“I paid for three cabins,” she corrected.
“We charge by the day.”
“But they aren’t finished.” She had no idea what to say. There had to have been a massive misunderstanding. She’d thought she was paying for three cabins, but apparently, she was only paying for three days. “How much to finish them?”
The man she’d been talking to shook his head. “We’re booked out for the next couple months.”
They didn’t really seem to care. “I can’t have guests stay in half-painted cabins.” And she wouldn’t be able to do the imagery and advertising she had planned. Getting guests was going to be tricky. She wasn’t fooling herself about that. It would takemonths of work to build up a platform that made money, let alone a platform that brought in guests on the regular.
Right on time for her minor panic attack, Cole showed up. “What’s all this?” he asked.
Kat clenched her fists in her pockets, unsure whether or not she was managing to hide her panic. “The painters are leaving.” By the wavering tone of her voice, she could tell she’d failed miserably. So, she gave up trying. “They’re not even finished, and they’re leaving and not coming back. Look!” She pointed to the bright blue cabin. “That one’s only half-painted. It looks terrible.”
The painters heard her irritation, apparently, and responded, “Nothing we can do, lady. You paid for three days, and you got three days.”
Kat clenched her teeth. “That issucha weird way to bill for a paint job.”
Before she could say more, Cole grabbed her by the wrist and said, “We can finish it no problem. Don’t worry. They weren’t doing that good a job anyway.” He said it loud enough that the painters could hear, and Kat had to admit it felt good to have someone stand up for her, even if it was a bit passive-aggressive. But was he just saying that to make her feel better?”
“Do you mean it?” she asked him.
“Of course.” He seemed so confident that everything was going to be OK that she couldn’t help thinking maybe he was right.
The next day,they left together for the hardware store. It was the same store where she had first met him. Already, that day felt like it was so long ago, but it had only been a few weeks. Strange how quickly you could get to know someone you were comfortable with when it might take years with anyone else.
When they got inside the store, Cole led them straight to the paint section. Kat wandered over to the swatches to select matches as close as she could. “Don’t bother with that,” Cole said, dragging her back with him to the counter. From his pocket, he pulled two wood chips and handed them to the man behind the counter. “Match these for me, would you?”
“Where’d you get those?” Kat asked.
“Don’t worry,” Cole answered with a wink. “You won’t even miss ’em. Remind me, when we get back, to challenge you to find where they came from.”
So he’d taken them off the cabins. She narrowed her eyes but decided to trust him, once again. He didn’t seem to be in this to sabotage her, having more than proved himself with the lambs. She could tell he was the one who had arranged the shearing lesson. She suspected he may have even paid for it, but he clearly didn’t want her to know about it, so she kept her conclusion to herself. The most important takeaway from that situation was that he didn’t want her to fail, and he would do what it took to help her succeed, even if it cost him. That was enough.
The man behind the counter examined the painted wood chips and asked, “What brand?”
Cole gave him a few more details about what he was looking for. Then, he turned and handed a piece of scrap paper with a brand name on it to Kat. “Pick a color for the third house. They only primed it, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. It was good not to feel lost for once, like having a guide in an elaborate maze. Something about being with someone who’d done this before just made everything feel so easy. At the same time, she felt kind of ridiculous for not having matched paint before. Of course, renting an apartment tended to make painting the place more difficult and pricier than it was worth, so she never did bother with it.
She chose a dark cherry red for the third cabin, which she planned to decorate in a 1950s theme with a diner-like kitchen and celebrity portraits on the walls. The blue cabin was beach themed, and the yellow one had a cozy, floral theme.
While they waited for the paint to finish mixing, they browsed the hardware store just for fun. Kat picked out three shower curtains that matched the themes of each cabin, and shockingly, Cole didn’t have anything snarky to say about it. He even helped her choose the last one. “You’ve got to get the classic car one,” he said. “It’s perfect.”
“I can’t believe we actually agree on something for once.”
On the way home, they chatted like old friends, and Kat began to see a little of the Cole behind the mask. The real him, the version of him he kept hidden behind that sharp exterior, had a playfulness and vulnerability to it that she never would have guessed was there. From the day of their first meeting, she’d assumed he was an exceptionally handsome man with an unfortunately nasty personality. It turned out the nastiness was just a kind of armor. Whatever he was like beneath that armorstill wasn’t entirely clear, but she was catching glimpses finally, and she liked what she was seeing.
When they got back to the ranch, Cole helped Kat carry several cans of paint to one of the cabins. “We can keep them inside for now,” he said. “I mean, no one’s staying here yet, right?”
“Yet,” she emphasized. “They will be here soon, and this place is going to grow and be wonderful.”
“I hope you’re right.” He smiled over at her. “Because if you’re not, this will all have been a massive waste of my time.”
She laughed, knowing he wasn’t trying to be mean, but trying to make her smile. “Where should we start?” she asked.
“Cherry red,” he answered without any hesitation at all. When she turned to question him, he said, “Go big or go home, right? Anyway, I want to see what you do with the place. It sounds interesting.”
“OK, we both know that’s not entirely true.”
