Free How to Knit a Love Song by Rachael Herron

drew together and the smallest crease appeared between her eyes. It satisfied him. He’d gotten under her skin. Finally.
    She didn’t want to say yes. He knew it.
    “Okay, I guess. If you want. But I think it’s fine.”
    Cade smiled and went around the back of the small barn, leaving her to deal with the alpacas and the dog, which was now barking its head off inside the cab of the truck. He could hear his dogs barking in the barn in agreement.
    God, this shed. When Eliza had lived here, she’d used it for chickens, although when Cade had taken over, he’d built a real coop farther down the hill. He didn’t like to hear and smell chickens early in the morning—he preferred a little distance between him and the roosters crowing.
    Not that they ever got up before him, come to think of it.
    It was an adequate shed, though. Even though he’d been giving her crap about it, it was a fine little building to shelter two alpacas. Any more than three and they’d be pushing it, and he figured she’d have three before long, since there really wasn’t a way to separate them in this tiny shed.
    The fence line did look all right, he thought, testing several places with his hand, and then his boot. That was Tom’s doing, not his. Cade stayed active and on top of all the areas they were working, but he tended to overlook places like this, places not in use.
    Vanity pets. On his ranch. He supposed he was going to have to accept it, at least until she gave up and left, which hopefully would be sooner rather than later, but alpacas! On his land!
    God. He’d look like a pyramid-scheme fool if anyone drove the top ridge road and looked down.
    He came around the shed and met her back at the truck.
    “Looks good,” he said.
    “Hmmph,” she said, which sounded an awful lot like an I-told-you-so.
    “Where are you going to keep their feed?”
    “In the shed with them.” She sounded uncertain, though.
    “They’ll get to it.”
    “Oh. Um. What about that shack over there?” Abigail pointed to the old shack a hundred yards away. It was still faintly purple from a paint job Eliza had him put on it when he was a teenager.
    “No room. It’s junk in there, just tools and stuff. And, by the way, that’s my shack. Not yours.”
    “Big Rubbermaid containers? Would that work?”
    He inclined his head. It would probably work. If she got big containers.
    “So you’re breeding them?”
    It was a low blow, and he knew it. She already looked completely overwhelmed, holding a lead in either hand, glancing back over her shoulder at the increasingly frantic dog in the truck.
    “No! At least not for a while.”
    “I give you until tomorrow.”
    “Oh, God, will they really?”
    “Alpacas are induced ovulators.”
    “That doesn’t sound good.”
    “Adults go into estrus during sex. Sex makes them receptive, actually fertile. Then you’ll have a bouncing baby cria in about eleven months.”
    “From tomorrow.”
    “Tonight, if you’re lucky.”
    “Mort kept them apart?”
    “I never saw them together, let’s put it that way.”
    “But I have no way to keep them apart.”
    “You could make money on a baby, pay for your…”
    “My overenthusiasm. I know. I’m used to it, don’t worry.” She looked at him and brushed the heavy hair out of her face, her blue eyes lighter than he’d seen them before.
    “Well, okay, then,” said Cade lamely.
    “Thank you. I’ll put them away.” She spun away, taking the male, Merino, with her, leaving the female tied to the fence, gazing after them.
    They really were kind of cute, he figured, with those big eyes and fuzzy topknot.
    Not that he would ever admit that out loud.
    He had work to do.
    Cade put his head down and walked away, refusing to look back to see how she did.

Chapter Twelve
The body of a sweater is the most delicious part. You can sink into it and feel the personality of the pattern and the yarn marrying in your talented hands.
— E.C.
    A bigail got the animals inside the