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“I’m Moira, the environmental engineer he hired to consult on the case the EPA has against this property.”
Well, shit.
“You’re Moira?”
She rolled her eyes. “Do you need to see some ID?”
“No, I just wasn’t expecting—” I rolled my lower lip between my teeth, looking her up and down. The kid was still hiding behind her, but he peeked out from behind her curved waist, glaring up at me in a mirror of the expression his mother was currently giving me. “I apologize,” I said as politely as possible, holding out my hand to her. “Grant Hallston, ma’am. Happy to have you here.”
Moira looked up at me like I’d just told her I was a werewolf and was about to eat her and her scrawny kid.
But then she threw her head back, her mouth opened wide as she let out a laugh that belonged to a person twice her size.
“Oh, my God, I thought you were a bodyguard or something,” she snorted, rubbing her nose as she looked me up and down and then laughed heartily again. “You scared the hell out of me!”
“Oh, I—”
“Moira,” she said, jabbing a manicured finger at herself. “And this is Holliday.” She shoved the kid forward, lovingly patting his head as the little squirt looked up at me, wide-eyed.
“LikeDoc Holliday?” I asked, tilting my head as I peered down at him. He was a good-lookin’ kid, looked like he was going to be tall one day. He gave me a ghost of a smile, then turned back to his mother, his cheeks going ruddy.
“Yes, likeDoc Holliday. He goes by Day, and he’ll be out of your way completely, I promise.”
“That’s no bother—”
“Anyway, look. I went over the files your lawyer sent me and I think this is a pretty cut-and-dried situation.” She turned back to the Jeep, talking over her shoulder at me as she opened the trunk and started pulling bags out. “The pictures he sent me are terrible, by the way. I need topographical maps, not actual pictures of the area.”
“I can get those for you,” I replied quickly, trying to grab some of the duffle bags she was hiking over each shoulder like they weighed nothing. She walked right past me, still talking, leaving me empty-handed.
I glanced at her son, who shrugged, then skipped after his mother.
“You said there was housing for us?”
“Yes, I—Can I carry something for you?”
She blinked up at me, drowning in the amount of stuff she was carrying, but she didn’t seem bothered by the weight at all. I could see the outline of her muscles clearly. She was strong, fit, and could probably have me flat on my back in an instant if I ever looked at her the wrong way.
I’d never seen anything more beautiful in my goddamn life.
“You can carry Hammy,” squeaked Day. He handed me a small, mesh, hard-bottomed purse of some kind.
“What’s a Hammy? Oh, Christ—” I nearly dropped the thing when a tiny brown creature bolted from one side of the container to the other, chirping wildly.
What the hell had I just gotten myself into?
“Uh, this way,” I said, skeptically eyeing the mom and son before leading them around the main house, which opened up to the sprawling developed part of my acreage. Ponderosa Pine grew in towering thickets between the house and the commercial buildings that housed the ranch’s large equipment. Past the warehouses, the land opened up into the fields, the barns hugging the fence that surrounded my entire property. I grinned to myself as I heard Day gasp excitedly, whispering to his mom about the horses that were sprinting along the fence.
I led them around the warehouses along a trail through the pines, the bunkhouse’s metal roof gleaming in the setting sun.
It wasn’t much, but it should house them comfortably, hopefully.
“Oh, it’s a cabin, Mama,” Day said excitedly, skipping forward and hopping up the steps to the covered porch.
He went inside, but Moira hesitated, looking at the corners of the porch, where security cameras were stationed on both the front and back of the bunkhouse.
“There’s no cameras inside, okay?”
“Do you have a 24/7 live feed?” she asked, her voice almost robotic in nature, like it was something she asked often.
