Barking Up the Wrong Tree Read online

  I thought it might be hard to tear myself away from Laken that morning, but she gave me no choice. She hopped out of bed remarking she had a ton of stuff to do that day, starting with receiving a delivery of lumber at the house. I had no choice but to follow her to the door when she told me I needed to get going.

  She gave me a quick, hard kiss on the mouth. Eyes all sparkling with playfulness, she patted me on my ass and said, “That was fun, Jake. Maybe we should do that again if you ever come back to town.”

  And then I was out on the porch and she was shutting the door to Mainer House, which I learned was actually an ancestral home for her, the name Mainer being her mom’s maiden name.

  I would be back to Whynot eventually, but not any time soon. Still… if the offer’s there.

  I shake my head and refocus myself on my email. I’ve got a multi-million-dollar business to run here. It takes me almost two hours to clean out and respond to everything in my inbox. I spend another thirty minutes with my secretary, going over the week’s agenda, and then it’s time for lunch. Except I don’t leave my desk for lunch because I have too much to do. I usually munch on a protein bar or my secretary will grab me a sandwich.

  Today it’s pastrami on rye, which is much better than a protein bar that tastes like cardboard and has the same texture.

  I browse my stock portfolio while I eat and respond to a few more emails. I’m not overly deep in thought so when my cell phone rings, I make a grab for it. Normally if I’m deep into work, I’ll ignore it knowing if it were ever my mother and it was an emergency, she would call the office to get ahold of me.

  Looking at the screen, I don’t recognize the number but I do the area code. It’s from North Carolina.

  Tapping the connect button, I answer hesitantly, “Hello?”

  “It’s Laken.” My body immediately tightens at hearing her voice. I have no clue why she’s calling or how, as we did not exchange numbers after our one-night stand. Only a quick goodbye kiss.

  “What’s up?” I say casually, trying to sound as if her calling me out of the blue doesn’t have my heart racing.

  “You need to come back,” she says, and for a split second, I actually think she’s talking about me coming back to her.

  In fact, I almost say, “Whoa there, girl. That’s moving things a little fast, but we’ll see what we can do.”

  But then, I really let the tone of her voice infuse me and I can tell she’s not coming on to me. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong,” she says with irritation, and a slight pause for emphasis, “is that your foreman, Jenks Peterson,” and this is said with such derision, I actually jerk, “dropped off a very sick, pregnant goat to me and promptly gave me his resignation to pass on to you.”

  “He did what?” I practically yell as I come flying out of my chair.

  “You don’t need me to repeat it,” she snaps back. “But you have a dehydrated animal here because I’m thinking he didn’t water them over the weekend. I’ve got her on an IV for now. I have no clue what shape the others are in, but I’m heading out there now to check on them.”

  A string of curses flies out of my mouth, and Laken doesn’t interrupt me.

  But when I finish, she puts the knife in and turns it. “And for your information, I cleaned my desk off yesterday and went through every piece of mail there. Your boy, Jenks, never left me a letter of resignation, so that’s what you get for trusting someone like him.”

  I scrub a hand through my hair in frustration. “Look… any chance you can watch over the farm until I can get a new foreman hired? I figure—”

  “No,” she says adamantly. “That could take you days or weeks and I’ve got my own business to run. You need to come back. I’ll go out today to make sure everything’s okay, but if you aren’t back here by tomorrow, you’re in very close danger of being accused of animal neglect. And if you don’t know what that means, let me fill you in. It’s a criminal offense.”

  God, she’s pissed. And rightfully so.

  “I’ll be there,” I mutter. Before I can thank her for the help she is willing to give, she hangs up on me.

  “Damn it.” I sigh, and then yell out through my open office door. “Bonnie… get in here.”

  Bonnie comes scrambling in, a notepad in her hand, ready to write down any instructions I might impart.

  “Schedule me on the next flight out of here to Raleigh. Cancel all my appointments this week or see if Kelly can handle any of them. And let Kelly know I can’t make dinner tonight. I’ll call her later.”

  Scribbling furiously, Bonnie nods. When she’s finished, she asks, “Anything else?”

  “Yes,” I say as an afterthought. “Put an ad in any paper within sixty miles of Whynot, North Carolina for a farm foreman. Minimum of five years of experience and impeccable references. Salary and benefits commensurate with experience.”

  “Yes, sir,” she says before spinning on her heel to leave.

  I grab my suit jacket from the back of my office door and head out. I have to get packed up for Whynot. God only knows how long I’ll be there, and I’m realizing that no tax break could be worth this trouble right now.

  CHAPTER 6

  Laken

  I’ll have to give Jake credit. He made it to Whynot well before the sun set over Farrington Farms. He finds me at the barn checking on my patients. I’d heard the arrival of his car and the slamming of the door. His presence in the barn is noted due to his shadow falling across me from the late afternoon sun blazing through the doors.

  “She delivered?” he asks from behind me.

  “Not long after I called you this morning,” I tell him as I kneel beside the dam. “Two kids. One didn’t make it. The dam did great on the IV fluids and so I thought I’d bring them back to get settled in. No sense in an overnight hospital stay.”

  The air whistling through Jake’s teeth tells me all I need to know. He’s pissed, and I’m guessing at Jenks.

  The kid that did survive is a soft little white goat with a pink nose. It’s curled up in the fresh hay I’d put out, sleeping soundly. My hands work at the dam’s udders, feeling the density of the tissue, but it appears soft and pliant. Definitely not mastitis.

  I stand up and brush my hands on my jeans as I turn to face Jake. I take a moment to enjoy the hotness of him, but then give him the bad news.

  “Your mama goat isn’t producing milk,” I tell him. He frowns as his eyes cut to the goat and then back to me. “The kid needs to be bottle fed until we can get her mama producing again.”

  Jake nods, but I can see the frustration wash over his face. He’s starting to finally understand that farming is not only demanding work, but it’s also constant vigilance and you must have the ability to adapt.

  “Why isn’t she producing?” he asks.

  “I’ve ruled out an infection in her udders, and her teats feel fine. If I had to guess, the goats aren’t getting the right nutrition. The field is nothing but tall fescue. The does need to be on alfalfa or peanut hay and probably some extra grain rations. I’ve given her a shot of oxytocin to help her along, but you’ll have to make these dietary adjustments. It doesn’t appear you have any other pregnant does in the field from a cursory look, but I can’t tell for sure.”

  “What about the baby?” This time, his gaze goes to the kid snoozing in the hay, and while he looks nervous as hell, I don’t miss the slight curve up of lips that form a fond smile. He may know jack about farming but in that instant, I can tell he loves animals in general. I couldn’t tell that day he worked at the clinic because things were done with clinical efficiency, but that look right there… he’s enamored with the new kid.

  “I drove over to the farm supply store in Milner and got you some powdered colostrum and milk replacer. Got you some bottles as well. The instructions are on the cans. The kid will need to be fed at least four times a day right now.”

  “Wait… I’m supposed to feed it?” Jake asks, and there’s no mistaking the panic in hi
s voice.

  “Who else do you recommend?” I chide. “You’ve got no foreman, and I have no clue if you even have any other employees.”

  “I have no clue either,” he mutters. “I assumed Jenks was on top of that.”

  “Yeah, well… you were wrong about Jenks.”

  “Will the baby just eat when I give it the bottle?” he asks, quickly moving away from his stupidity in hiring choices.

  “It’s a female… a doeling,” I tell Jake with a head nod. “She’ll be hungry. Now, if you see her start to take milk from her mama, let her do that, but the dam might not produce for a while, and then she may be unwilling to nurse.”

  Jake lets out a slow breath. “Okay… I can do that.”

  “Easy as pie,” I say to bolster his confidence. “Now, I’ve got to get out of here as I have a ton of stuff I need to do myself.”

  “Where are you going?” he asks, again with panic in his voice. “I mean… what do I do about the other goats? And do I leave the mom and baby in the barn? What will the mom eat?”

  I let out a frustrated sigh. This man is clueless, and it’s not his fault. Still, I’m quite irritated he jumped into the farming business without giving it much thought.

  “Look… feed the dam some of those alfalfa pellets, make sure they have water, and leave her and the baby in the barn tonight. I just fed the kid about an hour ago, so feed her again before you go to sleep. The other goats are fine as they have shelters in the pasture, but we’re going to need to milk all your does tomorrow. I’ll come back tomorrow and give you some more guidance on what to do, but you need to start looking for someone right away who can help you run this place.”

  “Milk the does?” he asks as his eyebrows draw inward.

  “Yes. These are Nigerian Dwarf goats. They produce milk, which means they need to be milked. Twice a day, in fact.”

  Jake groans. “What have I gotten myself into?”

  And for the first time, I have pity for Jake. I think he jumped too quickly into this farming venture, relying on someone else to do the labor, and not doing his research on what it would take to run this operation. But I don’t think he did it in moronic fashion, nor in a neglectful one.

  “I’ve already got ads going into the papers,” he tells me. “And thank you so much for helping me, Laken.”

  “Yeah… well, you showed me a good time the other night so you’ve got some redeeming qualities.”

  Jake cocks an eyebrow at me, his brown eyes darkening slightly. “Just a good time?”

  “It was passable,” I grouse.

  “You almost brought the ceiling down with your screams,” he returns with a wicked smile.

  “An exaggeration.”

  Jake snorts and takes a step toward the goats. He squats down, elbows to thighs, and watches the doeling as it sleeps. The dam walks up to Jake and nudges his shoulder with her head.

  I’m not sure what it says about me, but that right there is sexy. A city boy bulging with muscles, not knowing a darn thing about farming, which should turn me off, but looking at a little sleeping kid goat like it’s a puppy he’s been given for Christmas. Jake isn’t even perturbed by the dam bumping his shoulder, merely gives her a bump back.

  Maybe he’ll grow into these responsibilities, and the fact that he dropped everything he had going on in Chicago and came here because of these goats says something about him.

  And yup… it makes him sexier.

  Damn it.

  “Okay, I’m really out of here,” I blurt out as I turn toward the barn doors.

  “What do I owe you?” Jake calls, and I look over my shoulder at him. He stands up gracefully despite his height and formidable muscle mass. I wonder if he still works out?

  Ugh. Shaking my head, I blink to focus and tell him. “I’ll bill you for the birth and hospital care for the dam. Dealing with Jenks, though, is going to cost you extra. I’m thinking a very nice and expensive dinner.”

  Did I just say that?

  Jake’s smile turns knowing. A smirk of satisfaction, in fact. “It would be my pleasure to take you to dinner. Tonight? Seven?”

  “There’s way too much work to do here to indulge in a fancy dinner tonight,” I tell him, and enjoy myself immensely as the smirk slides from his face. “Maybe in a few days after you get this farm mess settled.”

  “Not sure I have a few days,” he says distractedly, then pulls out his phone from his back pocket. He thumbs through a few screens. “I have a board meeting on Friday that I’ll have to be back for.”

  “Then I suggest,” I chastise with a pointed look at the goats, “you put your house—or rather, your barn—in order. This place is a mess if you haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “I’ve figured that out,” he mutters and shoves his phone back in his pocket.

  ♦

  Later that evening, I sit out on my back porch step and sip on a beer. I live about two miles outside of Whynot in a double-wide trailer. Except I think the fancier term is manufactured home. It’s a nice place, in my opinion, and the company called the exact floor plan I purchased “The Chadbourn”. That sounded very fancy. Because they threw in free brick underpinning so it actually looked like a house and not a trailer, I thought, What the hell? My days of living in a stylish condo with hardwood floors and custom drapes are over, and if I’m embracing country life, I might as well go all the way.

  Although my parents offered to let me put my home on part of the Mainer farmland when I came to Whynot to practice, I declined. It’s not that I didn’t want to be near them, because I love my family like I love air, but I didn’t want to be dependent on them. I offered to purchase a few acres, and my dad cursed at me for doing so. I diplomatically told him I wasn’t a charity case. He stormed out of the house, and my mom gave me an appraising look. One that clearly said I needed to let my past go.

  Because I’ve got a terrible temper and the famous stubborn genes that are known to run rampant in our family, I stormed out of the house, too. I found five acres for sale on the eastern side of town, which is ironically close to Farrington Farms. The Mainer farmland is on the western side, where the town of Whynot is like neutral territory. I guess I was thumbing my nose at my parents’ offer for help by choosing to live on the Farrington side.

  I made some calls today to try to figure out what the deal with Farrington Farms was and how a man like Jake McDaniel came to own it. The world of farming can be competitive. Sure, in a small community, we always help each other and no one’s call goes unanswered. But we’re all competing for the same market shares for what we’re selling.

  Bob Farrington’s farm isn’t as old and established as my family’s, but it is bigger. He ran into the same issues my parents did, though, with much of the agriculture for our country being imported at cheaper prices. Farrington and Mainer farms eventually just leased out their lands to bigger companies who could at least compete with the foreign market, scaling back the actual amount of land worked by the families.

  Bob scaled back way farther than my parents because his children all moved away, not wanting to follow in their dad’s footsteps. So he leased everything out, retaining just enough to run his small goat farm, which produced wonderful chevre and mozzarella cheeses as well as fresh goat’s milk for consumption.

  What I found out, with a few phone calls, is that Bob got a girlfriend. At seventy-nine, he got a young girlfriend who was more than thirty years his junior. She apparently likes to travel, go to wine tastings, and shop designer stores. The total he sold his farm to Jake for had a ridiculous amount of zeroes behind it.

  I also heard through the gossip mill Bob intends to marry his new girlfriend and leave everything to her, a sort of way to thumb his nose at his kids who weren’t interested in farm life.

  Scratching on my storm door from within the house startles me out of my thoughts. I look over my shoulder to see Herman pawing at the clear, acrylic panel that I keep lowered in the summer months so the A/C doesn’t escape. In the cooler
months, I’ll raise the panel as the screen beneath keeps the bugs out but lets fresh air in.

  Grinning, I push up from my seat on the steps and open the door. Herman comes barreling out, all ninety pounds of long, lanky legs and big floppy ears. He practically knocks me over as he flies down the porch steps and into the backyard where he flops on his back and rolls in the dewy grass. Lighting bugs are starting to flicker as the sun sinks, and I know within moments Herman will be chasing them around the yard.

  No clue what type of dog Herman is. I can see some shepherd in him, and possibly some mastiff. But he’s got longer hair that’s speckled black, brown and white. I adopted him a little over a year ago when Lowe brought in a stray, pregnant dog that someone had hit on the highway. He’d been following along, saw the car hit the dog and keep going.

  Lowe being Lowe stopped and scooped up the injured stray. She was malnourished, full of ticks, and her lower spine was fractured. She was also due to drop her pups.

  When he brought her to me, I just looked at him like, “What do you expect me to do?”

  Not that I was mad he brought her. I would have done the same. But I didn’t know how much effort he wanted me to put into it, but when he just stared back at me with soft, worried eyes, it was evident I had to try to at least save the pups if I could.

  Turns out, I could only save Herman and I had to euthanize the mama. I’m not proud, and I’ll admit I cried. I don’t cry every time I have to give peace to an animal because sometimes it’s a beautiful experience, especially those older pets that have given years of love and devotion. It gives me great reward to help them pass on to a better place.

  But the animals that are sick or injured… that’s hard, because I know how desperately they want to be relieved of their pain. Even though I’m doing what they want me to do, but can’t tell me except with their eyes, it still hurts.

  Herman became my very first dog. You’d think as a vet I’d have a multitude of animals, but I don’t. I just never felt I had the time.