At The Rancher's Bidding

Allie looked up from pouring the cat food when Cord walked into the room, hooking his Stetson on a peg near the doorway.

“Why are the cows so upset?” she asked.

“It’s weaning time. It takes a couple of days for the heifers’ milk to dry up, and they miss their calves. Same thing for the calves.”

“You have separated the mothers and their babies?” she gasped.

“Have to. Most of the heifers are pregnant again and they need their strength for their next calf.”

“But that is so cruel.” Allie remembered the night following her mother’s death. She had thought her own heart would break. While visiting some of the poorer villages in Munir, hoping to improve the conditions in which her people lived, Allie’s mother had contracted a dreadful disease. Day by day she had wasted away, the doctors unable to help. And then she had simply stopped breathing. Allie had wanted to die, too.

“Leila.” He shoved his fingers through his sweat-dampened hair. “This is a working ranch, not a zoo or a pet farm. We raise animals that are turned into steaks and short ribs and rump roasts, and we do it as efficiently as we can. The calves are old enough to graze on their own and their mothers do better this way.”

He left her standing in the kitchen puzzling over his words. From the sound the cows were making, Allie did not believe Cord that all was as it should be. And when she stepped outside, she knew she was right. From the porch she could see the first pasture where calves were lined up on one side of the fence, cows on the other, desperately trying to get to each other.

Tears blurred her vision as memories of her mother swept over her, memories of loss. “Poor babies. I wish I could help you.”

BY EVENING, the racket had increased in volume. Neither Cord nor Brianna seemed disturbed by the noise. But it set Allie’s teeth on edge and gave her a dreadful headache.

In bed, she covered her ears with a pillow. Nothing blocked out the noise—or the image of herself as a five-year-old child, sobbing uncontrollably with no one to hold her, to tell her all would be well.

At her mother’s funeral, Allie’s father and brother had been clear-eyed and strong. They’d told her she must be, too. But she could not help herself. She’d failed, shaming her family, and was sent to the women’s quarters alone.

So alone…

Gasping for air, she sat up. Sweat edged down her neck and between her breasts. She could not endure the racket, the pain of those poor animals.

Tugging on jeans and her new boots, she hurried out into the darkness of night. No one had been there to console her when she had needed it. The least she could do was help these poor helpless animals.

No matter what Cord had said.

Chapter Four

Cord woke with a start.

The sun wasn’t up yet. Only predawn light slipped past the lace curtains on the windows. The air was cool, with a trace of rain that had fallen during the night.

After nearly thirty-five years of living on the Flying Ace, Cord knew every sound made on the ranch. The creak of the house as it settled. Movement in the kitchen that meant someone was up fixing coffee or a snack. The soft patter of rain on the flower beds outside or the silence that came with a rare snowfall. Even the dreaded roar of an approaching tornado.

As a kid he used to lie in his bed down the hallway, listening to his parents fight here in the master bedroom. He’d put his head under the pillow, pretending everything was okay. It wasn’t. He’d known that because the next morning his mother’s eyes were always red from crying.

Right now he didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, but he knew something was wrong—knew it from the way the hair stood up at the back of his neck.

He got up and pulled on some clothes, not bothering to tuck in his shirt.

Down the hall, Brianna’s door was still shut. No sound came from the office or any other room on this side of the house.

The living room looked a little dusty and unused. The kitchen was as they had left it last night, the faint hint of leftover chicken in the air. Just off the kitchen, the door to the housekeeper’s room where Leila slept was closed tight. Still, something didn’t feel right.

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