Cade's Loss: California Cowboys 1 Page 4

  “Perfect. Bug? Be gone now,” Ty ordered playfully. Kate leapt off her father’s leg and into her uncle’s arms. Cade scooted her around until she was hanging off his back like a monkey.

  “I took care of that issue with the consultant, by the way,” he told Ty stiffly.

  Ty nodded. “Good. It’ll all work out fine. You’ll see.”

  “Well, at least if it doesn’t, it won’t be my fault now.”

  Ty snorted. “Somehow I doubt that,” he mumbled.

  Cade chose to ignore him and started galloping toward the house, Kate giggling hysterically while she bounced on his back.

  They’d made it nearly to the porch when Kate started shrieking. “Wait, Uncle Cade, waaaait!” Cade ground to a halt, panting from the extra forty pounds he was running with.

  “What’s up, buttercup?”

  “I want to see Miss Nina.”

  “Oh, Katie bug, we need to go in—”

  “Katie bug?” Nina said from right behind them. Cade nearly groaned as he turned to face her, Kate scrambling down to go throw her arms around Nina’s legs.

  Cade struggled not to look too hard at those legs. He knew firsthand just how they felt wrapped around his waist, and the memory was like a whispering tease that crawled along his skin and landed with a zing in his cock.

  “That’s what Uncle Cade and Uncle Vaughn calls me,” Katie said loudly.

  “Well, I love that name! Should I call you that too?”

  “You could call me Bug. It’s what Dirk calls me, and Aunt Lynn too. They’s like my gwandpawents…but not.”

  “Well, bug,” Nina said, lowering herself to Kate’s level. “I heard that somewhere around here, dinner is served at six o’clock.

  Katie nodded, her eyes as big as her smile.

  “Will you show me where to eat?” Nina asked, standing and taking Katie’s hand.

  “Yes!” Katie yelled. Then she led Nina up the porch stairs and into the house—Cade’s house—and he realized that Nina hadn’t looked at him once. And while he also realized that should make him happy, it actually made him a whole lot of other things he didn’t want to admit—not even to himself.

  Nina sat at the table in the large open dining room complete with custom wood paneling and knotty pine floors. The room had an entire wall of glass that looked out over the edge of the hillside, and you could see the ocean in the distance, rolling green pastures leading down to it where a few cattle grazed, the majority of the herd being on the flatter fields on the eastern side of the ranch.

  “Nina,” Cade’s Aunt Lynn said, “would you like your steak medium rare or medium? The boys each like something different, so I always make some of each.” Lynn was a sturdy woman in her sixties, with the same blue eyes as Cade, and the no-nonsense clothing of a ranch wife. She was quick to smile, and reminded Nina of her own mother in many ways.

  “I’m actually vegetarian, but thank you anyway,” Nina answered.

  Cade snorted, and Ty coughed into his glass of water.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Cade muttered under his breath.

  “So, what made you choose that?” the youngest Jenkins brother, Vaughn, asked sincerely.

  “Um, well, I was in college when I started studying sustainable agriculture. The more I learned, the more I realized that I wanted to make the smallest imprint on the planet that I could.” She paused, realizing that in a family who was already divided about the shift to organics, her criticizing their livelihood wouldn’t go far toward healing the rift. She glanced at Cade before continuing, choosing her words carefully.

  “Conventional ranching can have devastating effects on the environment. Here in the US, we don’t have the severe issues with cattle grazing causing deforestation and some of the other land-use problems, but we do have issues with how much grain must be produced to feed conventional cattle, how much methane cows produce, how much water is used to raise and keep them. All those things hurt the environment.”

  “So even organic ranches cause environmental damage?” Cade asked, his gaze sly.

  She looked at him for a moment before answering. “Even organic ranches can cause environmental damage,” she hedged.

  “And so we should go organic why again?”

  “Because we can minimize the environmental impact of your ranch, and maybe even get it to a positive impact.” She smiled at Ty and Vaughn, ignoring Cade and his obstructionism. “As long as you’re raising cattle, you’ll be contributing to issues like the overabundance of methane, but if you raise cattle using organic techniques you’ll eliminate the pesticides, the unnecessary antibiotics, the overproduction of grain for feed. And you’ll provide families with healthier beef, you’ll provide farms with chemical-free fertilizer, and keep this beautiful land working for you for generations to come.”

  Vaughn smiled at her. “I think that’s really admirable—that you don’t eat meat for all those reasons. I’ve thought about becoming a vegetarian—”

  “You have not,” Cade scoffed.

  “No, really, I have. It’s kind of hard given the way we eat…”

  “We live on a damn cattle ranch. How are we supposed to eat?”

  Ty jumped in, the middle brother who had obviously learned to keep the peace. “If he wants to try being vegetarian, that’s fine. Doesn’t mean it’s a decision for life. Everyone’s allowed to experiment.”

  Cade rolled his eyes, and Lynn started asking Ty questions about his visit to the local elementary school where Kate would start kindergarten in the fall.

  Nina tried to listen as Kate regaled her with stories of the various pets that roamed freely in and out of the dining room, but Cade’s presence across the table was distracting. She’d been prepared to ignore him for the entirety of her stay at the ranch, but then the very first thing she’d seen was him galloping across the compound with his darling niece on his back as he played at being her horse. He’d been joking with her, and both of them were smiling and laughing, and Nina swore her ovaries swelled two sizes at the sight.

  Now all she could think was that not only was he incredibly sexy and amazing in bed, but really good with children. “And also an asshole,” she muttered into her potatoes as a reminder to herself.

  “That’s a bad word, Miss Nina. Daddy said so that time Uncle Vaughn called him one.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” Nina lied, looking around the table as her cheeks burned.

  “Mmm, Katie bug’s got pretty good ears,” Ty teased from his seat on Nina’s other side.

  Vaughn, sitting on Katie’s other side, burst into laughter. “Katie bug, what are we going to do with you?” he asked, ruffling her hair.

  “Mawy me!” she yelled, standing up in her chair and bouncing up and down.

  “Katherine Marie,” Lynn said, trying to repress a smile. “Sit down now. We’re still eating.”

  Lynn was the men’s father’s sister. She’d lived her whole life in Big Sur, Ty had explained, and when the elder Jenkinses were killed, she’d begun spending the majority of her time at the ranch to help the three brothers. And once Kate came along, there was no question that Aunt Lynn was a permanent member of the ragtag group.

  “Did she say ‘marry me’?” Nina whispered to Ty.

  “Oh yeah. Hey, Katie bug, tell Nina what you’re going to do when you grow up.”

  All three Jenkins men stopped shoveling food in their mouths and sat back, smirks firmly in place.

  Kate, who was still standing on her chair, turned to face Nina, looking down at her and bouncing occasionally to emphasize her words.

  “When I gwow up, I’m gonna’ cook in the kitchen wif Aunt Lynn, then wide the horses and chase the cows wif Uncle Cade and Daddy, and then mawwy Uncle Vaughn and wear a long white dwess that Aunt Lynn’s fwiend sews for me, and I’ll sleep in Gwandma and Gwandpa’s old woom that nobody sleeps in now, and I’ll let all the dogs sleep in the bed with me.”

  Her uncles, her great aunt, and Dirk, the ranch hand who seemed to be a virtu
al member of the family as well, clapped and cheered, and Kate bowed, then finally sat down, grabbing a fistful of mashed potatoes with her bare hand before Vaughn snatched her wrist, instructed her to drop the potatoes onto the plate, and quickly wiped her down.

  Nina laughed at the preschooler’s vision of the future. But when she looked across the table, her eyes met Cade’s—hot blue flames that stole her breath and made her heart beat faster. No, no, no, she chanted to herself. But then her mind replayed a certain moment from the night before and the chant turned to yes, yes, yes. She felt her face flush and looked away, but not before seeing Cade’s lips twitch, as if he were struggling not to smile. Bastard.

  “So, Nina,” Lynn said. “What exactly will you be doing while you’re here?”

  Grateful for the reprieve from her lustful thoughts of Cade, she launched into a description of the process she went through with business owners.

  “I’ll start by getting the records of everything that’s been used on the land and the animals over the last three years. So any pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, medications for the cattle, even the types of food they’ve been given and the origins of that food. Once I have all those records, I’ll be able to determine how long your cleanup process will be. In order to be certified organic, the land and livestock have to be pesticide-free for three years.”

  “And there’s the problem with the whole thing right there,” Cade grumbled from across the table. Dirk grunted from his end of the table, watching Cade with a scowl.

  “You’ve made it pretty clear you’re not a big supporter of going organic,” Nina said, gritting her teeth at the insufferable ass. She was getting a headache from the pendulum swing of emotions the man brought out in her.

  “I’m not in favor of dumping thousands of dollars and three years into something that we have no guarantee will pay off.”

  Nina took a breath, reminding herself to be professional. “All the data show that taking a property like this organic has a big payoff. No one can guarantee your results of course, but we’ve yet to certify a property that hasn’t earned back the investment within the first five years of operation.”

  Ty nodded. “I’ve shown you those stats, Cade. Bigger ranches like ours take a bit longer to get a return on the investment, but by five years out, even an operation this size has earned back the investment.”

  “Eight years altogether, then,” Cade said, looking at his brother like he was a child. “You’re talking about something that’s going to take eight years before we actually start seeing growth. What if everyone’s tired of organic by then?”

  Nina couldn’t help but laugh. “Organic isn’t something people get tired of. This is the future of the food industry, Mr. Jenkins. No one is going back to conventional production methods, so it’s not a matter of if you want to do this, but really only about when.”

  “Yeah, Mr. Jenkins,” Vaughn snarked, grinning into a mouthful of green beans.

  Cade glared first at Vaughn and then her from across the table, and she decided she was much safer when he glared at her than when he smoldered.

  “Well,” said Lynn, trying to distract everyone. “Shall we have some dessert? I think Katie might have made some apple cobbler.”

  “Yes! Yes! I did!” Kate screamed, leaping off her chair and grabbing her aunt by the arm. “And don’t forget, you pwomised we could use the spway-on whip cweam.”

  “Yes, I did. We’ll be right back, everyone.”

  Vaughn picked up his plate and Kate’s and followed his aunt into the kitchen, as Dirk grabbed his own and shuffled after them.

  “I’ve got some paperwork to take care of,” Cade said, standing and grabbing his own plate.

  “All right, man.” Ty looked at his brother from under a shock of hair. “I’ll lock everything up.”

  Cade nodded, face grim, and walked out of the room.

  Ty shook his head. “You’ll have to forgive him.”

  “I think I’ve done that several times today,” Nina said.

  “I know. He’s just…uh…It hasn’t been easy for him. Having our parents die like they did—when they did.”

  Nina pushed her plate back, settling into her seat a little more. “I’d imagine it wasn’t for any of you.”

  “Yeah, but Cade got the worst of it. He was twenty-five and one of the top five pro surfers in the world when their car went off the PCH.”

  “Oh…I had no idea.”

  “It’s not something he talks about too much. But they left him with everything—the ranch, a brother in college and another still in high school. He was the executor of the estate, Vaughn’s guardian, and the owner of a multimillion-dollar business. Overnight, at the age of twenty-five. And he had to give up his dreams in order to take care of it all.”

  Nina’s heart hurt for the young man Cade must have been, the triple tragedy of losing his parents, gaining responsibilities far beyond his years, and having to give up his career. “That is a lot of loss all at once,” she said softly.

  Ty nodded. “It was, and he did it all. He kept this place together, he got Vaughn through high school and college, and, truth be told, he hasn’t done anything for himself in six years other than spend an afternoon surfing once a week.”

  And pick up women at the Big Sur Inn bar, Nina thought grimly.

  “But it’s hard for him to realize that we can handle more now. Vaughn and I are perfectly capable of helping make decisions about the ranch, if he’ll only let us.”

  Nina didn’t usually talk about her personal life to clients, but it seemed so apropos at this moment, she decided to open up to Ty.

  “My parents own an apple farm in Washington State. All organic for the last twenty years.”

  Ty flashed her a cheeky grin.

  “Obviously, I didn’t certify them. But the point of this story is that I watched my dad run that place my whole life, and then when my older brother finished with his ag degree at Wash State, he joined the family business. But the first few years were really rough because my dad wouldn’t take any of my brother’s suggestions or ideas. My brother had this fancy degree and knew all sorts of new techniques and approaches, but he couldn’t get my dad to give an inch on anything.”

  “So what happened?” Ty asked, pouring some more water into Nina’s glass.

  “Eventually, my mom was able to bridge the gap. She explained to my brother that my dad had been shouldering the weight of the place for so long, he didn’t know how to let any of that go. He was dying for help but was so used to going without, he didn’t know how to use it when it was there.”

  “So you’re saying that even though Cade says ‘no,’ he really wants our help?”

  “I’m willing to bet on it. Somehow you have to figure out how to break through his resistance, and when you do, my guess is that he’ll be grateful. Sometimes even when we know the salad is better for us, we’ve been eating the fries for so long, we can’t stop.”

  “As long as they’re organic fries,” Ty joked.

  Nina laughed and wondered if maybe Cade was Prince Charming after all, just a very sad one.

  4

  Early mornings were always Cade’s time alone. Everyone on the ranch was up early, but he was up earlier, walking through the gray dawn, unlocking barns, collecting a few eggs for breakfast, brewing a good cup of coffee and sometimes simply sitting on the porch and planning out the day’s work.

  The Big Sur Ranch had an extensive crew of ranch hands, but most of the commercial operations were away from the main house down the road where the bunkhouse was, along with the commercial chickens, the stockyards, and several more barns full of horses. Here at the big house, as the hands called it, Cade and his brothers kept their personal horses, some chickens for the family’s eggs, and a quarantine barn for any animals that might be recovering from an illness.

  Today, Cade made his first stop to the quarantine barn to visit the calf Vaughn had brought home. The little guy was lying in a bed of hay with a warming blanket
under him. His left hind leg was wrapped up with a makeshift splint, and Cade could tell that Dirk had been tending to things.

  “Hey, little dude,” he said softly as he entered the stall. “How you feeling?”

  The calf lowed, blinking at him. He patted it on the head before standing and walking to the supply room. Once there, he pulled some raw milk out of the small fridge and warmed it in the microwave before pouring it into a baby bottle.

  Sitting on the floor of the stall, Cade leaned back against the wall and held the bottle to the calf’s mouth. The cow didn’t need to be shown twice. He greedily sucked on the bottle, taking long pulls on the rubber nipple.

  “Where’s his mama?” a soft voice that shot straight to his dick said from the gate of the stall.

  Cade turned and looked into those amber eyes that hadn’t yet ceased to be enticing.

  “Vaughn found him alone out on the range. Looks like he has a broken leg.”

  Nina opened the gate and slipped into the stall, then closed the gate again, kneeling next to the calf and stroking its head.

  “Did your mama abandon you, baby? Some mothers are like that.”

  Cade chuckled. “Hopefully not yours,” he said.

  Nina smiled, and his heart shimmied inside his chest. “No, my mom’s great. Stuck by me through the teen years, and let me tell you, if anyone deserved to be abandoned by a parent, it was teenage me.”

  “Heh. Yeah, I was a pain in the ass too. But honestly, it was after I left home that I really gave them trouble.”

  “Yeah? What did twenty-year-old Cade do that was so horrible?”

  Cade leaned his head against the wooden slatted wall behind him. He remembered back eleven years ago, and his stomach twisted a touch.

  “It was nineteen-year-old Cade, actually, and he didn’t want to stay in college because he wanted to join the pro surfing circuit.”

  “Ty told me you were one of the best in the world.”

  Cade nodded, surprised that the bitter taste that usually accompanied that little tidbit didn’t surface.