“Danni said they still have some planned renovations on this cottage. I hope they keep the built-ins and the exposed beams.”
“They will.”
I point up at the clerestory windows, tucked close to the sloping ceiling. “These are my favorite part of the cottage. That one fills the cottage with the morning sun.” I shift and point toward the other wall. “And that one paints a gorgeous sunset on the wall every evening. There’s another clerestory window in my bedroom facing the pine forest. When the sky is clear at night, the stars twinkle through the pine boughs.” I’m talking too much. And, specifically, I’m talking too much about me. I snap my lips closed. If I open up too much, even if it’s just one small crack at a time—like how I’m a sucker for sunsets and sunrises—eventually the cracks will burst open and I’ll be tellinghim every little thing about me. I turn abruptly and walk to the fridge as if my life depends on it.
“How long have you worked at May Ranch?” I ask.
He joins me at the counter. “After ten years in the military, most of it in a combat zone, I joined Bear here. He needed help at the ranch, and I missed ranching like a fish misses water.”
“Does Ava like living on a ranch?”
“Ava?”
My head’s stuck in the fridge, looking for the feta. I pull it out and glance over at him. “Yeah, Ava.” I laugh. “Your daughter. I wasn’t imagining her, was I?”
“Ava’s not my daughter.”
“Oh.” I blink at him. “I’m sorry. You two get along so well, I just assumed…”
“Skye, the owner of Seventh Heaven, the secondhand shop downtown, she’s Ava’s mother. Skye just signed the adoption paperwork. You know that whole ‘it takes a village’ thing? When Skye decided to go the foster to adopt route, me and some of my friends told her we were going to help her.”
I set the knife down and look at him.
“We take it seriously. It doesn’t hurt that Ava’s a sweet kid. She’s funny and smart as well.” He takes the knife from my hands. “You want me to chop these?”
“Please.”
“Not as much of an ass as you thought, huh, Tiny?”
He dices the tomatoes while I watch, smiling despite the nickname. “You’re checking out my abs while I do this, aren’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“We have an ass at May Ranch. A real one. Name’s Bert. Big ears, puppy-dog eyes. Everybody loves him.” He dumps the tomatoes onto the salad. “He’s a real chill guy until a coyote jumps the fence and tries to get near one of our horses or calves.Then he’ll kick the crud out of that coyote. He’ll die before anything hurts the horses and calves he protects.” He moves to the sink and turns it on before I have a chance to figure out how to respond.
He washes the cutting board and knife while I finish the salad, whipping up a vinaigrette and tossing in olives and feta. I’m trying not to think too much about how nice it is preparing a meal with someone else, even if it’s just pizza and salad.
He pulls two plates and salad bowls from the cabinet and sets them at the bar in front of the barstools. “Is this okay?” he asks.
“Perfect. I usually eat here or out on the front porch. Or the clawfoot bathtub, my other favorite part of the house.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I’m trying to scrape them back in.
“Wecouldeat in the bathtub. Your choice.” His lips quirk up.
I place the salad bowl on the bar, trying real hard not to picture us in the bathtub together sharing more than just a meal.
He slides two pieces of pizza onto each plate, then squints around the room until his eyes land on a vase of wildflowers I picked earlier. He shifts a book next to one of the place settings, over to the middle of the bar, then he does a double take, picks it back up and thumbs through it. “You like reading about World War Two?”
“I love reading almost anything, but especiallyanythinghistory. That was on one of those shelves.”
“I might want to borrow this… when you’re done.”
“Okay.” I grab some glasses from the cabinet then realize that the only thing I have is water. “I’d offer you a beer, but I don’t have any.”
“Don’t need one.”
The realization hits me. I don’t need one either. This is the first time in over two years that I haven’t sat down for dinner and hadn’t had, at the very least, a fleeting desire to have a beer or a glass of wine. Or four or five or six glasses, to deaden the pain I felt after Cain and Trudi’s death.
He walks to the windows, facing away from me, his arms crossed, staring out the window at the silvery sheets of rain slicing through the darkness. “Only getting worse out there,” he murmurs.
