Page 104 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

“The office is.”

“You spend ten minutes a day in the office.”

“Ten beautiful minutes.”

I ignored him and checked the post. I grabbed the level from the grass. Jax watched me for another moment, I could feel his eyes as they drilled holes into the back of my head. When I looked at him, he shook his head.

“You’re smiling.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You were.”

“Probably thinking about your suffering.”

“Asshole.” He picked up the auger and carried it toward the next marked section. I let him believe that. The truth was harder to explain—I liked being here. I’d forgotten just how much.

There was a different kind of tiredness that came from working outside. At the garage, most days ended with my shoulders aching from leaning over engines, my hands stained with grease no amount of soap completely removed, and my brain still working through whatever problem I’d spent the last several hours trying to solve.

This was simpler.

Not easier; my back already hurt, and I could feel a blister forming near the base of my thumb despite the gloves. But behind us stood a straight line of new fence posts where rotten ones had been when we arrived.

It was progress you could see.

No diagnostic equipment.

No computers.

No customer insisting the noise definitely hadn’t been there before we changed their oil.

Just land and sweat and something solid at the end of it.

Beyond the fence, several cows grazed beneath the scattered shade of oak trees. The dairy barn sat in the distance, its weathered red side almost washed pink beneath the sunlight. Somewhere near the main barn, a tractor started and ran for several seconds before shutting off again.

Marigold Ranch was never quiet. I’d forgotten that too. There was always something going on. Cattle calling from one pasture to another. Metal gates opening and closing. Equipment running. Birds gathered along fence rails. Boots against gravel. Ranch hands calling across the property.

Even the wind sounded different out here when it moved through acres of grass instead of between buildings on Main Street.

The place was alive, yet tired, as if it had weathered one too many storms and severely understaffed. Held together in several places by repairs that should have been temporary and had clearly become permanent.

I looked toward the dairy barn.

Carson had disappeared inside almost an hour ago.

When we’d pulled up shortly after seven, she’d already been outside, standing beside Earl near one of the pastures with a clipboard tucked beneath her arm and a coffee cup in her hand, her blonde hair pulled back in a thick braid. By the time we’d unloaded our tools, she’d disappeared into the dairy barn.

Twenty minutes later, she’d driven past us in an old utility cart loaded with feed.

Then she’d returned on foot with one of the ranch hands, discussing something about a delivery.

I’d seen her maybe six times since, and every time she’d been heading somewhere different. She hadn’t stopped moving.

I was starting to understand that Carson didn’t run Marigold Ranch from an office.

She ran it by being everywhere.

The woman seemed to know when a cow stopped eating before anyone else did, which gate had started sticking, what feed delivery was late, how much milk had been bottled that morning, and which section of fencing Earl had patched three times and needed to be replaced instead of repaired again.