Eight
THE STAPLETONS’ RANCH was many long, labyrinth-like roads from the highway—deep in farm country. You had to pass fields of corn and cotton and pastures full of cows. There was even a field with real live longhorns.
When we arrived, Jack turned onto a half-mile, gravel entry road that started at a cattleguard, crossed a wide-open field, and seemed to go on forever.
“How big is this ranch, anyway?” I asked, starting to suspect that it was not small.
“Five hundred acres,” he said.
The sheer size made it more real for some reason. This was an actual place. Those were genuine barbed-wire fences. Bona fide humans lived here. This was really happening.
But it didn’t really happen, in the end.
We never made it to the ranch house.
I saw the house up ahead in the distance—white stucco with a red Spanish-tile roof—but halfway up the gravel entrance road, we spotted a guy out in the field who could only be Jack’s brother. I don’t want to call him a poor man’s Jack Stapleton, but that’s about right. Same jawline. Same posture. He had on brown ropers and a plaid shirt and a blue gimme cap.
“Is that your brother?” I asked.
Jack nodded. “Yep. Meet my folks’ ranch manager and my own personal nemesis, Hank Stapleton.”
Jack stopped the car and shifted to Park right there in the one-lane road. We watched as Hank pulled a hay bale off the back of a pickup bed and dropped it by his feet. Then he looked up and saw us.
He went still and stared. He didn’t wave. He didn’t walk toward us. Just pulled off his work gloves and watched us, all wary, like he’d seen a coyote or something.
And I’ll tell you this: The minute those guys locked eyes, every muscle on Jack’s body tightened. It was downright animalistic.
Estranged? Yeah, that about captured it.
I thought about those rumors that Kelly had never been able to confirm. The car accident. The possibility that Jack had been driving after drinking. Did Hank Stapleton seem like he might be looking at a drunk-driving manslaughterer who had covered it all up to save his career?
Sure. Why not?
He certainly wasn’t looking at someone he was glad to see.
“Stay here,” Jack said. And as he got out and walked into the field toward his brother, it definitely had a Shootout-at-the-O.K.-Corral vibe. I could almost hear the spaghetti-western theme music.
Were they going to have a fight out there, with Jack all sockless in a pair of Italian loafers like a city slicker?
I put my fingers on the door handle, ready to spring out if Jack needed me.
Then I waited, watching.
Was I going to eavesdrop on them?
Most definitely.
I rolled down the windows and cut the motor—and, at first, I thought I couldn’t hear them. Until I realized they weren’t actually talking. Unless you could call hostile silence a type of conversation.
Finally, Hank said. “I see you brought an entourage.”
“Just my girlfriend.”
Hank glanced my way. “That doesn’t look much like Kennedy Monroe.”
I cringed. No shit.
Jack shook his head. “Stop reading People. We broke up.”
“You haven’t been here in two years, and you bring some random brand-new girlfriend?”
“Trying to even up the teams.”
“For the record, I don’t want you here.”
“For the record, I already knew that.”
“Mom insisted. And Dad wants what Mom wants.”
“I knew that, too.”
“I don’t need you making this any harder for her than it has to be.”
“Agreed.”
A long silence. What were they doing?
Then Hank said, “Anyway, you can head back to the city. She’s not up for a visit today.”
Jack looked over toward the house. Then back at Hank. “Is that her assessment or yours?”
“She’s in bed with the curtains drawn, so I expect we’re in agreement.”
“Where’s Dad?”
“He’s with her.”
When Jack spoke again, his voice was tight. “You could have let me know before I drove all the way out here.”
A pause. “I don’t have your number. Anymore.”
They may have said other things after that, but I confess—I missed them.
Because right then, out of nowhere, like something out of a horror film, a giant face appeared at my open car window.
A giant, white cow face.
It was close enough that I could feel its humid, otherworldly breath washing over my skin. I don’t want to say the cow snuck up on me, but let’s just say the field had been empty up to that point and then suddenly—Boom.
What were the cow’s intentions? We’ll never know.
But in one second, there it was.
And one second later, the face came through the open window and licked my forearm.
With its rough, green tongue.
Maybe I screamed.
Or maybe not.
It’s a blur.
I definitely made a noise of some kind, though—loud enough to get that cow, and apparently the whole herd that was right behind it, to gallop away a few steps, before seeming to run out of energy, slow to a stop, and turn to stare at me.
At this point, I, in the Range Rover, was surrounded by a whole herd of white, floppy-necked, sad-faced cows.
And I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t scary.
Of course, cows aren’t generally regarded as terrifying creatures. But here’s what you never realize when you see them on milk cartons, or on TV, or even in some distant field: They. Are. Enormous.
They make even Jack Stapleton look small.
So even though I was safely encased in a luxury SUV, I could still feel my heart going double-time in my chest. I was surrounded by them. A hundred? A thousand? A whole hell of a lot. All with limpid black eyes, and surprisingly feminine lashes, staring point-blank into my soul.
Whatever noise I’d just made, it startled Jack, too.
At the sound, he turned and started running back toward the car—and the genuine concern I saw on his face right then only amplified my anxiety.
In my defense, here are the facts as I experienced them:
1. I was attacked by a cow.
2. Fine. I screamed.
3. Jack Stapleton came running.
Doesn’t that feel like cause for concern?
At the edge of the herd, Jack slowed, adjusting into a calm saunter, but he kept his eyes on me. He entered the crowd of beasts and walked calmly among them until he’d reached the driver’s door.
He climbed in.
“What happened?” he said then, looking me over, all intense.
I blinked, like Duh.
“Are you hurt? What was it?”
“What was it?” I said. “Look around!”
Jack looked around—but didn’t seem to see anything. “What am I looking for?”
“What are you looking for?” I asked, and then I launched my arm in a panoramic, as if to say, Behold. Terror in all directions.
Now his expression was shifting. “Do you mean…” And then he gave the tiniest headshake, like he was rejecting the guess even as he was making it: “The cows?”
Keeping my eyes on his, I nodded.
“The cows?” he confirmed. “We’re talking about the cows? That’s why you just screamed?”
I tried to recalibrate. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re fully surrounded.”
“Yeah,” he said. “By cows.”
I could feel his tone shifting, but I wasn’t sure what it was shifting to. “There are millions of them,” I said.
“There are thirty,” he said, “to be exact. A herd.”
“Are they…” I didn’t quite know how to put it. “Angry?”
Jack squinted a little. “Do they look angry?”
I double-checked my read on them, just baldly standing there, staring. “It feels a little aggressive.”
Jack turned to me then, in fascination. “Are you afraid of these cows?”
“I’m not going to comment on that.”
“You, who flipped me on my ass without even trying?”
“These cows make you look like a dollhouse person.”
“But you know that cows are gentle creatures, right?”
“I’ve heard of people getting trampled by cows. That happens.”
“Well, sure. If you trip and fall right in front of one that’s already running, maybe. But on the aggression scale…” He tilted his head and thought about it. “Nope. They’re not even on the scale.”
Now I felt like I had to stand up for myself. “I wasn’t the only person scared just now. You came running like a shot.”
“Yeah. Because you screamed.”
“Why did you think I did that?”
“I didn’t know. Copperhead snake? Fire ant attack? Murder hornets? Something scarier than cows?”
But whose side was I going to take besides my own? I doubled down and declared: “One of them attacked me.”
“Define ‘attacked.’”
“It licked me. With intention.”
Now he was suppressing a smile. “You mean, as if it might—what? Eat you?”
“Who knows what its endgame was?”
“‘Trampled by a cow’ might be a thing. ‘Eaten by a cow’ is definitely not—in any way, ever—a thing.”
“The point is, I was licked. By its green tongue. I didn’t even know cows had green tongues.”
Jack’s expression got totally hijacked by amusement now. He closed his eyes, then opened them. “Cows don’t have green tongues. It’s the cud.”
I stared at him.
“It’s grass,” he said. “It’s regurgitated grass.”
“What!” I thrashed around, trying to wipe off my already-dry arm again on my sundress.
Watching this made Jack actually laugh. He leaned forward and rested his forehead on the steering wheel, and I watched his shoulders shake.
“What?” I said. “It’s legitimately disgusting.”
This just made his shoulders shake harder.
“What is so funny?”
Now he leaned back against the headrest, still laughing. “You’re afraid of cows.”
“Um, hello? We are outnumbered.” I looked around. “We are totally surrounded. I mean, what happens now? Do we just have to live here?”
But Jack just kept laughing. “I thought it would be a banana spider, at least.”
“You think I’d be scared of a spider?”
“You’ve clearly never seen a banana spider.”
“Can you just get us out of here, please?”
“Now I kind of want to stay. This could be a reality show.” Then his face just relaxed into a big grin. “My money’s on the cows.”
I glared at him until he put the car in drive and slowly eased forward into the herd. I put my hand over my eyes, but after a second, I had to look. The herd was moving for us, stepping away, like Whatever.
As he turned off the gravel road and into the field, steering a bumpy and wide U-turn over ant beds and thistle bushes, Jack just kept laughing, wiping at tears with one hand and steering with the other.
“Oh God,” he said finally, as we pulled back up onto the gravel, now driving away from the house, back toward town. “Thank you so much.”
“What are you thanking me for?” I asked.
But Jack just shook his head in amazement. “I did not expect to laugh today.”