The Bride (The Bride #1)(23)

“Stay away from Ellie. Or I’ll know about it.”

I turned and started to walk away. I waited for whatever shot he was going to fire. I knew his type. Bobby MacPherson was the kind of kid who waited until your back was turned to feel brave.

“You know what, screw you. I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole. No one around here wants used goods. Jake Talley’s sloppy seconds.”

I kept walking. There was no point in responding. No point in telling him I would no sooner touch or look at Ellie like that ever. It’s what he thought.

Think of the visual, Jake. You’re a strong attractive man, she’s growing into a beautiful young woman. You’ll be married, living together.

Janet had said it, but I hadn’t wanted to believe it at the time. I didn’t really believe people would think that about me. I wasn’t even entirely certain Bobby believed what he was saying.

Words were weapons. I got that. Insinuations could be as ugly as they wanted to be, but they weren’t based in fact.

I almost did it. I almost turned around and asked an obnoxious seventeen-year-old with a bad attitude if he really thought I would do something so… dishonorable. I didn’t, because then it would give him even more power. Knowing how much what he said hurt. I didn’t, because what if he did believe that of me?

What if I married Ellie thinking I could save her, but instead ruined her life because people thought she was the type of girl who could be seduced?

Riverbend was small. Ridiculously small. The options for both the men and women in this town were limited. Hell, it was probably why I had dated Janet as long as I did.

Ellie would have all the limitations I had, only she would have something else.

An ex-husband and possibly a reputation.

In all of things I had considered when making the decision to marry her, I never thought of that.

I should have thought of that.





Nine





Ellie

June





School ended with pretty much a whimper. None of the guys hassled me anymore, which was cool. But they also didn’t talk to me either. Even the guys I was friendly with. I think I had officially gone from the girl most people liked, who most guys thought was pretty cool, to Weird Married Ellie.

The truth was, I probably got away with being Weird Married Ellie longer than most girls would have. This was because most people liked me and most guys thought I was cool. Had I been bitchy or nerdy, that transition no doubt would have happened much sooner.

Only three hundred and twenty-two days left of my marriage. Counting the days instead of the months made it seem like a much smaller frame of time.

Jake didn’t get it. He said the time would come when it came, and there was no use rushing it to get here. Which was such a cowboy thing to say.

Anyway, it was summer and that meant I needed to start learning about ranching full time. This morning after breakfast Jake was going to introduce me to semen.

Don’t be gross. Not that kind of semen. Bull semen.

I was following Jake to the pen, wearing my cowboy boots, jeans, and a T-shirt. I followed his tradition of using a baseball cap to keep the hair out of my eyes and the sun off my face.

I realized how much I liked this. I liked working outside. I liked that we had this thing we needed to do every day. Of course I had grown up with chores. Feeding chickens, gathering their eggs, mucking the stable, taking care of Petunia. I knew what ranch life was. But I didn’t know what being a rancher meant.

Maybe because I hadn’t ever thought of myself as a rancher. That was my dad. What I told Jake was true. I had come to grips with understanding that this was my destiny. My responsibility.

What I didn’t know was if I was going to enjoy that destiny. It was a little scary to think… what if I hated it? What if this was my life, and I was totally not good at it. Or freaked out by it.

We were talking about bull semen here. I was going to have to handle bull semen.

I wrinkled my nose and tried to be cool about it. We got to the pen and I followed Jake up the wood slats so that I was above the fray of cows. Currently we had a little more than four hundred cows, which translated to sixteen herd bulls. Jake explained everything I needed to know about cow fucking.

“See that one there, that’s Guss, he’s your most fertile,” he said, pointing to one of the large bulls, who was currently doing the nasty on the back of a cow.

“Tell me how you can tell again?”

“He’s the strongest, and tracking the DNA through the calves each year he’s inseminating over thirty cows per cycle. That’s a lot. But Hank over there, he’s getting on in years. He’s probably going to have to be replaced next year.”

“And I want a four-year-old?” Jake had been through this, but the more I went over it the more it helped to stick.

“Four is okay, you have to be careful he’s not getting in the way of Guss. Sometimes the younger ones will get a little ornery. If they’re doing all the breeding and you’re not getting calves from it, that’s a problem. And remember you have to check the…”

“Penis. Yes, I know.”

That’s right. Some bulls overworked their dick, and it broke their penis. Seriously, this was information I had in my head now.

We watched for a while as the bulls kept banging it out. You could tell by the cows’ tails, which were up and crooked, which ones had already been tapped. The best part about using herd bulls was that you didn’t have to worry about knowing when the cows were in heat. Evolution and biology took care of all that, and the bulls just knew when the time was ripe.