Hot Westmoreland Nights - Brenda Jackson [56]
“Wow!”
He chuckled. In a way he was pleased with Chloe’s interest in his ranch. “The rams and the wethers are—”
“Wethers?”
“Yes, castrated male sheep,” he explained. “While the pregnant ewes are lambing, the rams and wethers and the ewes that aren’t pregnant are taken to pasture by the sheepherders. And that is where most of them will be for the next few months out on the pasture grazing.”
An idea popped into his head. “One of my men, Pete Overton, won’t be able to begin sheepherding until Sunday morning, so I’m going to drive his herd out to pasture early Saturday morning and get things all set up for him. Will you come with me? We’ll be back here before noon Sunday.”
Chloe smiled up at Ramsey. She had wanted to come clean and tell him the truth, but he preferred they hold off and not discuss anything serious until her last day. That was fine with her because she knew that once she told him the truth he would probably be upset with her.
She leaned up and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Yes, I’d love to go with you.”
Ten
Over the next few days Chloe accepted the realization that she was falling in love with Ramsey. They would share a bed each night and get up before daybreak every morning and together they would prepare breakfast for the men.
It was during those times that he would share more information about his life as a sheepherder and had begun telling her about members of his family. Five of his siblings had been under sixteen when his parents had gotten killed—Megan, Gemma, the twins by the name of Adrian and Aiden, and his sister Bailey. Zane had been a senior in high school, ready to go off to college and Derringer had been about to enter his senior year of high school. His cousin Dillon had been placed in a similar situation with four siblings under sixteen.
From what Ramsey told her, Adrian and Aiden were now in their last year of college at Harvard, as was their cousin Stern. Another cousin by the name of Canyon was in medical school at Howard University in D.C. Brisbane was in the Navy. Micah, who was Zane’s counterpart in age, was a graduate from Harvard Medical School and was an epidemiologist with the federal government.
Just listening to Ramsey share information with her about his family’s turbulent years and the struggle that he and Dillon had had to endure to keep their families together, she had to admire the two men. Although she had yet to meet Dillon, she had met another one of his brothers, Riley, and found him to be just as handsome as the others.
And Ramsey had shared more information about sheepherding with her. One afternoon they had walked around his ranch. He had taken her to where the lambing stalls were and explained how next week more than a thousand of his ewes would be delivering. She had found the whole process fascinating. He had also given her a tour of the shearing plant and she was able to watch the men at work. She’d seen the dogs at work, too, and Ramsey had explained how important the sheepdogs were in managing and protecting the herds. You could definitely see that running a sheep ranch required maintaining a tight schedule and sticking to it.
Hanging the last pot back on the rack, she turned when she heard the back door open and smiled when Ramsey walked in. Closing the door behind him, and without missing a step, he crossed the kitchen floor and pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
Chloe returned the kiss, for the moment refusing to acknowledge that she was making it harder and harder to leave after this weekend, to walk away and not to look back. The thought of doing so caused her heart to ache, but that’s what she would be doing. She decided she didn’t want to think beyond it, so she tightened her arms around him as he deepened his kiss. His mouth slanted against hers and she could feel her knees weaken.
Moments later he broke off the kiss and pulled back slightly