Tarr grinned down at her. “Yeah. A celebratory dinner date—that sounds amazing.”
Briar bounced on the balls of her feet and lifted up onto her toes. She pressed her lips against Tarr’s cheek, right above where his beard grew. “Give me fifteen minutes to get home and feed Wiggy and change my clothes, and then you can come pick me up.”
“Yes, ma’am.” His voice barely sounded like his as it ghosted between his lips.
Briar wasn’t sure what she’d done that surprised him so, but she stepped back and said, “I’ve just got to grab my keys from my office.”
As she moved by him, he reached up and covered where she’d kissed him with his hand, almost as if he could capture the touch and hold it in his palm.
Briar smiled to herself that she seemed to have such an effect on him, and then she hurried home to get ready for their date to celebrate the fact that Tarr would be living permanently on the same farm as Briar very, very soon.
eighteen
Tarr couldn’t believe what a difference two weeks made. Just before Thanksgiving, he’d been feeling downtrodden and dejected, and now he followed behind his RV as his friend Jentzen pulled it with a tractor toward the arena. They were maybe moving five miles an hour, and yet Tarr felt like he was soaring on top of the world.
Ashton would meet them at the arena, and the three of them would work on the RV to make sure it was level, stabilized, and hooked up to electricity and water before anyone left for the day. Tarr had enjoyed his stay in the mansion, and the longer he was there, the more he could see staying with Tuck and Bobbie Jo.
However, they weren’t home, and Tarr knew the moment they returned, he would not want to be there. He knew no one understood it—heck, he didn’t even understand it—but they’d have two other people living with them, and he didn’t want to be the third.
So he inched along, watching the curtain sway in the back window of the RV, and then came to a stop as Jentzen masterfully turned it in a wide arc around the corner and continued. They had to make one more turn, this time right, andthen Ashton started waving Jentzen toward the long, south wall of the arena.
He parked it correctly the first time, much to Tarr’s astonishment, and the three of them met at the door that sat halfway from each end of the RV.
Tarr grinned and grinned. “It looks great right here.”
“Yeah, you could set up a whole patio and an outdoor area,” Ashton joked. “I thought this would be the best place, because we have an outdoor outlet right here, and we should be able to get your whole rig plugged in.”
“Let’s get it level first,” Jentzen said. “I’ve got cinder blocks and pallets if we need them.”
He set about doing that, and he set up an area in front of the RV with pallets to make a decent front porch where Tarr could escape the snow and mud, clean his boots, and then go up the steps and inside his temporary home. The three of them crammed inside next, and Ashton took one look at the wood-burning stove and said, “I don’t think you need that.”
“No? Just space heaters?” Tarr looked from the stove to the facility manager and expert cowboy here at the farm.
“If we sealed the roof up right, the wood-burning stove could be out here, and you could use a space heater inside in your bedroom,” Jentzen said. He took the few steps to look inside the back bedroom, poked his head in the bathroom, and then started opening cupboards. “Are you showering in this thing?”
“If there’s hot water,” Tarr said. “I could shower out here.”
“We could probably do some sort of gravity system,” Jentzen said. “Especially if you’ve got water hookups to the arena here.”
“We should be able to do that,” Ashton said. “But it might take a hose.”
“Won’t a hose freeze in the winter?” Tarr asked.
“Yeah, probably,” Ashton said. “But I wonder if we could feed it out the second-floor window and kind of use gravity the wayJentzen just suggested.” He looked up to the ceiling, as if he could see where to place a hose coming from…where?
Tarr had no idea—and that was why he’d tried living in the RV without utilities.
“Or you could not shower out here,” Ashton said. “But all of your dishes and everything you need water for—washing your hands, cooking—would have to be done with ice-cold water—if it doesn’t freeze.”
Tarr honestly didn’t know how any of that would work. “What about a water tank?” he asked. “That I keep inside the RV, so it won’t freeze. What could we do? Fifty gallons, one hundred?”
“You could do that,” Jentzen said. “And it would be whatever temperature it is inside the RV. But you could heat it for dishes, or coffee, or washing your hands.”
“And I could just shower at Tuck’s,” he said. “Or Briar’s.”
Ashton nodded. “Yep, that’s what I would do. I don’t think you need to shower out here.”
“What about the bathroom?” Tarr asked. “If I had a hundred gallons, would I be able to use that?”
