Denise came in carrying two things: the binder she'd promised Kaya, and a brown paper bag from Milly's Diner in town.
"Don't tell me you're eating guest snacks again," she said, spotting the granola bar in my hand.
I shoved it behind my back like a child.
"I brought you real food." She set the bag on the counter. Green chile and pork and that specific grease from Milly's griddle thatno amount of rebranding could make healthy. "And before you say you're not hungry, I refuse to let you meet international clients on a granola bar."
"You drove into town for this?"
"I was already there." She waved a hand. "Had to grab Taylor's dry cleaning."
That was a lie. The dry cleaner was on the east side of town. Milly's was on the west, past the feed store and the stoplight that never worked. She didn't pass Milly's on the way to anything except Milly's.
But I didn't call her on it, because the burrito was warm in my hands and Denise was already pulling out a chair and sitting down across from me like she had all the time in the world. Which she didn't. She had the same list I had, plus the website updates and the waiver signatures and a dozen other things she'd been handling since five a.m. because Denise didn't sleep before big bookings either.
She just didn't admit it.
"Eat," she said.
I unwrapped the burrito. Took a bite. The green chile burned the roof of my mouth in the best way, and the knot between my shoulders loosened a fraction.
Denise watched me eat with the particular satisfaction of a woman who believed food solved problems. She wasn't wrong. At least not about this one.
"You're spiraling," she said after a minute.
"Kaya already told me that."
"Kaya tells you with love. I'm telling you with authority." She opened the binder and spread it on the table between us, but she didn't look at it. She looked at me. "Talk to me."
"There's nothing to talk about. Guests arrive at three. Everything needs to be perfect."
"Everythingisperfect. The cabins are spotless, the welcome baskets could be in a magazine, and Hank has the trails so clean you could eat off them." She tilted her head. "So what's the real issue?"
I set the burrito down. Wiped my hands on a napkin. Fixed my attention on the table because looking at Denise when she was being perceptive made me feel like an open wound.
"What if they hate it?"
"They won't."
"What if something goes wrong and I can't fix it fast enough and they leave a bad review and the whole season tanks because one group of Scottish tourists thought my ranch wasn't worth the flight?"
Denise didn't laugh. She didn't roll her eyes. She just sat there, letting the fear exist in the room without trying to sweep it into a corner.
"Do you remember the Caldwells?" she asked.
I groaned. "Don't."
"The Caldwells," she repeated, ignoring me. "Our very first paying guests. Summer, five years ago. The ranch had been open for three weeks. We had four horses, one functional cabin, and a website built in an afternoon that looked like a Craigslist ad."
"It was a fine website."
"It was a crime against design, Rose. The font was Comic Sans."
"It was not Comic Sans."
"It was a cousin of Comic Sans. A font that had Comic Sans energy." She stretched her arms overhead, crossed them behind her neck, smiling. "And the Caldwells showed up, this sweet retired couple from Phoenix, and within the first hour Mr. Caldwell's horse spooked at a plastic bag and threw him into a creek."
I covered my face with both hands. "He was fine."
