Stripped Bare by Shannon Baker Read Free Book Online Page A

stopped here, where our home valley opened up in front of me. The house, the barn, several outbuildings, and the plowed garden spot stretched below a hill on the west. A cultivated alfalfa field spread from the headquarters across the meadow to hills on the east, with a center pivot irrigation sprinkler at rest, waiting for summer.
    A red-tailed hawk hunting for mice soared in lazy circles over the hay meadow in front of our house. I breathed in some of his freedom. The skiff of snow from last night was a memory, and only a bit of frost lingered in shadowed hoofprints in the frozen mud of the road. The sun hovered just east of center.
    The first time I saw this view was on my third date with Ted, nine years ago. I’d come home from the University of Nebraska with a bachelor’s in psychology, a truly useless degree, unless you planned on grad school and beyond. I liked school, but I couldn’t get enthused about where it would lead me: a city, an office, someone else’s schedule, wearing heels and dresses every day. Prison.
    I knew Ted, of course. In a town of a thousand, you know everyone. But he was six years older than me, in Louise’s class. Louise disliked him, which was good enough reason for me to be interested.
    After my grade-school fantasy had faded I hadn’t given Ted much thought, until he burst into my life on New Year’s Eve. He and Roxy had broken up for the final time—they broke up every year or so, just to stay in practice. But this time it seemed to take. Roxy had moved to Colorado to work on a dude ranch.
    Ted was smart and funny. He loved to take me riding in the hills around Frog Creek. I can’t say why I fell so hard for Ted. I did. When I was with him I felt special. I was his one and only. After a lifetime of being the invisible middle child who always shared a bed and clothes, food and toys, it felt wonderful to be the focus of someone else’s life.
    I continued around the curve, toward the headquarters, and followed the drive to park behind the house. If Robert had been here at sunrise to check the cows, that meant they’d been on their own for over four hours. I might be ready to collapse from exhaustion, but I wouldn’t sleep until I saw to the state of my ladies.
    I stepped out of Elvis and reached inside for my old Carhartt barn coat. The calving lot took up three acres halfway up the hill behind our house. A worn dirt path led from our back walk, across the drive, and up a steep climb to a gate in the barbed wire fence. The most I kept in the lot was fifty head, the cows I predicted would calve the soonest. I could check on them every two hours. I adhered to common knowledge: if a cow started to calve and hadn’t finished within two hours, she likely needed an intervention.
    I trekked up the hill and into the lot. Crisp air brought scents of freshly fed hay, the musky dust of cowhide, and the hint of manure, only starting to ripen with the day’s thaw. The cows paid scant attention to me as I meandered along the softening ground, checking to make sure none needed my help. Robins celebrated spring in the soft morning air. The cows munched hay Robert had fed them earlier, their grinding teeth and their huffing breaths adding a beat to the birds’ song. At least here, peace reigned.
    Assuring myself the ladies would be okay without me for a spell, I plodded to the house. The whistle from a BNSF coal train floated from the tracks that ran along the highway twelve miles north. Some mornings, the air at Frog Creek was so still and magical that the sound made the long, impossible journey to be here in this special place. I understood how it felt.
    I stumped up the back steps, closed my fingers around the wooden door handle, and pulled, slipping into the covered porch. Worn pegs crowded with coats and jackets lined two walls. A simple bench with peeling paint flanked one wall, with boots, old tennis shoes, and even a collection of mismatched