Last Chance Lake

Chapter 3

Karla Jenkins tried to find the right words and put them in the right order. Cache Bryant had just asked her out. Right out loud. She’d noticed that they’d been flirting on and off for a few months now, and he was brilliant with a guitar in his hands.

And with these cows, as she’d never seen a cow just lie right down and let a human curl into it. But two of his had done exactly that, and she couldn’t wait to report back to Scarlett.

“It’s fine,” Cache said. “Never mind.” He turned and started walking away, everything in Karla desperate to call him back. But she just watched as he moved over to a different cow and started talking to it too, in the same human-like way he had Flower.

“Flower,” she whispered, stroking her hand down the cow’s hide again. “How do I tell him?” She wanted to go out with him, and she was flattered he’d asked. But she had so many things she didn’t want to talk about. Mistakes from her past. And didn’t people talk about their past when they started dating?

didn’tKarla hadn’t been in the game for a while, but she thought she still knew the rules. And Cache would want to know about her, and she’d have to tell him things if she wanted to keep him in her life.

The two sides of herself went to war, and she honestly had no idea which one would win. The man—the ridiculously handsome cowboy—in question glanced over to her, and Karla still stood there, unsure about what to do.

She wasn’t sure if her heart could take another battering. “Maybe he’ll be gentle with your heart,” she whispered to herself. Yeah, and maybe he could train these cows to fly. She didn’t think so, but she needed to explain.

She stepped around the legs of the cow and headed toward him. “Cache,” she said just as he snuggled into the side of a cow.

“Come join me,” he said. “I want them to be able to tolerate two people.”

“Cache,” she repeated, and he gestured for her to come over.

She did, stepping between the hooves and sitting on the ground next to Cache. Their eyes met, and he was so, so handsome. Her breath caught in her throat, and she found herself diving all the way into his blue, blue eyes.

“Good girl, Cookie,” he said, patting the cow.

“Do you have names for all of them?” she asked.

“Just a few,” he said. “The several I’ve been working with on the cuddling.”

“How do you pick them?”

“Well, all the cows are girls,” he said. “So I just call them whatever. Daisy or Flower. Bluebell. Floral varieties are popular, obviously.” He put that delightful smile on his face, and Karla’s heart started bobbing somewhere in the back of her throat.

They sat in silence for a minute, and Karla decided maybe she could be honest with him. “Cache, I want to go out with you.”

He turned his head and looked at her. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I just….” She gazed at the horizon. “This might sound stupid, but I don’t want to be the talk of the ranch if we start seeing each other.”

“Is that what would happen?” Cache asked, his phone buzzing.

“Possibly, and I—I’m a pretty private person.”

“It’s okay,” Cache said, getting to his feet. “I have to get over to Piggy Paradise. I’ll see you later, okay?” He didn’t wait for Karla to say anything before he dashed off.

She stayed against the cow’s side and gazed up into the cloudless California sky. She wanted to pray for help, but she didn’t quite know how. She’d tried that before anyway, and nothing much had come from it.

She’d still lost her job. Her husband. Her baby.

The pain that always came when she allowed this particular box to open sliced through her. She’d gotten a new job. A better job. She loved Last Chance Ranch, and it had come with the cabin that had allowed her to truly get a new start on her life.

She didn’t want the husband anymore, and that really was a problem. Jackson had been terrible for her from the beginning, and she’d been a fool to think a baby could fix their broken marriage.

In the end, she’d lost both, and most of her life felt like a waste. She’d managed to put together a few pieces, but it had come at a high price. A vow that she didn’t need a man in her life, something she’d kept since the divorce had been finalized five years ago.

Could she break that vow now? For a cheerful cowboy with the best eyes she’d ever seen?

She sighed as she got up too. “Thanks for the cuddle, Cookie.”

* * *

Later that day, Karla sat at her desk in her office, which was really the second bedroom in the cabin on the edge of the homestead’s backyard. She hadn’t made lunch for the ranch workers that day. She’d hardly gotten any work done either.

All she’d been able to do was sit at the desk and stare as she thought about Cache Bryant and his dinner invitation.

He’d taken it off the table and never really put it back on before running off to do his job. She had his phone number. She could call him. But she had no idea what to say.

“Focus,” she muttered to herself, and she looked down at her computer. She was supposed to be putting up next month’s goat yoga schedule, and she couldn’t seem to get it done.

After that, she needed to confirm with Forever Friends about the Fourth of July picnic and adoption event, taking place in a couple of months. That event should be highly publicized around the ranch and through the Forever Friends organization, and Karla had a meeting the following day that would take her down to the offices in LA.

Anxiety hit her at having to return to the city. All those memories. All those people. But she pushed aside the panic and picked up her phone to text Vicky, the only friend she had left from her previous life.

Still on for lunch tomorrow?

Still on for lunch tomorrow?Yes! Vic’s text came back almost immediately. Karla smiled at her device as they confirmed their location and time. Then Karla would drive back to the ranch, back to this small cabin, back to this simpler, easier life.

Yes!Karla loved this life, but she’d started to feel like it was hollow. She was a shell, with nothing of substance inside.

And her thoughts went back to Cache again. Wondering if he could provide some sort of fulfillment for her, Karla once again stalled in her work. Could she really find out? She’d heard all of the love stories here on the ranch—and if he didn’t think they’d be the source of all gossip if they even so much as glanced at each other with a playful glint in their eyes, he was sorely mistaken—and she didn’t want to feel like she couldn’t be here if she and Cache started something and broke up.

She didn’t need to repeat what had happened in the city.

Keep it a secret.

Keep it a secret.Words that Scarlett had said to her that morning, regarding the cow cuddling Cache had been doing in the pasture right across the lane from her cabin. Apparently, he’d been working with his cows for a long time, and she hadn’t known.

But now, her brain was suggesting she keep her relationship with Cache a secret. She scoffed out loud. There was no relationship with Cache.

no“Yet,” she muttered under her breath. And maybe if she could get him to ask her to dinner again, she could suggest they go, sure. But that no one else could know.

Satisfied with that solution, Karla was finally able to get some work done.

* * *

“Girl, you have lost weight,” Vic said when Karla walked into the restaurant where they’d agreed to meet for lunch.

She scoffed. “I have not.” She hugged her friend. “If anything, I’ve gained ten pounds feeding everyone on the ranch.”

“You were always a genius with feeding large groups.” Vic nodded to the hostess, and she grabbed two menus and took them back to a table. “I miss that about you around the office.”

Karla put a smile on her face and nodded. “I don’t miss much about the city,” she said. “I can handle coming for a meeting, but I don’t want to live or work here.” And not only because she might run into Jackson.

“How’d the meeting go?” Vic asked, getting situated on the bench across from Karla. “You’re working with that animal sanctuary, right?”

“Right,” Karla said. “It went great. I love the people there. They have a real passion for saving abandoned or injured animals.”

Vic smiled and nodded, and Karla needed to change the subject. She loved her friend, but Vic didn’t understand how Karla could leave the city and be happy. Sometimes Karla couldn’t believe it either.

“So there’s a new band I’m into,” Karla said, and Vic’s face lit up. She enjoyed lunch with her friend, but she didn’t ask any questions about Karla’s life. Didn’t ask if she was seeing anyone new, or had made any friends, or if she liked the cabin she’d been living in for almost a year.

As she hugged her BFF good-bye, Karla couldn’t help but think that the relationship had turned…hollow. Just like everything else in her life.

She kept the radio off as she drove back to Last Chance Ranch, hoping some inspiration would strike her. Or maybe lightning. At this point, Karla would take almost anything.

As she drove up the dirt road to the ranch, she noticed someone had put a pair of bunny ears on the robot that stood sentinel at the entrance. She smiled at them, a little ray of hope in her otherwise dreary existence.

She wasn’t sure why they were there, as Easter had come and gone last month. But it didn’t matter. Karla drove down the road to the back of her cabin, parked, and got out, the bunny ears reminding her that even the simplest of things mattered.

She mattered.

To who, she wasn’t sure, but she could start with Scarlett and Hudson. They depended on her to get promotional activities ready for the ranch. Maintain the website. Feed the people on the ranch.

They needed her.

Even if God had abandoned her. Even if Jackson had left in the middle of the night. Even if she’d walked into her job one morning and walked out an hour later, all her stuff in a pathetic, brown box.

Her phone chimed, and she pulled it out of her purse to check it.

Hey, Karla, Cache had texted. Do you have a sec? I need to talk to you about something.

Hey, Karla, Do you have a sec? I need to talk to you about something.A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth.

Cache needed her, too.