Page 75 of The One Who Saw Her: Boone

Boone braced his hands on his hips and stared at the beams like they had personally let him down. Money and time and regulations were all stacking up on top of everything else he was already carrying.

"How much are we talking?" he finally asked.

"Mid to low five figures. My guess."

Boone sucked air through his teeth. "Fantastic. Anything else? You want my firstborn? Blood sample? Maybe a kidney?"

The inspector, entirely too literal, blinked. "No, sir. Just the foundation and the electrical."

"How did you hear about the remodel?"

"It's all around town," the man said with a smile. "Sounds like the community's really behind this. Like an old-fashioned barn raising."

"Barn raising," Boone said flatly, remembering that was exactly how Vivi had advertised it.

He turned and walked out before he said something that turned the visit into a felony. He stood in the open air, with hands on his hips, chest rising and falling, and dust swirling around his boots.

He needed money—and fast.

First, there were the ranch finances. Then came the water situation and looming standoff with Virgil. The cost of hay, the price of feed. It all compounded at once, pressing down on him from every direction.

Then, underneath all of it, quieter but no less sharp, was a sliver of something aimed straight at Vivi.

He didn't want to feel it. He hated feeling it. But it was there, and he'd spent enough of his life pretending things weren't there to know better than to try. If she hadn't rallied half the town with her sunshine-and-clipboard energy—posting progress updates like they were building something for a magazine spread, treating his private battle like a community project—the inspector never would have heard a word about it. He wouldn't have shown up or poked around, and he sure as hell wouldn't have blown a hole in the timeline, the budget, and what was left of Boone's patience.

He stood there with it for a long moment, not ready to say it out loud.

Eventually, he made his way to the ranch house and stormed into the kitchen. Eli looked up from the ledger. Colter from a stack of supply invoices. And Rea paused mid-sip of her tea.

Three sets of eyes. Zero good options.

"We're about to go broke," Boone announced, dragging a hand down his face. "Well, the ranch isn't broke but the bunkhouse sure as hell is."

"That inspector really screwed you?" Eli asked.

"How did you know about that?"

"Saw him pull up," Colter said.

Boone let out a humorless laugh. "Foundation needs to be repoured. Not patched. Not reinforced. Repoured. And the electrical is so old it might as well be running on aluminum foil." He paced, boots thudding against the floorboards. "We can't move forward with anything until those two things are handled. I still don’t know what fucking order I’m supposed to go in. Which means every contractor we have lined up needs to be postponed. Drywall, carpenters, painters. All of it frozen until we have the money to get the foundation and wiring up to code."

Rea carefully set her cup down. "How much?"

"More than feels legal to say out loud."

"We need a number," Colter said.

"Around fifteen to twenty thousand."

Colter leaned back and let out a long breath. "Damn, Boone."

"Yeah." The shame, the stress, and the thing he wasn't naming yet all burned together under his ribs. "We were finally getting ahead. Finally building something real. And now I'm calling everyone to tell them to stay home."

Eli studied him with this look he had—the one that saw too much and said nothing until it was ready. "This about Vivi?"

Boone went still and a muscle jumped in his cheek.

"Because I'm guessing you're thinking about how fast she pulled half the town into that remodel day," Eli said.