He was so surprised that it took a moment for him to react. He pulled away from her, feeling all sorts of uncomfortable. “I appreciate the concern, but I’m fine.”
She smiled and opened her door. “Give it some thought.” Before she stepped out of the truck, she turned back to him. “I owe you a favor for dropping me off. If your livestock need anything this week,” she gave him another smile, this one suggestive, “or ifyouneed anything, text me. I’d be more than happy to make an afterhours call.” She winked, got out of the truck, and strutted off to the Lawrence’s.
Well, Angelina had just made everything more awkward than he’d expected. He thought he’d made it clear he wasn’t interested in anything beyond friendship. Apparently not. Landon put his truck in drive and headed home. This was another moment to add to his list of bad luck. Now he was going to have to avoid Angelina whenever she came to the ranch. And what if one of his animals had a problem after hours and he really did have to call her?
Landon shook his head, trying to erase thoughts of those possibilities. He was going to have to make sure Jaxon was around this week to make any potential vet calls.
The ironic thing was that Angelina would be the perfect girlfriend for a rancher, the perfect wife. If she was living at the Wyle Away, she would ensure his animals had the best care. The savings in vet bills alone was enough to make a man consider her as an option.
Landon couldn’t use Angelina for her expertise, though. He couldn’t even lead her on, knowing that dating her would be a boon for his ranch. He wasn’t that sort. And Angelina realized that about him or she wouldn’t have offered free help.
Pity that Kitty didn’t realize it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
February came and,despite lower-than-average beef prices that winter, Kate congratulated herself on still having enough money in the bank to pay her upcoming grazing fees to the Bureau of Land Management. Seven thousand dollars, due the end of the month.
Then her truck broke down. A mechanic informed her that the transmission was out for the count. Perhaps she should have expected this eventuality since thething was nearly thirty years old, but she'd hoped that the daily pep talks she gave it would provide it the fortitude to see out the year.
Alas, no. She had a truck lease now.
Her tractor was the next thing to give her trouble. Anything in the engine block was beyond Gary’s capabilities to fix, and due to the computer software the tractor used, she couldn’t take it anywhere except the John Deere dealer. They didn’t make house calls, so she had to pay someone to drive to Coyote Glen, load her tractor into a truck, and haul it in for repair. The whole thing set her back nearly five grand.
And there went a good portion of the money earmarked to pay grazing fees.
Two days later, one of windmill pumps stopped working. The repairman told her—as though she’d neglected a child—that she should have replaced the oil in the gears months ago. They were shot, and she needed to replace her sucker rod as well.
She laughed when the repairman told her about the sucker rod because that was obviously the punchline to a joke, and he must be kidding about the estimate he’d just given her. But it turned out that a sucker rod was a real thing, and she had to buy a new one.
This repair was doubly frustrating because the expense could have been avoided.Shouldhave been avoided. Part of her wanted to blame Gary for not warning her to check the oil. He was supposed to know what needed to be done on a ranch. She hadn’t even realized that windmills needed oil. But in his defense, he’d never claimed an expertise with windmills, and really, the yearly oiling that hadn’t happened was on Dewayne’s watch. Perhaps it was one of the ways he’d planned to sabotage her.
In order to pay the BLM grazing fee, she was going to have to sell four head. After culling the barren cows and taking the weaned calves to auction, she was down to one hundred and eighty-six head. Her herd would increase nearly one hundred and sixty after calving season, but she’d probably lose some to illness or coyotes. She didn’t have a lot of margin. She would have to watch her costs, be thriftier, and adhere to her grandfather’s motto: repair, reuse, make it do.
So when the floor of her cattle trailer showed signs of rot, she was more than happy to believe Gary when he assured her that he could fix it. Turned out, Gary’s fix wasn’t adequate. When he loaded the cows in, one punched through the floor and broke her leg.
Kate considered firing Gary then—not because she ended up having to euthanize the animal but because he didn’t seem to care that his incompetency had caused the animal’s pain. He blamed the place that sold him the wood, the trailer’s age, and the animals themselves for creating an unbalanced load.
He was still finding places to shift the blame the next day. To stop him, Kate said, “We can’t undo the past.” This month was determined to end in the red. She’d just have to find a way to crawl back in the black as quickly as possible so she didn’t lose the ranch. Three months of debt would sink her. She’d take the trailer somewhere to have it fixed, pay the vet to inspect a different cow, and then sell it and the three that hadn’t been injured by Gary’s incompetence.
“Let’s go over the upcoming expenses,” she told Gary. “We need to find ways to cut some costs.”
Gary followed her to the barn’s small corner office and sat in a folding chair beside Kate while she brought up her spreadsheet on the computer. She stared dejectedly at the numbers.
Gary pointed to the line for feed. “The easiest way to cutcosts is to stop buying that premium feed you like so much. I know where you can get some bargain basement stuff. You could cut this number in half.”
“Would the feed still be healthy?”
“Nope. That's why it's bargain basement. They throw in everything but the nutrients.” He shrugged as though this shouldn't matter. “The cattle won't have the weight you’d like, but your grandfather's will only specifies you have three hundred and thirteen head. Doesn’t say nothing about their weight.” He took out his cell phone, ready to make a call.
Kate shook her head. “If the cattle aren’t healthy, they’ll be more prone to disease.”
“You only need to keep them alive another six months. Then they’ll all be sold anyway.”
She was definitely going to have to talk to her father about Gary’s continued employment. His attitude irked her. “I can't sell malnourished cows who’ve been eating who-knows-what. The beef is going to end up on people’s tables.”
Gary snorted. “People eat a lot worse.You think in between their Cheetos and Oreos, folks are gonna care what’s in their hamburger?”
How many people like Gary were in the food industry? Kate was seriously going to worry the next time she went grocery shopping. She rubbed her brow to erase those thoughts. “I don't want to misfeed cows or people.”