Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 104448 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 522(@200wpm)___ 418(@250wpm)___ 348(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104448 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 522(@200wpm)___ 418(@250wpm)___ 348(@300wpm)
The room smelled like sandalwood. Like Devon. I closed my eyes and indulged in a few deep inhales. Memories that were never truly far off cascaded behind my eyelids. The scent of his faded cologne as I brushed my nose along his neck and behind his ear. The salty taste of the skin there. The sound of his deep voice as he encouraged me to feel good, just like that.
I shook my head and quickly grabbed the video baby monitor so I could go downstairs to the barn and get some distance from Dev’s scent and his surroundings.
I was here to give this man custody of his daughter and to make sure that Lellie would be safe in his care. That was all—and after that conversation with Orris, that was going to be more than complicated enough—so it didn’t matter how often I’d fantasized about doing much, much more to him these past two years.
Indigo was busy filling troughs in the nearest paddock with fresh water while listening to something on giant headphones. At some point, he’d managed to swap his flip-flops for mucking boots, but he’d stuffed his linen pants in the top of them, making them balloon out comically.
When he saw me, he jumped. “Whoa, dude. Warn a guy.”
“Sorry. I was just stretching my legs and having a look around,” I explained. “My name is Tully.”
“Dope. Indigo. I’m here to help out with the horses for a bit. You, too?”
I reached out to offer my knuckles to a nearby gelding for a sniff. “No. Just here for a visit. Up from Texas. What about you?”
“I’m from Utah, originally, but I went to school in Colorado. Just graduated last week, so I’m probably heading back to Utah in a couple months to get, like, a real adult job,” he said sadly. “When I thought about going back now, though, I was totally bummed. So I told myself, ‘Nah, Indigo, you need a summer adventure.’ But, like, also gotta make money, right?” He shrugged. “Mostly, I wanted an excuse to climb Three Daughters, so…here I am.”
I hoped that wasn’t as creepy as it sounded. “Three Daughters?”
He tilted his shaggy hair in the direction of a triple-peaked mountain vista in the distance. “Three Daughters. Killer climbing, bro. Big water, too, if you’re into it. Mountain biking. All that. You know AdventureSmash? They’re holding their GrandSmash race here this summer.”
I wasn’t sure I spoke the same language as this guy, but he seemed friendly enough. “Sounds like fun.”
“Oh, yeah. Gonna be lit,” he agreed. “Some friends of mine are already heading up the mountain. Hope to connect with them again next week, maybe, but I needed the rest. Did a climb last weekend that was a total muscle-fuck. Totally flashed it, but fuck, man. Intense. You know?”
I definitely did not know, but I nodded anyway. “So, you’re going to be able to wrangle the horses during roundup in a few days?”
His affable smile didn’t dim. “Yeah, dude. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy. No stress, lemon zest. I’ve been playing polo forever, so like… how hard can it be?”
I imagined Dev’s response to this attitude. Since it was possible his reaction would cause local law enforcement to show up, and since I definitely didn’t want that sheriff turning up anytime soon with his proprietary attitude toward Dev, I decided to do a little proactive crisis management.
“Well, that depends,” I told Indigo. “In order to separate herds, you need to understand herd dynamics. From what I know about the Fletcher Ranch, these are primarily trail horses used on dude ranches. They spend the winters here being taken care of, and then when the summer tourist season begins, they get sent in smaller batches to their respective ranches for the summer. That means those large herds you see in the pastures will need to be picked through to separate out each individual horse.”
Indigo’s smile had finally faded. “Why don’t they just keep ’em organized all winter? Like the Johnson ranch horses live in this pasture and the Smith horses live in that one? Seems like it’d make it easier come summer.”
I nodded. “It might. Except there are other reasons to separate them differently. Pregnant mares need special care. So they might get put together closer to the barn where Dev can keep an eye on them. Older horses more sensitive to the winter weather might need to be kept in a pasture that’s more protected from the wind. Certain animals might have special dietary needs, and keeping them together would make daily feeds easier.”
My information about Fletcher Ranch had come from an internet search on the plane yesterday, but I’d done some additional research on my phone since hearing Dev describe his job as managing the ranch’s breeding program.
“It’s probable that many of the programs that lease horses from the ranch don’t need specific horses as much as they need a specific kind of horse. Like ones trained for trail riding or ones trained for carrying packs. So at roundup, maybe Dev needs to pull ten trail riding horses of varying sizes for a particular dude ranch program, and then he needs to pull eight packhorses for a different program. And let’s say all of those horses come out of a large herd in the same pasture. He needs to be able to separate out the right horses to load up in the trailers for those contracts.”