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“Aw, you still have your band of horses,” Amber said, crouching down to love on Brulee. “That’s nice they stayed here.”

“Yeah, we were surprised too. The original band doesn’t have any pregnant mares either.”

“Looks like our plan of population control is working for the wild horses,” Justin said. “Not so much dogs and cats.”

They told Dave and Amber about the plan to move Kelly’s rescue to Bayou Cottage, and they were excited and supportive, offering help where needed.

“I’d love to help out. It might even help me with school,” Amber said. “Just let me know.”

It appeared old wounds were healed over, for now.

Chapter 7

Christmas was on everyone’s mind, and it drove Maggie nuts. She had one goal and that was to paint the cottage while the dry weather held out. That meant starting in the back so Justin wouldn’t notice, and working around to the front during the week so he’d only see the outside after sunset.

After promising secrecy, Steve ordered the paint and delivered it to her early on Monday morning.

“Should you be up on a ladder with no one around here?” he asked, concerned.

“I don’t have a choice. I’d ask Annie if she wants to hang out here, but you know her, she’ll insist on helping. So mum’s the word.”

“I don’t know…”

“Steve, I swear to god!”

“I promise! I won’t say a word. But just so you know, there are harness hooks about every four feet on your roof right above the gutters. I saw them when I was up there installing your satellite dish. You tie a rope around your waist and loop it around the hook; then if your ladder falls over, you’ll hang there until someone comes along.”

He slapped his knee, laughing.

“Real funny. I’ll do that, and I have my phone in case I fall.”

“Whatever. Women. Look, while I’m here, do you want to walk the property with me? Show me where you’d like the foundation for the trailer to go, and we’ll get started on it ASAP.”

“Okay, that’s great!” she said, excited. “Follow me. We decided to have it be out of sight of the cottage, just so I can have some privacy. So instead of coming in the gate, customers will drive down the trail to the back of the property where the fence ends. It’s about two thousand feet back in the woods.”

They walked the property, and he staked out where the trailer would go, how far the trenching would have to go to reach her well, and where the solar would be installed in a clearing about twenty feet away from the trailer. His father was donating the trailer and foundation, but the utilities and other improvements like a road and fencing would be paid for by Maggie. The dream was coming together.

Following her plan, she painted the entire cottage in five days. The only mishap, Brulee slept under the ladder, and one day the brush Maggie was using fell on the dog, leaving a blue paint smear on her fur.

“Oh crap!” Maggie cried, climbing down the ladder. “Poor Brulee!”

She looked startled but didn’t really care. Maggie got as much of the paint out as she could and then painted a small table they used on the porch the same blue in case Justin noticed, and of course he noticed.

On Saturday morning when he got up and took his coffee out onto the porch, he just happened to look behind him and saw the beautiful blue paint.

“What the…?”

He walked around the front of the porch and saw that she’d painted to the dormers on the second floor, and then to the side, that she’d painted the entire cottage.

Slightly ticked off, he knew she’d be furious with him if he tried to admonish her, so he paced a little to calm himself down before he went back into the cottage. Maggie was just getting out of the shower when he came into the bedroom and sat on the made bed. Of course she wouldn’t leave it unmade. Suddenly little things like that annoyed Justin, and he wondered why, determined to be reasonable.

Coming out of the bathroom in jeans and sweatshirt and a towel wrapped around her head, she saw Justin sitting there, and like a lightning bolt going off, she remembered the cottage. She’d done such a good job keeping the paint job from him she’d forgotten completely about it, that he would surely notice someday.

“So! Do you have something to tell me?”

She tried not to make light of it, biting her tongue.

“What do you think?” she asked, playing coy, smiling.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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