“Here,” Ian says, handing me a bottle over the door.
I take it with my good arm and hold it by my face. “Dinner tiiiime, little Candy girl. Come on over here and eat it up for momma so she can stop worrying about you.”
She walks over like she understands every word I just said and then we play tug-o-war with the bottle again until she sucks it dry. My arm is on fire, but I ignore it. Every bit of pain I have to endure for her is worth it.
When she’s done, she goes off and does her happy milk-belly dance, and I stand in the corner watching. I don’t realize I’ve got happy tears on my cheeks until Ian reaches over and wipes one away.
“You ready for dinner?” he asks softly.
“Yeah. No. Maybe.” I can’t focus on him. I can only stare at this little miniature cow and revel in the miracle that is her. I can’t believe Ian and I actually brought her back to life. If we hadn’t shown up when we did, she’d be frozen solid right now and her real mommy would be mooing while her heart broke. I feel like a superhero.
“Want me to bring it out here?” he asks.
That gets my attention. “Could you?”
He smiles. “Yeah. Be right back.” A second later he’s handing a short stool over the door to me. “Here. Make yourself comfortable.”
I put the stool in the corner of the stall and sit on it. Candy comes over to check things out and lick me with her really rough tongue before I push her away and she goes back to ruffling the straw around. It’s only after I’ve settled in and she’s going back to sleep that I realize how frigging cold it is out here. I wiggle my toes over and over trying to keep the circulation going in my feet.
Ian shows up a few minutes later with a blanket that he throws over the door on top of me and something covered in tin foil. He opens the stall door and comes in, sitting down in the straw next to me as I settle the warm wool on my shoulders.
“What’s this?” I ask as he hands it over. He keeps one for himself and tears the top of the foil off.
“Burrito. Fresh frozen and microwaved by yours truly.”
“Wow,” I say, taking a bite of it, failing miserably at looking like a girl with manners. “You have so many hidden talents.”
“You know it,” he says, eating a third of his burrito in one bite.
I laugh as a bean rolls out of his mouth and sits on his chin.
“What?” he asks, all innocence, even though I know he has to feel it sitting there. “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“You sure?” he moves his head left and then right, showing off his new bean mole.
“Positive. You’re perfect exactly like that. Best you’ve looked all day.”
He turns his head sideways and in one quick movement flicks the bean off his face. It lands in my hair.
I sigh through my nose and just sit there, chewing my burrito, reviewing the tragedies of the day. I’ve had cow loogies all over my face. I’ve been scratched by a lion and now have stitches and a future scar that will show every time I wear a sundress or a t-shirt. I’ve contributed to the death of said lion. I’ve pissed off my best friend and pretty much her entire family. And now I have a burrito bean in my hair.
A great big smile breaks out over my face.
“You’re smiling,” Ian says. He sounds worried.
“Yes, Ian, I am.”
“I’m a little scared.”
I keep staring out into the stable. “You should be.”
“Really?”
Without warning, I dive to the side, effectively tackling him into the straw. My burrito goes flying. “Yes! Really!”
The baby cow jumps up on wobbly legs and runs to the far corner.
I’m on top of Ian, staring down into his surprised face.
A few seconds later, a weird smell comes wafting up into my nose.
Ian’s expression goes dead.
“What’s that smell?” I ask.
Ian closes his eyes. “Can you let me up? I think I’m lying in cow shit.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
I CANNOT STOP LAUGHING ALL the way to the house. The back of Ian’s head is covered in cow poo. And I thought my hair was bad with some loogies and a burrito bean in it.
“Don’t say it,” he warns as he goes up the front steps.
I’m gasping for air, bent over as I hold my stomach. Oh, it hurts so much. I can’t stop laughing.
“I’m hitting the shower.” He throws open the front door and drops his jacket on the ground just inside the entrance. “Don’t flush any toilets while I’m in there.”
I pause in the foyer, my laughter drying up with the confusion of his statement. “What?”
He clomps up the stairs. “Don’t flush any toilets while I’m in the shower.”
“Why not?” I yell up after him.
The door to the bathroom slams shut without him giving me a response.
I wander into the downstairs powder room to check my face and hair. That was my first mistake.
I stare in horror at the image reflected back at me. I can honestly say that I have never looked so bad in my entire life, even after once getting wasted back in college and ending up at some guy’s house whose name I couldn’t remember, waking up with my face pressed into his living room carpet. That was a bad day, but this is a worse than bad day.
I lean in to get a closer look and then just as quickly back up. Oh. My. God. I’ve spontaneously wrinkled out here on this ranch! I look ten years older!
Maybe it’s the clothes. Maybe it’s the food.
I hold my stomach as it turns over and grumbles. That burrito is not going down well. Nature is calling.
I sit down on the toilet and think back on my day as I take care of business. My stomach continues to express its discontent as I wander through my memories. I’m really glad it’s just Ian and me here in the house. I’m making a lot of noise in this little room. Wow.
Ian and I did chores together. He came to get me this morning so I would do them with him. He wanted to show me baby cows and stuff. That was probably a big hassle for him to do that. Was he just being polite? I doubt it. It seems like something a guy would do if he liked a girl. Does Ian like me?
Or maybe he just wants to make fun of me, laugh at all the times I fall down on my ass and make a fool of myself. And he has laughed, that’s for sure. The jerk probably has sore abs from all the gut-busting he’s been doing. But he’s also been really nice and even polite sometimes. He said I’m not like he expected me to be. I can’t be sure, but I think he meant it as a compliment. That’s a good sign, right?
There’s always the chance that he could just be trying to get in my pants. He’s being creative about it, I’ll give him that. I can honestly say that I’ve never had a guy try to woo me by having me take part in a cow birth. The best I’ve ever had prior to this was a date at the zoo followed by a candlelight dinner. At the time I thought that was pretty creative, but it pales in comparison to this day.
That’s when it hits me. My god, I have a baby cow to take care of! How often does she eat? What exactly does she eat? I need to get Googling!
I finish up using copious amounts of two-ply, and stand, pulling my elastic granny pants up to my waist. I need to find out how often Candy needs to be fed and what goes in that bottle. Will I have to sleep out in the barn tonight? No one but Ian is home. I need to go ask him and figure out how I’m going to do all this and keep up with my social schedule, visiting with Andie and going to Boog’s party and all that.
I flush the toilet and leave the bathroom after washing my hands. I’m not two steps into the hallway when a loud roaring comes from upstairs.
I take the stairs two at a time. It sounds like Ian is dying up there.
“What’s wrong?!” I shout at the top of the stairs. When I reach the bathroom door I pound on it. “Are you okay?!
“I told you not to fucking flush the toilet!”
I bite my lip as his meaning sinks in. “Oh
.”
“Yeah, oh. Don’t act like you didn’t do that on purpose!”
He’s really mad. It kind of makes me angry that he’s so mad.
“I didn’t!”
“Liar!”
“I’m not a liar.”
“Yes, you are. You’re a damn liar. You flushed on purpose to freeze me out. Probably trying to see me naked or something, thinking I’ll come running out of here.”
My eyes narrow as I picture him standing there accusing me of something I didn’t do. And seeing him naked kind of sounds like a good idea.
I turn around and run down the stairs, just as fast as I ran up. Maybe faster. Into the powder room I go, flushing that toilet for all I’m worth. I also turn on the sink faucet just for good measure.
I giggle like an insane person when I hear him roar again. Running into the kitchen, I turn on the faucet there too and then press the buttons to turn on the dishwasher.
I hear a pounding of feet but ignore it. He’s probably jumping around up there like a deranged monkey. Now all I have to do is find their washing machine. Ahoy! Super big load of laundry needing massive amounts of hot water, coming right up!
I’m running around the corner into the hallway when I slam right into something big and hard and wet. It’s breathing heavily.
“Caught ya!” Ian shouts in my face, throwing his arms around me.
“Ack! What are you doing?!” I scream. He’s wet. And naked. Like, really, really naked. I start yelling and laughing at the same time. I can’t help it. The adrenaline has exploded in my heart and I’m completely out of control.
“Just giving you what you asked for!” He picks me up and starts walking towards the front of the house. We make it to the foyer before the doo hits the fan.
Neither of us is prepared for the front door to fly open and for Mack and Andie to be standing there on the doorstep, with Angus and Maeve right behind them.
Ho. Lee. Shit.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“UHHHH…” IAN PUTS ME DOWN in front of him. A freezing cold burst of air hits me in the face.
“Uhhhh, hi.” I say. My face is on fire, despite the sub-zero temperatures.
“Ian Michael Angus MacKenzie … of all the …” Maeve is rendered speechless apparently, because that’s all she has to say.
“I’ll … uhhh … just hop back in the shower.” Ian leaves me standing there in the foyer staring at the entire MacKenzie family in shock. His pounding footsteps fade in the distance. A door upstairs slams shut.
Andie looks up at Mack. “I told you something like this was going to happen.” She shifts her arms, and for the first time I notice there’s a baby there.
“I’ll talk to him,” Mack says, without looking at me.
My face goes even redder as I realize how awful this looks. I try to explain. “I flushed the toilet.”
Maeve comes in and pats me on the arm. “That’s nice sweetie. Maybe you should get in bed. You’ve had a long day.”
Angus breathes out heavily but says nothing. Mack walks around me to the kitchen and his father follows. Andie and Maeve just look at me.
“Yeah. I think I’ll go to bed.” I turn to go up the stairs.
I’ve never been so humiliated in my entire life. I used to be a mature, adult woman with a degree in fashion design and a thriving salon business in a metropolitan city. Today I’m a moron in granny jeans with cow loogies and a burrito bean in her hair being chased by a naked maniac in his mother’s house. Good. Lord. Have. Mercy.
“We’ll discuss this in the morning,” Andie says. It sounds like a warning. Somehow she’s shifted from being my BFF to being my mother.
“Okee dokee,” I say, acting like I don’t have a care in the world, even though my insides are back to being a mess and my head feels like it’s about to pop right off my shoulders. I’m pretty sure I’ve never been so embarrassed in my entire life, even when I accidentally turned my business partner’s hair green. He still hasn’t gotten over that and neither have I, but right now I’d happily trade another one of those incidents for this one.
Going up the stairs is like taking the walk of shame or something. I can feel Andie’s stare boring into my back. I know exactly what she’s thinking too, but tomorrow I’m going to set her straight. There will be plenty of time to do it then. Tonight I can just go to bed and try and forget for a few hours that any of this happened. Hopefully Candy won’t get too hungry in the meantime.
I walk past the bathroom that Ian’s still showering in and go into Mack’s bedroom just across the hall from it. Closing my door, I try not to let my mind wander into that place where it imagines what’s going on inside that bathroom, what Ian might be doing right now, what he might look like.
Oy. I’m in so much trouble. I caught a glimpse of him naked and … hooey! … It was way better than my imagination. Talk about a swinging dick.
Sliding out of my granny jeans is way easier than I thought it would be. Ian was right about that. It makes me wonder if he really did buy these because I’m on the injured list and not because he was trying to make me look insanely ugly.
Deciding that my lacy pajamas are going to be a little harder to get into, I abandon them for the flannel shirt Ian bought me today. I lie down on my back and slide under the covers wearing nothing but the shirt and my underwear. The room is dark but I have no idea what time it is. I can’t hear anything but the sound of water in the bathroom across the hall. It gradually puts me to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Six
A BRIGHT LIGHT BULB GOING on and shining through my eyelids brings me back to the land of the living and forces me awake. I squeeze my lids shut tighter, trying to block it out.
“What the fudge …,” I say, my voice sleep-rough and barely there.
“You awake?” Ian asks.
I crack one eye open. He’s wearing a t-shirt and shorts. It’s dark outside.
“I am now, fool.” I close my eye and try to fall back to sleep. My head is killing me.
“The discharge instructions say you need to take these pills every six hours.”
I open an eye again and find him standing there with his palm up and a glass of water in the other hand. There are three pills waiting for me.
Sitting up gradually, I wince at the pain in my skull and the burning in my arm. Youch. Fighting cougars is painful. “What are they?” I ask.
Ian sits down on the edge of the bed and hands the pills to me. “Antibiotics and pain meds, I think.”
“You trying to slip me something so you can take advantage of me?” I ask before throwing them into my mouth and chasing them down with the water.
He grins. “I notice you didn’t wait for my answer before you took ‘em.”
I shrug and hand him back the glass. “Whatever. Take advantage of me if you want. I’m too tired to fight you off.” I close my eyes and try not to scowl too hard over the pain the lump gives me when I’m lying down again. Turning my head to face the wall only partially relieves my misery.
“You in pain?”
“What do you think?” I ask.
“I feel bad.”
That makes me open my eyes. I flip my head over to the other side so I can look at him. “Why would you feel bad?”
“Because this is my fault, and I apologize for that.”
I reach up and slap his arm. It’s not a very powerful slap, but it’s the best I can manage right now. “Shut up. Don’t you dare apologize.”
“Why not? If it weren’t for me, you’d be your regular self and not sporting a scarred up arm and a lumpy head.”
I blink slowly a few times, letting that image settle into my brain. “Thanks for that description.”
“You’re welcome.”
“But even though I’m now hideously ugly, I’m still not accepting your apology.”
“Why not?” He sounds cranky.
“Because you never should have given me one in the first place. This wasn’t your fault. Plus, I have no regrets, so … ye
ah. Keep your apology. Use it on someone else.”
“You have no regrets.”
“That’s what I said.” I close my eyes and roll over onto my side, facing away from him. “I’m going to sleep, so unless you’re here to rub my back, you can leave.”
There’s silence for so long I think he’s left me and I begin to drift off. But then I feel his hands on me.
“You’re pretty cool, you know that?” He’s rubbing my shoulder. It makes me tingle.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that about me before.” My words come out all mumbled. I sound like I’m drunk.
“When I first met you, I thought you were a pain in the ass. All high maintenance and shit … stuff, I mean.”
“That’s nice.” My mind is spinning very slowly, slowly, slowly. His words and his hands are working some kind of magic on me. Maybe the pills too. I feel like I’m falling into a dream world.
“But you’re really not. You’re actually smart and funny and someone a person can count on when stuff gets real.”
“Thasss meee,” I say lazily. “Fugging superhero. They call me Wonder Bitch.” I giggle at my new name. I could totally see me in spandex with a cape and a big letter B on the front of my chest. I’d be in a bustier, à la Wonder Woman, naturally.
“You’re not a bitch. I think you’re actually kind of a marshmallow under all that noise.”
I lift my arm as high as I can and wave it in his direction. “Go ‘way. I’m sleeping.”
His hands leave my back, and the bed shifts. Something heavy and warm is behind me now. I realize just as I’m drifting off again into la-la land that it’s Ian. He’s lying beside me and his arm is over my hips.
Or maybe I’m just dreaming.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
ANDIE CLAIMS SHE WOKE ME up to give me pills and that I actually sat up and took them, but I have very little memory of that. It all just feels like a dream. Especially that part where I dreamed Ian was sleeping with me, keeping me warm, snuggling up behind me. I guess a twelve hour nap will cause a person to kind of lose touch with reality.