Resisting Rose, page 2
“Don’t sound so surprised.” She glanced up the hill. It did look bigger than she remembered. “Let’s go see what Lily has to say. But just so I don’t forget… the chicken coop is due to be cleaned on Tuesday.” Rose laughed at his pained expression and started her trek up the hillside.
Tate followed Rose up the hill. He knew Lily would officially announce him as the loser, but he couldn’t seem to mind. It was worth it to see Rose laughing as she flew down the hill. She definitely wasn’t afraid of a challenge. Though she took her work seriously, Rose was always one to lighten the mood with a joke, usually at Hawthorne’s expense.
This afternoon hadn’t been what he’d expected. Daisy’s message had made it seem like they needed help moving chairs and tables at Storybook Barn. As he watched the college students he employed sledding down the hill and attempting to crash into one another, he was glad Daisy had interrupted.
He knew as well as anyone that the long winter months could be dreary and depressing. His team had been working hard, packing planting blocks and carefully inserting seeds for the last week or two. Before that, it had been a marathon of deep cleaning and organization to get everything ready for the season. His team deserved a break.
In fact, they all did.
It was things like this—the family gatherings, the fun and games—that made Bloom’s Farm worlds away from the ranch he grew up on. At Russell Ranch, it had been all work and no play. Especially after his mother had died. Fun was a luxury that Steve Russell had no time for.
They reached the top of the hill with little conversation and he looked hopefully at Lily.
“Tate, I gave you an 8.5 for creativity and speed. You were faster than Rose, and going backward was a nice touch.” Lily turned to Rose. “Rose, I gave you a… 9.0. Daisy counted six full rotations on the way down, and you got extra points for almost running Tate over.”
“Hey!” he blurted out with mock offense.
“Sorry, Cowboy,” Rose teased. “Better luck next time.”
“Double or nothing?”
She laughed but shook her head. “No way.”
The sledding continued around them. Poppy had arrived with the kids and she watched nervously as Hawthorne took Magnolia with him on her first ride. Rose pulled down the tailgate of Tate’s truck and hopped up. He took a seat next to her and watched Daisy convince Poppy to go down the hill with her.
“You still coming tonight?” Rose’s question broke the silence between them and he nodded.
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“It’s okay if you need to. I can handle it.” Her expression was serious.
Tate shook his head once. “Never said you couldn’t. I like being there though.” He knew Rose was more than capable. Who was she trying to convince?
“Okay. It’s nice to have the company.” Her tone didn’t quite match her words, and he laughed at the seriousness in her voice.
“Come on, Flowers. You’re going to make me blush with all that sweet talk.”
Rose’s solemn expression broke into a smile, and she leaned over to nudge his shoulder. “Don’t go getting a big head. It’ll be a long night. I’ll bring the coffee.”
3
Rose peeked into Margie’s pen from around the corner, trying not to disturb the laboring animal. The goat was breathing heavily and making low moaning sounds. It wouldn’t be long.
She felt the warmth of Tate standing next to her, and the piney trace of his soap tickled her nose. He whispered, “Hey, how’s she doing?”
She turned and led them back down the hall toward the offices. “She’s doing great. She’s been laboring for a bit, but I want to give her a little more time to try on her own before I go interfere. Cup of coffee?” She held up the large green steel thermos.
Tate nodded. “Anything warm is welcome at this point.”
“Could be worse. At least the snow is melting.” She poured them each a mug of the coffee she’d brought with her from the main house.
“Oh yeah. I’d much rather have mud four inches deep,” he said sarcastically.
Rose chuckled at his attitude. “I’ll remind you of that when we get another foot of snow.”
He gave a dramatic tremor of disgust.
“What are the winters like in Montana?” Rose watched his eyes quickly fall to the mug in his hands at her question. Tate didn’t talk about home very much, but Rose was fascinated by the stories he let slip about the ranch where he’d grown up.
“Not too different from here. Mostly cold and snowy, though sometimes the Chinook winds would bring a warm snap to keep it interesting: keeping the cattle safe during a rough blizzard or driving the truck out to drop hay in the pasture when it was fifteen below. You know how it is.”
Rose nodded. She did know, even though they didn’t have hundreds of head of cattle. She could keep her little herd of cows relatively close to the barn during the winter. The goats, sheep, and hogs had pens that were semi-enclosed, and the animals could come inside during the worst of the weather. The horses had stalls that opened to a corral with a pasture beyond. And the chickens? They had a coop but mostly ran around wherever.
“Should we go check on Margie?” Tate’s question interrupted Rose’s thoughts about the animals and the logistics of increasing her herd sizes for any of them.
She set down the empty coffee cup and stood. “Yeah, let’s check her out.”
Margie’s low moaning sounded rough and Rose approached slowly as Tate followed. “Hey there, girl. How are you doing?” She shushed the laboring mother and held out her hands slowly. “It’s okay. Just let me take a little look, all right?” Rose continued talking to the tired animal as she laid her hands gently on the goat’s side.
Tate watched as Rose comforted the scared animal. Her gentle tone and confident nature soothed the mother, and he felt a surge of admiration for his friend. Rose checked the progress and grinned back at him. “Just a few more pushes.”
She urged the animal on and then took hold of the kid’s hooves to help extract the animal. With a laugh of joy, Rose cleared the airway of the new kid. Tate handed her a stack of towels to dry it off. Almost immediately, the kid wobbled up onto its legs and nestled closer to its mother.
Tate felt the wide smile on his face as the mama goat licked the baby’s face. Rose’s hands went back to the goat’s side. “Looks like you’ve got twins, Margie.” A few minutes later, Rose’s smile dropped, and she turned to him. “The second baby is upside down.”
“What can I do?”
Margie moaned, and Rose stroked the goat’s side before turning back to him. “There’s a box of gloves over there. Can you grab it?”
He found the gloves and obediently brought it to Rose. Her voice lilted over soft words. “It’s okay, mama. We’re going to get this baby out, okay? You can do this. We can do this.”
Rose removed her coat and grabbed a plastic glove, pulling it up past her elbow. “Okay, sweetie. This isn’t going to feel good, but it’s our only option.”
Tate flinched as Rose confidently reached in and slowly rotated the baby goat inside of Margie. He watched Rose’s face instead of the procedure. Her face was a solemn mask of concentration. She closed her eyes and the barn was eerily silent except for the labored moaning of Margie and the mewling noises of the healthy kid. When Rose relaxed, Tate realized she had removed her hand.
“Got it,” she proclaimed with a grin.
Tate watched as Rose assisted Margie with the rest of the labor, the exhausted mother goat barely able to push. When the second kid emerged, Tate caught Rose’s proud smile. Despite the chill in the air, her face was warm and flushed.
“There we go, little one.” He cleaned up the baby goat and watched it totter over to its mother, looking for milk.
While Rose cleaned herself up, Tate raked up the soiled bedding and laid out fresh straw doing his best to not disturb the new family. He watched from the edge of the enclosure, and Rose came up behind him. “Have you done that before?”
Rose shrugged. “I did it once when I worked for the vet. Sometimes I’ll have to reach in because only one leg is extended, or because the neck is back. That’s the worst one if you don’t catch it in time. There’s nothing worse than a stillborn.” He could hear the sadness in her voice. Her compassion for the animals was unmatched by anyone he’d ever met before. Since he’d been helping, they hadn’t had a stillborn, but he could imagine the heartbreak that would bring.
He held open her coat, which he had rescued from the floor of the pen where she discarded it. While Rose slipped her arms into it, his fingers brushed her shoulders. Tate tried to come up with a response. “Well, either way, that was pretty amazing.”
She turned to him and smiled. He could see the circles under her green eyes, but they sparkled with the excitement of a successful kidding. His fingers twitched with the desire to touch her again. “We make a pretty good team, I’d say.”
His heart flipped inside his chest, and he swallowed heavily. Rose was his friend. Why was he reading more into those words than he should? “Yeah,” he choked out. “A great team.”
Her smile broadened, and he felt his resolve tumble a little further. He’d known for years that she was passionate and funny and tough and gorgeous. So why was he suddenly imagining what it would be like to kiss her? Tate realized he’d been staring and cleared his throat, shifting his weight as he looked toward Margie and back again.
Her hand flew to her mouth to stifle a yawn, and Tate checked his watched. Three in the morning. “We better get some sleep.”
Rose nodded. “I just have to make sure the kids are nursing okay.” No surprises there. Rose would always put the animals’ needs before her own, and arguing with her wouldn’t make any difference. He’d learned that from experience. He followed her as she approached the newborns and double checked they were receiving milk from the clearly tired, but preening Margie.
He patted her head. “Great job, Margie. Such a good mama,” he said gently.
Rose stood back up but stumbled. Tate held out his arms to steady her, and Rose sagged slightly before straightening. “Must sleep.” Now that the adrenaline from delivery was wearing off, Rose must be exhausted.
He hit the remote start on his truck and heard it roar to life outside. He held her arm as they walked out of the barn. “Come on. I’ll give you a lift back to the house.”
Rose shook her head. “I can walk. It’s not far.”
“Rose, it’s two degrees out here. And you can barely walk straight. I’ve got to drive to the trailer anyway.”
She yawned again. “Okay, fine. If you insist.”
She was adorable when she was sleepy. It was perhaps his favorite part of their middle-of-the-night tradition. When she’d first invited him three years ago, he’d come more out of interest. Cows were different from goats, after all. Since then, he’d come for nearly every calf, kid, and litter of piglets that had been born.
The truck heater was roaring when they climbed inside, and he heard Rose’s contented sigh as she held her hands in front of the vents. She reached over and flipped on the heated seat. Tate couldn’t stand the things, but every time Rose was in his truck, she turned hers on.
When she opened her mouth, Tate knew exactly what she was going to say. It was the same comment she made every time she rode in his truck. “I need to get me a truck like this,” he said in unison with her.
She gave him an incredulous look before bursting into laughter. He winked at her, which only made her laugh harder. Somebody was a little slap happy.
The drive to the main house took less than two minutes, and Tate drove as slowly as he could, reluctant to end the evening. Rose was still laughing. She looked so dang gorgeous with her messy hair peeking out from under her stocking cap.
He pulled into the circle drive and Rose gave him one last grin. “Thanks for keeping me company.”
“Anytime, Flowers. See you tomorrow.”
Rose jumped down from the cab and jogged inside, his headlights illuminating her path. Once she was safely inside the house, Tate released the brake and slowly rolled away from the house. His lonely trailer parked near the edge of the property seemed especially uninviting after an evening spent with Rose.
4
Three hours of sleep wasn’t nearly enough, but Rose silenced her alarm and sat up in bed. While Daisy was known to set fourteen alarms to wake herself up, Rose had only ever needed one. Once you were awake, what was the point of an extra four minutes? Plus, this morning, she knew the baby goats were waiting to greet her. That was worth getting out of bed.
When she got to the barn, Tate’s truck was parked outside. She smiled. Apparently, he couldn’t wait to see them again either. Rose stepped inside and looked longingly toward the office where the coffeepot was waiting. Instead, she walked the other direction toward the small kidding pen where Margie and the baby goats would be waiting.
Tate turned as she approached, a mug in his hands. “Good morning,” he said with a crooked smile.
In lieu of a greeting, she grabbed the mug from his hands and took a sip.
“Help yourself,” he said wryly.
“Thanks.” She gestured toward the goats. “How’re they doing?”
“Everything looks good. Margie is a trooper. Have you named the kids yet?”
She shook her head. “Any ideas?”
Tate pulled the cup from her hand and raised it to his lips. Rose tried not to follow the path with her eyes. “One boy and one girl, right?” After she confirmed, he continued. “How about Harry and Sally?”
She tipped her head back with a laugh. “Yeah, all right.”
They watched the babies jump around the small enclosure while Margie munched contentedly at the feed trough hung on the wall.
“Will they join the rest today?”
Rose nodded in response, then glanced at her watch. “Yeah. I better get to it.”
“Need any help?”
Tate’s offer warmed Rose from her toes to her hat. Why was it when Hawthorne or her dad offered to help, she immediately felt insulted and inadequate, but when Tate offered, she felt cared for?
Still, she didn’t need his help. He had his own work to do, anyway. “No, but thanks for the offer.”
Tate’s fingers touched the brim of his baseball cap and he tipped it slightly. “All right then. I’ll see you around.”
He turned to go, and Rose stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Wait.”
Tate glanced back, expectantly. With a grin, Rose grabbed the mug from him and took one last drink. “You make good coffee, Cowboy.”
He gave an exaggerated pout and looked down at the lidded cup. “Yeah, I know. I usually like to drink it myself.” Then he met her eyes again. “Of course, if you are usually drinking the swill Hawthorne makes, I can’t really blame you for stealing mine.”
Rose chuckled at the dig aimed at her brother and watched Tate walk away. He lifted the coffee cup in a farewell wave as he strolled out the door. Rose turned back toward the goats. Harry and Sally, huh? What did that tell her about Tate?
Since he’d come to the farm four years ago, Tate had quickly become a regular feature in her life. He came to family dinners. He was invited to her sisters’ weddings. He even sat with them at church a good portion of the time.
More than once, Lavender had made comments about how cute he was, or what good friends he and Rose were. But that’s all it was. Rose wasn’t looking for anything else. In her experience, men made great friends and lousy partners. She’d been “one of the guys” at school and work for as long as she could remember. Growing up with five sisters, hanging out with men was a nice change from life at home. The only problem was that whenever she was interested in someone, they inevitably saw her as a friend. One “helpful” friend in vet tech school had informed her that men didn’t want someone who knew the answers or never needed help.
Apparently, to be an attractive woman, you needed to be needy and dumb. And Rose was neither of those things. She couldn’t afford to be. Pretending she didn’t know what to do last night for baby Harry could have ended in the death of a goat. And for what? To stroke Tate’s ego? No way.
Instead, she would do what she needed to do and not worry about the other stuff. Maybe she wasn’t meant to get married. Tate was a friend. A friend who made excellent coffee and she liked spending time with. That was all.
Tate’s small trailer had been home since he left Montana. It was easier to move around and jump from ranch to ranch when your house had wheels. Of course, it wasn’t exactly roomy. But he only slept there anyway.
It had taken his entire first year’s salary to buy the camper. Everything he owned fit inside it or the truck. When he told his younger brother he was leaving, Travis hadn’t understood. No one had. But Russell Ranch had stopped being home to him when he was seventeen. If it had truly even been home before that.
Since he was old enough to remember, his father had drilled into him that someday the ranch would be his. He saw the pressure his dad was under. He saw how the long hours and unpredictable schedule wore down his mother until she was a shell of a woman. When the ranch did well, his dad was fun and happy. When they struggled? His dad was angry and bitter, taking it out on his wife and kids. For a while, his mom was angry. “What woman wants to be tied to one place her whole life? This ranch will kill both of us if you let it, and you wouldn’t even notice.” His mother had been crying and yelling at his dad while Tate listened from the dark at the top of the stairs. Soon after that, it was like she’d stopped feeling anything at all. His mom had been right—his Dad either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t cared.
Tate wanted no part of Russell Ranch or the family he left behind. They had proven over and over again that they only cared about themselves. He would never live like that. Perhaps that was why he had stayed so long with the Bloom Family. Time and time again, he had seen their family put each other ahead of success or pride. When Lily was diagnosed with cancer, the entire family took time off for her appointments or let their own responsibilities slide to help cover events for her.
