Page 31 of The Cowboy and the Baby

Great. Some impressive cowboy I turned out to be. Noelle was no frail flower; she could handle rude words. But I didn’t like it. She deserved better.

“Well . . .” I ran a hand through my hair, scratching my neck. “The animal left.”

“There was one?”

“Oh, definitely.”

“What kind?”

“Skunk.”

“Good grief,” she murmured. “It didn’t spray?”

“No, and we’re lucky for that. Probably been there for a while, to be honest. It’s gone . . . for now. But I’m going to have to pull out the whole tub to get to the hole that it just departed through.”

She squeaked out, “Tonight?”

“If we want to keep the toilet and hot water functioning through the cold spell? Yes.”

Her heavy swallow sounded like a shot in the night. “We want the toilet to function,” she whispered.

“Exactly.”

Her eyes slid around the room. “After Lily finishes eating, I’ll be setting her down to bed. I can help, if you like.”

I hadn’t told her about the poop yet, and I didn’t want her anywhere near the foul excrement.

Gah.

A wild animal. In the bathroom. Near a baby I had to protect. This was a job for the knuckleheads. They had nothing better to do. They would have already tucked in all the animals with the storm arriving, and the boys had to earn their food and lodging.

I gave her a smile and reached for my phone.

“Thank you, but this is a job for the boys and me to tackle.” Surprise, then maybe a little hurt, flickered through her luminous eyes. I hastily added, “The space under the tub is filled with poop, and I’m not entirely sure if a skunk is the only animal that’s been living in there. I found several skeletons, and other issues. Considering Lily . . .”

Noelle took a step backward again. Given the shock in her stare, she may not have realized she did it.

“Oh!”

“I think this is best for them to handle.”

“Agreed. Th-thank you. I . . .” Her teeth worried her bottom lip, and she fidgeted with the bottom of her sweater. “I guess I feel like I’m not very helpful yet. There has to be something I can do.”

I tilted my head to the kitchen. “You’re coordinating, remember? Fixing our meals. Brightening this place up. Figuring out what to throw away. I have no idea how to organize Morgan’s old stuff, nor what to do with it. This is the monkey-grunt labor the boys and I are good at.”

A quick wink seemed to settle her, and I turned my focus to finding Cody’s number. He answered on the first ring.

“What’s up, hoss?”

“Grab Wyatt, gloves, two shovels, the firewood sled, and as many buckets as you can find. We’ve got an animal poop situation in the bathroom.”

An hour later, Wyatt had worn a track through the snowy deck, down the stairs, and over to the nearest dump pile with the wheelbarrow. Cody ripped the fiberglass tub apart with a Sawzall, and I plucked my tenth squirrel skeleton off the ground, flinging it into the closest bucket.

Disgusting.

Snow collected on the window ledge and turned to ice fingers. Each minute dropped the temperature farther, and the wind began to drive instead of warble. The heart of the storm hadn’t arrived yet, and we still had work to do.

“Uh . . . hoss?”