Dan hiked toward the aging barn. Surely he could find some cell service somewhere in this godforsaken wasteland.
Okay, that was harsh. The place was pretty awesome-looking, especially with the sun rising over the mountains. The hills were green, and the sky seemed impossibly blue. In the early morning light, the barns and older, ramshackle buildings didn’t look so much like they were out of a horror movie. And, hey, the trek around the property was getting him a little cardio.
He reached the top of the swell of land. To his right was an old barn-type thing. There seemed to be little enclosures for animals inside. If he had to guess, he’d say it had been used for horses.
He held up his phone, but a strange noise made him jump and drop the thing. “Shit,” he muttered, bending to pick it up. When he straightened, he let out a yelp of surprise.
There was a thing. A not-small furry animal thing standing at the fence, staring at him expectantly.
He stared back at the animal, then helplessly at his phone. Hey, cell service. He googled random animal names he thought the thing could be until he found a picture that looked mostly right.
A llama.
How did he have a llama on his property? How had Buck not mentioned he had a llama, period? Surely the guy had been taking care of it. Llamas didn’t take care of themselves, did they? There weren’t packs of wild llamas running about Montana.
Were there?
“So, hi.” The llama didn’t respond at all. It stood there and stared at him. The thing was probably hungry. Maybe he should find it something to eat. “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what you’d want to eat?”
The llama stared. Didn’t move. Dan gingerly held out his hand, but when the creature nipped toward him, he pulled back. “Okay, so either you’re very unfriendly or you’re very hungry. We have a word for that in human speak—hangry.”
He needed to feed it, and he needed to stop talking to it like it was going to talk back, because he was sounding crazy even to himself.
He backed away, then jogged down to the house. Of course when he got to his kitchen, he had no cell service to look up what llamas ate. Shit. When was Mel supposed to get here?
He poked around in his fridge before pulling out a container of lunch-meat ham. Grabbed a few pieces of bread and a bottle of water and a bowl.
Worst he could do was offer random food it wouldn’t eat. Surely he couldn’t kill a llama with a sandwich.
He trudged back out to the barn where the llama still stood against the fence. Watching him. Still. Dan slowed his pace. That thing was motherfucking creepy.
“Hey, fella, want some ham?”
It moved around, and he figured that was sign enough. He peeled back a few pieces of the lunch meat and tossed them in the llama’s direction.
“What the hell is that?”
Dan glanced to where Mel was hiking up the hill. Thank Christ she was here. “According to my research, it’s a llama.”
“Why do you have a llama?” She approached, hands on her hips, wrinkling her nose at the creature before them.
“I don’t know. It was just here.”
“What are you feeding it?”
“Ham.”
“Ham? Ham? You can’t feed a llama ham.”
“Well, then what do I feed it?”
“Hell if I know, but not ham!” She made her way to the fence, then gingerly pulled the pieces of ham out of the grass at the llama’s feet. “Grain. Straw. Bread. Something remotely sensible.”
“I maybe panicked a little bit.”
“I see that.”
“I know you’re a genius cowgirl and all, but tell me you wouldn’t panic if you got the crap scared out of you by a llama.”
“My panic rarely involves ham,” she said drily.
“Fair enough.”
She stared at the creature, and Dan couldn’t help noticing she looked a little more haggard than she had yesterday. Her hat was pulled down low, but he could see circles under her eyes, and she looked pale. Even the way she stood was different. Slumpy instead of that ramrod straight “I’ve got this shit covered” posture she’d walked around with all day yesterday.
“You okay?”
She gave him an are-you-crazy look, all scrunched-up nose and drawn-together eyebrows. She seemed to give him that look a lot for only knowing each other about twenty-four hours.
“You look…” He tried to think of a diplomatic way of telling her she looked like death warmed over. But he didn’t have much practice being diplomatic, so he came up empty.
“I look what?”
“I don’t know. Like you had a crappy night of sleep.”
“Perceptive for a man with his head so far up his ass he feeds a llama processed meat.”
“It wasn’t because of me, was it?” He didn’t like the sudden guilty weight in his gut. Sure, he was paying her a shitload of money to be here, but he didn’t want to be making her life miserable in the process.
“Don’t flatter yourself, wannabe cowboy.”