“Forever’s a long time. Does it make sense to ease into it?”
“Whatever works for you.”
“Where do you want to live?”
“Dark Hollow.”
And that hit her like a second bolt of lightning. He wanted her forever, but he wanted her here, in the wilderness.
“I’ve got a business to run.”
“When my family visited and you were spending all your time with us, how’d your business do?”
Molly chuckled. He was pretty clever.
“Best week the resort has ever had.”
“While you were partying with my family?”
“Yes, while I was partying with your family.”
“Seems like the place runs itself with a little guidance now and then from the boss.”
Molly hated to agree that that was true, and she wasn’t going to admit it. They were in a negotiation, and she’d need all the leverage she could muster.
“The business needs more than occasional guidance. It needs an owner CEO with daily oversight.”
“Do you work in the diner, or the store, or the stables?”
“No, but I oversee all that.”
“How do you spend your days?”
“Looking at the financials, sending emails to my staff, and being available.”
“You could do that from here.”
Molly’s head was spinning. He was trying to talk her into living in Dark Hollow and managing her business from there.
“And how am I going to do that?”
“Carrier pigeons.”
Molly burst into laughter, leaning forward, her sides shaking. She hadn’t expected that, and it struck her as really funny.
Finally, “Carrier pigeons?” She was still chuckling at the absurd idea.
“Sure. No problem. From the top of the mountain behind the cabin, you can see Summer Lake. It’s fewer than forty miles as the bird flies. Carrier pigeons fly up to fifty miles an hour. For thousands of years, they’ve been transporting messages longer distances than that.”
That stopped Molly. First, it was a ridiculous idea. But, second, Bart had been thinking about it. He’d been thinking about how they could live together. He was talking about forever. But he wasn’t giving up on Dark Hollow. He was looking for a way to make Dark Hollow work. Well, she wasn’t going to live at Dark Hollow for the rest of her days. But, still, the conversation was interesting. She was viewing it as a negotiation.
“So you know quite a bit about carrier pigeons?”
“I don’t, but one of my army buddies has a business raising, training, and selling them. I know you establish the homing locations and the birds’ navigational instincts guide them back and forth. They’ve been trained for centuries to do this. They were heavily used in World Wars I and II, and during one war in the 1800s, 400 pigeons carried over 40,000 messages.”
“My, my. You’re quite the expert.”
“My buddy told me that, but it’s impressive.”
