived a minute too soon.
“Would you mind tying off the horses for me?” Seth indicated toward the large wooden post that supported a gate. He unhooked his saddle bag and then passed Scout’s leather reins to Josie. “I’m going to check out what we’re dealing with and see if the heifer will let me tie her up, too.”
The horses were more than happy to rest in tall grasses they hardly had to lower their heads to snack from. Josie secured both Sally and Scout and then hurried toward Seth, trampling dry reeds to make her own path in the overgrown pasture. She almost lost track of him in the thick brush, but when he flicked on a flashlight, it was like a lighthouse beacon drawing her to their exact location in the field.
“Breech.” He had a gloved hand elbow deep in the struggling heifer. “You ever deliver a calf before?”
“Goats, pigs, horses, and a llama.” Josie ticked off each animal on her fingers, one by one. “But never a calf.”
“Any of them ever try to give you trouble and try to come out butt first?”
She shook her head. She’d been lucky. In all of the livestock births she had assisted in, she’d never experienced anything too out of the ordinary. Some help she would be.
“Should I call Dr. Cranford?” Josie started to reach for her phone in her jacket pocket.
“No. He was heading to an appointment down in Sacramento after our visit. That’s a couple hours away. If this storm kicks into gear like it’s threatening to, maybe even longer. We’re going to have to figure this one out on our own.” With his free hand, he reached into his saddle bag and withdrew another set of long, plastic gloves and then tossed a bottle of lubricant Josie’s way. “Glove up.”
Josie slipped one on and came up next to the cow. She ran her fingers and cast delicately along the side of the trembling animal, patting her at the widest point of her stomach. The whites of the heifer’s eyes flashed with fear, pain, and a look that came close to total resignation.