Page 26 of Sweet Courage

“Just another rope.” It wasn’t a question, but she answered with a smile anyhow.

Slipping the cards into his pocket, his gaze never left hers. “Thank you, Kat.”

“You’re welcome.”

He tapped the card in his pocket and gave her a smile that shouted all would be well. If only everything were that simple.

Chapter Eleven

The posthole digger was heavier than it looked. Hanson had learned that approximately forty minutes ago when Benny, one of the ranch hands, had handed it to him with the cheerful confidence of a man who considered this a light morning task. He’d also discovered that operating it required a specific combination of grip, leverage, and body rotation that his index card had not covered. This morning before breakfast he’d written the process down on a single card—gate installation: mark posts, dig holes, set posts, hang gate, check alignment—and the card was doing its job, sitting in his left breast pocket, consulted twice already when Benny’s radio had crackled and taken his concentration sideways. The card had saved his hide, and yet, he was still mildly amazed every time it worked.

The southeast pasture fence line ran straight along the road for more than a mile, and they’d been working it since seven, he and Benny and two of the other hands, marking and digging and setting posts at the intervals Preston had measured out the week before. Gate openings every hundred feet—one for vendor access, one for equipment, two for general parking. Practical, orderly, the kind of work that had a visible result at the end of it, which Hanson had decided was the best kind. He pulled the card out, confirmed he was on step three, put it back.

Benny nodded and went back to tamping the base of the post he’d just set, and that was the end of that, which was one of the things Hanson had come to appreciate about the ranch hands. They were not, as a group, interested in things that weren’t their business.

The sound of a truck slowing on the road pulled his attention up. Garret Sweet’s pickup, which Hanson recognized now the way he was slowly learning to recognize all the vehicles that came and went from the ranch. Garret climbed out with the unhurried ease of a man who’d grown up working this land before and after school for most of his life, and came through the temporary gap in the fence line where the first gate opening had been marked.

“Mom sent reinforcements.” He picked up a pair of work gloves from the truck bed. “Also coffee.” He held up a thermos and set it on the fence post nearest Hanson.

Hanson hooked another bite of dirt out of the hole and tossed it aside. The work suited him. It had sequence. It had order. Measure. Mark. Dig. Set. Level. Brace. Bolt. He did better when the job in front of him stayed honest and didn’t change shape halfway through. The three of them lifted the treated post and lowered it into the hole. Benny steadied it while Hanson crouched to check the level and Garret shoveled dirt back around the base.

The men worked their way through this gate and moved to the next, before Hanson shoved his gloves into his back pocket, glanced down the fence line and turned to Garret. “How many more of these gates do you think we need?”

“Good question.” Garret grabbed a nearby water bottle from a cooler and took a long swallow. “According to the head of the fair committee the new management company running this show is frustrating everyone with a serious lack of communication that would be teetering on comical if the date for this shindig wasn’t approaching fast and hard.”

Hanson leaned against the tailgate of the ranch pickup. “What do you mean?”

Heaving a deep sigh, Garret took another long gulp. “The company who runs this show used to be a family-run operation. I can’t even remember how many generations back were putting on our county fair, along with fairs and carnivals all over the country.”

“Used to be?” Hanson ran a cool bottle of water along the back of his neck.

“Bought out a few months ago by some foreign conglomerate.”

Benny tossed the last piece of equipment into the back of the pickup. “Probably the same foreigners who are buying up ranch land all over the Midwest.”

“My guess is it’s becoming too politically problematic to buy up our land so now they’re just going to be content with simply playing on it.”

Benny bit back a chuckle. “Sorry.”

“No worries.” Garret shook his head. “If I wasn’t the school rep on the fair committee, I’d be laughing at this Keystone Cop routine too.”

“Sorry, man.” Hanson pushed away from the truck. “If there’s anything I can do…I may not remember whether I’m digging a hole or screwing on a hinge, but I’ve been known to be pretty persuasive with uncooperative people.”

“Thanks.” Garret smiled. “Someone’s going to have to get these idiots to answer or they’re going to find their carousel in downtown Abilene instead of the Sweet Ranch.”

That had Hanson chuckling outright, his mirth subdued at the sound of crunching gravel announcing an approaching car. The moment recognition dawned, his heart did a little kick and the corners of his lips curved north. Kat.

The car door opened, and dressed in jeans, a long sleeve cotton shirt, and pink cowboy boots that to Hanson looked sexier than show off stilettos, Kat looked amazing. Their gazes met, her smile bloomed and he thought his cheeks might crack from smiling so hard. Every minute of the last couple of weeks that he’d gotten to spend with this woman had only proven that Kat Sutton was truly and completely making herself at home in his heart—and there weren’t enough index cards in the world to explain that one to him.

From the road, Kat had first noticed the fence line, then the men. The moment she spotted Hanson, every other thought went sideways.

He stood near the ranch truck in faded denim and work gloves, broad shoulders catching the sun, his movements slower and more deliberate than most of the men around him and yet somehow no less capable. There was nothing frantic in him now. No grinding gears. No parking lot disaster. No confusion written across his face for the whole world to see. What she saw instead was a man working through a task one piece at a time and doing it well. And then he looked up.

Standing with one hand on her car door, their gazes met across the distance, and his whole face changed. The smile that hit him was not cautious or polite. It was immediate. Warm. The kind of grin that started in his eyes and spread from there until Kat felt her own smile grow even wider. He smiled at her as if seeing her was the best part of his day. Wasn’t that something a woman could get used to?

Slamming the door shut behind her, she moved forward, gravel shifting under her boots. Working down the road a short way, one of the hands lifted a gloved hand in greeting before going back to work. Garret Sweet leaned against the truck bed with a water bottle in one hand and the sort of expression that suggested he had already spent too much of the day dealing with fools.

“Well,” Hanson called out as she came closer, “if you’re here to inspect the work, I’d appreciate it if you lowered your standards.”