Page 20 of The Fugitive Cowboy's Baby
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shrug. “I don’t know. I can probably blame Uncle Roy for that. He always made me get up and try again every time I failed. He said that you only fail when you give up. If you never give up, then you haven’t failed yet.” She smiled at the memory of her uncle, and Cole briefly wished he could have met the man. He sounded like a decent guy.
“Do you believe it?” he asked her. “What your uncle said, do you think it’s true?”
“I don’t think it matters whether it’s true or not. It’s a mindset. If you give up, you’ll never accomplish what you tried to accomplish. That’s a sure bet. But if you don’t give up, then you still have a chance. If telling yourself you haven’t failed yet keeps you from giving up, then it’s a strategic mindset, and it doesn’t matter if it’s not one hundred percent true.”
Cole laughed under his breath. “You really are something else, aren’t you?” He couldn’t get over how resilient she was, thiscity girl who had inherited a ranch and dove right in without assurances, experience, all the things most people would rely on before trying something new.
Though he’d given her a hard time about it, the truth was he was a little jealous of her ability to believe in herself despite the opinions of the naysayers around her. Truly, it was admirable, but he wasn’t about to tell her so, at least not yet. He knew he wasn’t going to be around for a long time, and he didn’t want to give her the wrong impression. Even so, he would do everything in his power to set her up well before he left.
In his determination to do the best he could for her while he was here, he had set up a surprise with the rancher who was selling the lambs. Kat had asked Cole to teach her to shear sheep, and he was going to do her one better. Sure, he could handle a job like that, but why not learn from an expert? So he’d asked the seller if he would be willing to teach her for a small fee. The seller agreed, and so it was set. Kat had no idea.
When they arrived, she immediately went to meet the lambs, and Cole took the seller aside and paid the extra fee for the lesson. “Don’t tell her it was on me, OK?” Cole said. “Go ahead and take credit. Say it’s for the lambs or something.”
The seller nodded in understanding and pocketed the fee Cole had paid him.
In the end, Kat was thrilled. The seller let her watch him shear one of his sheep with a pair of powerful clippers on the end of a long, jointed, metal arm. He was so quick about it that Cole worried Kat might not actually hear much of what he was saying, but she had apparently logged all of it away because, when it was her turn, she seemed to know exactly what she was supposed to do. She struggled a bit getting the sheep into position initially,but some gentle coaxing by the seller gave her the tools she needed to make it work.
When she was finished, there was a pile of wool on the ground in front of her and a sheep that looked like it had some kind of punk haircut. Cole couldn’t help laughing. She’d done so well for her first try, but it was still amusing. “Dye that sheep a few different colors, and it’ll be ready to go clubbing,” he said.
The seller laughed along good-naturedly. “She’s never looked better.”
Kat was blushing furiously, and Cole couldn’t help noticing how cute she looked when she blushed. “I did my best,” she said.
“You did better than I did on my first try,” Cole said. It surprised him that the words came from his own mouth. He’d never been the type to offer comfort unnecessarily, but he wanted to make her smile. And for some weird reason, he wanted to keep her spirit alive. The more he became convinced she would never give up, the more he wanted to see her dream through to the end, even though it was impossible.
She muttered her response, “Liar.”
“No, I’m telling the absolute truth here. You should have seen the first sheep I sheared. It looked like a kid with scissors had gotten hold of it. Yours at least looks halfway stylish.”
“Thanks, I guess.” She smiled and nudged him playfully. He was glad she hadn’t taken his joke too hard. More and more, he wanted to be able to loosen up around her. He wanted to open up to her and joke around with her, but he had to remain guarded.
In the end, they bought two lambs, both female and siblings. They had white bodies with black legs, noses, and ears. He hadto admit they were visually appealing little lambs. She’d chosen the right pair for a social media campaign, which he knew she was already preparing because he’d seen her taking a video of them prior to purchase and again when they were loaded into the trailer.
“So what’s your plan for these girls in the long run?” he asked Kat as they were driving back to her ranch.
She thought a moment before offering her answer. “Well, at first, I was only thinking of having them for the petting zoo and to sell wool items in the gift shop. But today gave me a couple more ideas. We could include shearing the sheep as one of the classes we teach. It’ll be seasonal, but I bet people would pay for an experience like that, don’t you think?”
Instinctively, he wanted to answer that it was a bad idea, but then he thought about it for a moment. Hadn’t he just paid good money for a sheep-shearing lesson? Of course, people would pay for something like that. He was beginning to see why her uncle might have entrusted this ranch to her. She had instincts when it came to business. It might not have been exactly how he would have handled a failing ranch, but it was still a method that could work. From now on, he decided he would do everything he could to help her out. It would be his good deed, his good karma in his mess of a life.
“Hey, kitten,” he asked after they turned onto the highway, “do you want me to teach you how to milk a cow?”
She grinned over at him and nodded enthusiastically. “And goats, too. I want to make cheeses for the gift shop.”
Instead of criticizing her this time, he smiled and said, “I think that sounds like a pretty good idea.”
CHAPTER 10
KAT
Things could not have been going better. Three of the guest cabins were erected, and the landscapers were making the area around them cozy and beautiful. She had hired professional painters to paint each of them a specific, bright color to match their theme. Having a theme for each would make it easy to name and book them, and people seemed to like that sort of thing. Also, it would look good on their website.
She’d already begun compiling little clips she’d taken of the calves and lambs to use in short-form content about the ranch. The story about the calves arriving sick and being nursed back to health would be popular. She had several clips of one of them sneezing, which she had taken to show to Cole in case he didn’t believe her or they wouldn’t sneeze in front of him. Now she would use the clips to tell a story. She’d also taken several short clips of the new lambs, and as they seemed healthy enough, their story would have to be about them being adorable while getting used to their new home.
She quickly wrote down,Now, all they need is some new friends to play with.Good conclusion to the story, she thought. It invited people to imagine themselves or their children getting to interact with the lambs. Her vision was starting to come together, finally. She could see it in her mind’s eye, and she loved the look of it.
Since the fiasco with the calves, very little had gone wrong, so Kat supposed she was overdue for some kind of catastrophe. But she couldn’t have predicted it would be something as simple as the painting of the cabins. If anything, she expected to have a medical emergency with one of the older animals, or maybe the younger ones wouldn’t get along.
Instead, the painters started packing up at the end of the day, and when Kat asked them what time they’d be back tomorrow, they looked at her like she was out of her mind. “You paid for three days,” they said.
