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“Mm.” Emma turned to put the cold items in the refrigerator. “What are you going to do? Build another house here? Get a place in town?” She lived in this house with Ginger right now, as did Jess, and three other women—Hannah, Michelle, and Jill. Sometimes, one of Ginger’s sisters needed a place to stay too, and she’d come to the West Wing.
“I haven’t decided,” she said. “I think build another house here. We have plenty of land, and then we can basically call this the administration building and bunks.” She looked at Emma. “Has a nice ring to it, right?”
“Nice,” Emma agreed with a smile.
“I could move the cowboys out into the cabins on the ranch,” she said. “And we’ve got those two in the corner as well.”
“But then where would we put the guests?” Emma asked.
Ginger frowned. “We could build more cabins.”
“Are your parents still considering living in one of those cabins in the corner of the yard?” Emma managed a lot for Ginger, and she didn’t mind reminded her of the things her boss and best friend didn’t keep in her head.
“Yeah,” Ginger said. “I need to talk to them about that. Those cabins haven’t been lived in for a while.” She looked at Emma with hope in her eyes. “Maybe with some creative shuffling, Nate and I could live in the Annex.”
“Another possibility,” Emma said. “You’d have to talk to Hannah about the accounting if you’re going to build or take away revenue from the guest cabins.” Hannah worked on the ranch about seventy-five percent of the time. Other than that, she did the bookkeeping and taxes for the ranch. She oversaw the global money management, while Emma did more of the day-to-day expenses and payroll.
“It would be like five or six more buildings if we built.” Ginger shook her head. “I don’t want that many new buildings. We still want people to come here for a true wildlife experience.” She smiled at Emma and shrugged. “I need to think more about this, but I’ve got to run. See you later.”
“Yeah, bye.” Emma kept cleaning up after Ginger left, her mind moving at ten times the speed of her hands. Hope Eternal Ranch was fifteen hundred acres of wetlands, meadows, natural lakes, trees that grew along the riverbanks, and brush land. People came here for hunting, fishing, bird-watching, to gather and buy honey, to see the butterflies as they migrated south, and so much more.
They made their living on tourists—and the horseback riding lessons they did. So many horseback riding lessons, and Emma suddenly remembered what she needed to get done that day.
Invoices for the almost two hundred horseback riding accounts the ranch had.
A sigh pulled through her body, and she really just wanted to wander down the dirt lane behind the house until she came to the border of the ranch, where the Mission River flowed.
“Later,” she muttered to herself as she put the last of the chocolate cake under foil and moved toward the office. As she sat behind her computer, her mind was already centered on Ted Burrows and not the invoices she needed to complete.
She pushed against him, but he would not move. He stayed right there, those handsome eyes and his deep voice asking, “Have we met?” while she clicked and started setting up the batch invoicing program that would bring in another month’s fees for the lessons.
