Page 7 of When The Dust Settles

“It’s a studio apartment, so enough room for one.”

“You don’t wanna live with your boss.”

“I do, actually,” she said pointedly. “I feel safe, and oh dear God do you need me.”

“You—”

“Then it’s settled,” she announced cheerfully. “You go off and ride horses, I will make this place a home, and by the time you get back, it’ll be livable.”

“No, I—”

“And for rent I might even cook, but for certain I will work on the house and the backyard that could be great if you, you know, mowed.”

“I can’t have a girl living with me. What would everyone say?”

“They would say, boy, that Glenn Holloway is a soft touch, but everyone needs a little sister to take care of them.”

I threw up my hands, got out the spare key for her, and told her not to drink my beer or eat all my leftovers.

The wince of apparent pain over the suggestion made me laugh.

“As if any of those leftovers will still be here when you get home.” She retched. “I’m getting a hazmat suit on and then I’m bleaching everything.”

I could only groan.

“And as far as me drinking your beer—I hate that stuff, so really, you don’t have to worry.”

“No boys over here ’cept the ones from work, you hear?”

The look I got, as though I had lost my mind, no one could have missed. Clearly boys were not on her agenda at the moment.

I finished packing and told her she could sleep in the spare bedroom until the studio was cleaned out. “Get the guys to help you.”

“Like I’m doing all that by myself.”

“And seriously, kill the spiders first.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

She trailed after me to the kitchen, and when I opened the refrigerator to get a bottle of water, she gasped.

“It ain’t that bad.”

She pointed. “Is that green? Ohmygod, what is that?”

“You—”

Hesitantly she took a step closer before pointing at what I was pretty sure used to be potato salad a very long time ago. “I think that has fur on it.”

I locked the door on the way out.

Chapter 2

IT WAS three forty-five in the morning by the time I made it out to the Red Diamond, towing a horse trailer that was in better shape than my truck. I’d driven over to the Blue Rock Stables where the owner, Addison Finch, let me keep my horse. There was no way in the world I would ask Rand for room in his stable. What was great was that Addison was the one who took care of the horses for the resort, so the walk over there at night from my restaurant so I could ride Juju was short. I had a routine down. Jog over, work out my horse, and then run the long way home to my bungalow. What wasn’t so great was I’d made my horse as nocturnal as I was, so when I got there in the early morning and loaded her into the trailer, she only had one eye open, just like me.

The house was lit up when I pulled in, so I knew people were awake. That made sense. Rand normally started his day at four, and we had at least a five-hour drive to get to the cattle.

Sitting there, I debated just calling and telling him that I’d come down with pneumonia, or the plague, or just anything to get out of the drive. It wasn’t even his fault, really; it was mostly that Rand was larger than life and everything he did turned to gold, making it damned difficult to ever measure up to him.