He downed the bottle of water, smashed it, then twisted the lid back on before shoving it into his coat pocket and zipping it up.
Damn, a man after my own heart.
I just loved it when a man took care of the climate!
There was nothing worse than seeing work crews tossing their empties out everywhere.
I couldn’t fucking stand when they could care less about the environment and treated their work sites like trash pits.
I always took time at the end of the day to clean up everything I could.
My crew didn’t act like assholes. Though, they hadn’t been super good at first. I’d had to teach them, and threaten them with no dessert, until they did what I wanted.
Now they were mostly domesticized, but they still went off track every once in a while.
Once the water break was over, I kept an eye on the man that was busy felling trees like he was born to do it.
We broke for lunch a little after noon, and I picked up the last of the trees and took them to the pile where they’d then be stripped of all their branches and cut into a more manageable size.
Once I was done, I parked the excavator in a shady spot and opened up my lunch.
I was halfway through spreading my mayo on my sandwich—no one liked soggy bread—when there was movement to my right.
I glanced up to find a figure heading my way with his own lunch box.
My breath hitched when he walked right up to me and jerked his head at my track.
I opened the door and said, “I’m sorry, but my ass is bougie. I don’t sit on dirt. Or snow.”
His lips twitched. “What are you having for lunch?”
I showed him my box.
His eyebrows lifted. “That’s impressive. Are you going to eat all that?”
“I ate almost all of my food last night, didn’t I?” I teased.
Honestly, I wasn’t going to eat all my food. I always brought extra in case I got a little snackish toward the end of the day. But I had more than enough to share.
He chuckled and hopped up on the track of the excavator and sat down, his long legs dangling over the side.
He opened his lunchbox and pulled out the most sorry excuse for a sandwich I’d ever seen.
“You really went all out,” I teased.
He grinned. “Gas station has pretty okay sandwiches.”
“Pretty okay?” I snorted. “That’s a glowing review for them. You should definitely post the review and assign it four stars.”
He took a bite of his sandwich and looked out at the sloping countryside in front of us.
“I didn’t know that you worked for Bunyan’s.”
Bunyan’s was actually Paul Bunyan’s Custom Homes. Mr. Bunyan was a great guy who was a huge supporter for military and gold star families.
Once a year, he hosted an event at his estate—seven hundred acres on the side of a mountain, that encompassed part of the river and valley below—and invited twenty gold star families out to hunt, fish, and have a great time at the mountains.
He seriously was one of the best people that I’d ever encountered in my life.
