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Chapter Thirteen
Nate pulled the rope tight to keep the barrels in place. He needed to get them out to the new bird blind he’d finished last week. Sweat ran down the side of his face, but he ignored it. He’d been at Hope Eternal for eight weeks now, and he finally felt like he knew how things worked.
“You got that?” Spencer called, and Nate finished tying the knot around the metal pole.
“Yep,” Nate said. “Done.” He turned to the other cowboy, who drank from a bottle of water.
He finished the whole thing and said, “You can’t go out unless you drink. Ginger will kill us both.”
Spencer was right, so Nate stepped over to the cooler just inside the shed and got a bottle of water. He managed to swallow a few mouthfuls to appease Spencer, and the two of them loaded up in the ranch truck.
Nate hardly ever drove, and today was no different. Spencer took them over the bumpy roads to the far north side of the ranch, which surprisingly was pretty swampy. And water and tall reeds meant a lot of birds. People paid quite a bit to come to Hope Eternal and see the birds that lived here, as Nate had learned over the weeks.
They came to see beehives and wear bee suits to harvest the honeycomb too. Children and adults alike came to ride horses. Summer campers came to learn about butterflies and farming. The number of people who came to the ranch had alarmed Nate at first, but now he was used to seeing the dirt parking lot to the west of the homestead full of cars and trucks.
“All right.” Spencer let out a sigh that spoke of his exhaustion. “Let’s get these unloaded.”
“You stayed up too late, didn’t you?” Nate asked as they got out of the truck.
“Only a little.” Spencer wore a guilty grin as he came to the back and started on the rope on his side. “I just couldn’t quit in the middle of the level.”
“Yeah, and that’s why Nick didn’t shower before he left.” Nate chuckled and untied the rope on his side. “You know Ginger is going to be cranky about that.”
“Yeah, well, Nick can deal with that. I managed to get up when my alarm went off.” Spencer hauled the first barrel off the truck. “And anyway, if you just take a walk with Ginger, she won’t be so cranky anymore.” He shot a knowing look at Nate, who froze.
“What?”
“Oh, come on, man,” Spencer said with a laugh. “You two disappear every morning, and she comes back like she met Santa Claus out there and got a year’s supply of gifts.”
“I—” Nate cut himself off, because he didn’t know what to say. He had no defense. He honestly hadn’t known anyone knew about his and Ginger’s morning walks.
“You’re seeing her,” Spencer supplied for him, reaching for another barrel. “Right?” He cut a glance at Nate, who still couldn’t get himself to move.
“I mean, I guess?” Nate guessed.
“Oh, boy,” Spencer said, grunting as the barrel came off the truck and he had to bear the full weight of it. “Okay, I’m just going to tell you this, and then you can do what you want with it.”
“I really don’t want to hear it,” Nate said, pulling his gloves on and reaching for the nearest barrel.
“Too bad,” Spencer said. “I didn’t want you to tell me I couldn’t aim to save my life, but you said it anyway.”
“That was a video game,” Nate said. Spencer and Nick loved their video games, and Nate didn’t mind watching after Connor went to bed. He still slept with Nate at night, and Nate didn’t mind at all.
He’d asked Connor about adoption, and then Bethany when she’d come to the ranch for a few hours one weekend. Her kids played well with Connor, and she’d told him he should definitely adopt Connor.
Nate had talked to his parents, and he’d learned that his mother was starting to forget things and that his father had been diagnosed with stage one colon cancer.
He called them a few times a week, because he was the oldest now and Ward wasn’t around to do it. Sometimes the fact that Ward wasn’t around hit Nate pretty hard, and thinking about adopting Connor usually sent him into a depression.
In the end, Nate had decided to go forward with the adoption. He’d filed all the paperwork with his lawyer, and now they were just waiting.
“This is real life,” Spencer said. “And you should know Ginger’s dated a guy like you before.”
Nate’s blood pressure rose. “A guy like me?”
“A guy in the RRC program,” Spencer said. “He seemed like a nice guy. I actually liked him. Then, one day, he disappeared, and the next thing I know, Ginger is telling us she might lose the ranch and that this guy had stolen thousands of dollars from us all.” He’d stopped unloading to tell his tale.
Nate didn’t know what to make of it. “I’m not going to do that,” he said.
