“I can help with that.” He started out with her. “Does Baltar the Conqueror come back?”

“He does.”

“I knew it.”

She milked cows. Well, the machines milked them, she admitted, but humans played a part. She hadn’t been up close and personal with a cow since childhood, and only really to watch. She judged that washing and drying udders ranked about as personal as it got.

“Good work,” Dillon told her. He took off his hat, plopped it on her head. “Next step is stripping before the machines take over.”

Adjusting the hat, she gave him a long look. “I’m supposed to get naked to milk cows?”

“No. But now that’s an image in my head. We prime the pump, let’s say. ‘Stripping’ just means we help them let down the milk. Like this.”

He closed a lubricated hand over one of the cow’s teats, drew down. “Gently. Smooth. Anything that hurts her’s wrong.”

She watched with delight when milk squirted into the pail.

“How do you know if it hurts?”

“Oh, she’d let you know. Here.”

Taking Cate’s hand, he guided it, kept his over hers. Gentle, she thought, smooth.

A little thrill fluttered inside her as the milk squirted.

Maybe several little thrills, she realized, as he crouched beside her milking stool, his body close and warm, his cheek nearly pressed to hers.

He had strong hands, she thought. Strong, hard-palmed, calloused hands. Sure ones.

Mixed with the delight of a new experience twined the surprise of finding out a milking parlor that smelled of hay and grain and cow and raw milk could, in any way, be sexy.

“You’ve got a good touch.”

Testing both of them, Cate turned her head so their faces were barely a whisper apart. “Thanks.”

She saw his gaze flick down to her mouth—just for an instant, but she saw it—before he eased back. “You’re good to go. Do you want to strip her other two?”

“I’ve got it.”

He’d felt it, too, no question. And wasn’t that interesting? Wasn’t that fascinating?

He’d stripped the other two cows by the time she finished the one, showed her how to attach the machines. The cows seemed largely bored by the process. One buried her head in a bucket of grain.

“They tend to get hungry after a milking.”

“How do you know when they’re done?”

On cue, suckers released and dropped from one of the cows. “Oh, okay, that’s how. And that was fast.”

“Definitely a time saver, but we’re not done. Now we wash and dry the udders again, clean and sterilize the machines.”

“And all that three times a day. What happens if you miss a milking?”

“You’re going to have unhappy cows,” he said as he worked. “They’d be uncomfortable, even start hurting. They can get mastitic. If you’re going to have milk cows, goats, it’s your job to look out for them. It’s your duty.”

“Anything that hurts is wrong.”

“There you go.”

“It’s a lot of work, what you do.” She washed udders as he’d shown her—a completely different feel after milking. “Even just this part of it. Then there’s the beef cattle, the horses, and all the rest. Doesn’t leave you much time for recreation.”

“There’s always time.”

Once he’d stored the tanks, he got to work cleaning the machines. Methodically, she thought. The man was definitely methodical.

“Since Red retired, he pitches in, and it takes some of the load off. I’m a decent mechanic, and so are my ladies. He’s better than all three of us. He’s damn handy in the dairy kitchen, too, so I mostly get a pass there.”

“But you know how to make butter, cheese, and all that.”

“Sure.”

“No gender bias on a ranch?”

“Not on this one. We’ve got a system that works. The day starts early, but once the stock’s fed and bedded down for the night, there’s time for whatever.”

Methodical, she thought again as he stored equipment, noted something down on a hanging clipboard. He led the cows back through the parlor door, back into the pasture.

“The Roadhouse just this side of Monterey’s got a live band on the weekends. Dancing.”

Oh yeah, he’d felt it, too. She kept her smile internal, just glanced up at him with mild curiosity. “Do you dance?”

“I grew up in a house with two women. What do you think?”

“I think you can probably hold your own.”

“Dave can’t dance worth dick, but he likes to think he can. He’s seeing someone. Leo and Hailey might like to have a night out before the baby comes. Would you be up for that?”

“I could be. What’s the dress code?”

“It’s not fancy.”

Amused, she took off his hat, rose to her toes, and dropped it back on his head. “I just helped milk cows, so I’d think you’d see fancy isn’t one of my requirements.”

“Good. I can come by, pick you up about seven-thirty.”

“That’ll work.”

He walked her around to the mudroom rather than the front, and spotted his mother hoeing a row in the family garden. “She’s tireless.”

She had her hair bundled up under a wide-brimmed hat, a half apron with deep pockets over baggy jeans. The faded T-shirt showed the muscles in her arms rippling and flexing as the sun washed down over her and the turned earth, the tidy rows of vegetables.

“She’s wonderful. I know you know how lucky you are because I see it. I envy it.”

Following instinct, Dillon stepped back. “She’d like some company if you’ve got a few minutes. I’ve got some things I need to see to. I’ll see you Friday.”

“All right. I bet I can teach your friend to dance.”

With a shake of his head, Dillon walked away. “Not a chance.”

“Challenge accepted,” Cate murmured, then walked toward the garden and the mother she wished she had.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Cate considered her choices of not-fancy attire on Friday. She’d considered them on Thursday, and maybe looked them over, briefly, on Wednesday.

She’d dated plenty, she reminded herself. But in New York, and that was just different. And she hadn’t had a date in months. Or wanted one.

She couldn’t be absolutely positive Dillon termed it a date-date. More of a night out with friends? That worked, too, because she wanted the room to decide if she wanted it to be a date-date.

Relationships were so damn fraught, she thought as she looked over her choices yet again. At least hers ended up that way.

The Coopers were too important in her life to turn this into something fraught. That, she decided as she took out one of her go-to black dresses—not fancy—hit number one in the against column.

She discarded the black dress. Not fancy, but too New York.

Balancing out the number one against? That moment in the milking barn. Definitely a moment, she thought as she considered black jeans. If you didn’t test the waters, you never got to swim.

Problem there? Every time she decided to swim, really swim, she ended up sinking.