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Mrs. Jones spun on her heel and was gone, back to the kitchen.
    The minute she cleared the doorway, Jake reached out and snagged Bonner’s mug.
    “Hey!” Bonner frowned.
    “Here. Take mine.” Jake slid his own mug of decaf toward him, as if it would replace the coffee he’d stolen. “I’ll eat this wallpaper paste she feeds me, but I refuse to give up real coffee. You gonna turn me in?” Jake’s snowy white brow rose.
    Bonner laughed. “No, sir.”
    “Good boy.” Jake’s gaze perused the table. “Hand me a piece of bacon too. Quick, before she comes back.”
    With a glance at the kitchen door to make sure the coast was clear, Bonner shook his head and did as asked. “Don’t blame me when you fall over dead one day.”
    “I’ll outlive you boys. Just wait and see.” Jake winked at Casey.
    She smiled. “I’m starting to envy you all your life here.”
    Jake paused with the spoon of oatmeal in mid-air. “Oh, really? And why is that, Miss Harrington?”
    “It seems like much more fun working here than in the offices in New York.”
    Jake laughed. “Come back to me a week from now. We’ll see if you still think so.”
    She cocked a brow, making her look like a vixen. And Bonner really needed to stop looking at her like that. He wasn’t into torturing himself. Wanting something he couldn’t have would be just that. Torture. Besides, who’s to say she’d even look twice at him. What would a city girl want with an old ranch hand like him?
    “Is that a challenge, Mr. Maverick?”
    “Could be. You up to it?” Jake pursed his lips.
    Bonner shook his head and watched them square off against each other. Casey and Jake couldn’t be more different, yet it seemed they had one thing in common because the old man never could resist a challenge.
    “Of course I’m up for it. I’m a New Yorker.”
    “That’s what I’m worried about, darlin’.”
    Her expression wavered and for the first time today, Casey didn’t ooze cool confidence. Instead, she looked a little worried.
    This little visit was proving to be more interesting than Bonner had imagined, in so many ways.
    * * * *
    “So, they run the cows into a squeeze chute one at a time.” Bonner stood next to her in the cold morning air.
    “Okay.” Casey watched as the two young cowboys accompanied by a barking Misty, the cattle dog, did as Bonner described, herding a cow between the metal rails.
    “Then the vet feels her uterus to see if she’s been bred and is carrying.”
    As the vet lubed his arm from hand to shoulder, Casey began to figure out the purpose of the extremely long plastic glove he’d put on. Her eyes opened wide. No, he couldn’t possibly…but then he did. The vet lifted the cow’s tail and then his entire arm disappeared inside the cow’s butt, who, immobilized in the chute, didn’t have a whole lot it could do about it.
    Casey cringed. “Wow.”
    Beside her, Bonner laughed. “We need to know which cows aren’t bred. Rectal palpitation isn’t as reliable as blood tests or ultrasounds, but it’s the quickest and cheapest way to separate the cows that are bred from the ones that aren’t.”
    “I guess so.” She swallowed hard as the first victim was released from the chute and the next one was subjected to the vet’s inspection.
    Jeez, couldn’t they all just pee on a stick and see if it turned pink? That seemed a hell of a lot easier than this, for everyone involved. As the vet did his thing the cow let out a short moo of protest. A shudder ran through Casey and she didn’t think it was from the cold air.
    Glancing over, she noticed Bonner smirk. Casey turned her attention to him—a much more pleasant sight than what was happening behind the metal rails of the chute.
    Damn, he was hot. Even though most of his sentences contained only a handful of single syllable words, they were delivered in a low, slow way that made her insides heat. After all these years, it seemed she still hadn’t gotten over her cowboy