Page 40 of His Texas Claim

I lifted my head with a smirk. “You're a sore winner.”

She reached up to stroke her fingers along my jawline, smoothing my unkempt beard. “Takes one to know one.”

I kissed her hard, then pulled away to look into her green eyes.

“Glad I didn't leave you at the house.”

“I would've just walked over here if you had,” she said. “It's not that far.”

“And if the door was locked?”

“Would've broken a window.”

I grinned despite myself. “I'm askin’ for trouble, huh?”

She smiled back. “Trouble already answered, cowboy.”

FOURTEEN

Bryn

Stetson’s cabin didn’t stay Stetson’s cabin for long.

For one thing, he had to get a TV—that was non-negotiable. I needed to watch movies while I was decompressing from research all day, and Stetson needed to…well, see movies for the first time.

He fought it at first, of course—claimed TV would rot his brain, draw him away from the land, make him “soft.” But I’d already seen him cry laughing at “pug yoga” memes on my phone while pretending to scowl and look away, so I knew his resistance was performative. In the end, the prospect of watching “Tremors” and “Lonesome Dove” with a beer in hand, a dog sprawled across our legs, and my head tucked under his chin wore him down in record time.

The day after our movie marathon kicked off, a delivery truck trundled down the dirt drive, its wheels slicing ruts in the wet clay. I’d ordered the television online, using his address without asking, then strong-armed him into helping me wire it into the ancient, wood-paneled living room. He grumbled the entire way through unboxing, tsked at the styrofoam, criticized the waste…then threw it all in his truck to make sure it got sorted into the right pile.

And the deliveries? They were far from over.

I had some of my lab equipment shipped over from the university, had to get a printer so I could file the paperwork to protect the aquifer. I started to get a sick pleasure out of conquering every inch of his territory with Amazon Prime. The packages stacked up along the porch rail like little markers of occupation: pipette tips, more field notebooks, a horrifyingly bright pink watering can for the two succulents I’d already smuggled in.

I set up a miniature battle station in the corner of the living room, taking over a side table Stetson had been using as a spot for his keys and wallet (which, as it turned out, he could never remember to put in the same place twice anyway). Within two weeks, the entire left side of the cabin smelled like thermal printer ink, fresh plastic, and unfiled paperwork.

The dog seemed to love it. Buck started sleeping there during the day, curled around the base of the printer—which was hot, and vibrated gently, and was exactly as alive as any animal in the cabin, as far as Buck was concerned.

Stetson noticed the shift before I did—or at least he named it first, standing in the doorway one evening with mud on his boots, looking at the mess of cables and notebooks like he was cataloging an invasive species.

“This used to be a chair,” he said, nodding at the wooden chair now buried under a stack of USGS groundwater reports.

“It’s still a chair. It’s just supporting important documents.”

“Can’t sit in it.”

“You have more chairs.”

I looked up at him, meeting his eyes…found him smiling.

My ex had never smiled at me like that. Not ever, even when I thought he was it, that we were endgame.

It had been on my mind a lot these past few days…wow—weeks, now, not days. I’d been building a life in Stetson’s little cabin and he actually liked the energy I brought here, the chaos. My ex, Michael, had been irritated by it. Said I ran a messy lab, just like I had a messy house, a messy car.

“Where’s your head at?” Stetson asked.

He’d taken his shoes off and was sitting beside me, one hand idly scratching behind Buck’s ears.

I looked back at my paperwork, the filing that was almost complete.