“What do you keep back there?” Miss Brown’s curious gaze was pointed at the area behind the two rows of horse stalls.
“Would you like to see?” Roman asked.
She nodded, and Roman led her past the stalls to the wide-open space beyond. Only the banker’s buggy sat there, Roman’s wagon having already been rented for the day.
“What a lovely carriage!” Miss Brown stood beside him, her face alight with glee.
“It belongs to the banker,” Roman explained. “I have yet to see him take it out, but I suppose he’s keeping it here to use at some point.”
“My friend Violet’s family had a buggy. I used to love riding in it about town.” Miss Brown ran a hand over the conveyance’s fine craftsmanship.
“One day, I hope to have a need to build another barn to keep carriages and wagons, both for boarding and for rent. Then we could build more stalls on this side of the stable.” Roman could see it all in his mind—a bustling place, filled with horses and people coming and going. He’d need several more employees, of course. And perhaps then, he could afford to pay someone to sit guard all night to prevent thieves from making off with his—and his customers’—horses.
“That sounds wonderful.” Miss Brown looked at him with unabashed happiness.
He grinned in response. Never had he thought she might be so interested in his plans.
“What do you keep in those rooms?” She pointed at the three closed rooms lining the rear wall of the barn.
“Tools in that one, saddles and harnesses and such in the middle one, and the other is where Jeremiah and I sleep.”
She blinked at him. “You sleep in a room in the stable?”
Embarrassment crept through him. What must she think? That he intended for her to marry him and live in that room too? He pushed his shoulders back as he realized he could easily rectify that. “Follow me.”
She looked at him with questions written across her face, but did as he asked.
They emerged into the bright sunlight behind the stable. The lean-to and the beginnings of the new wagon sat off to the left. To the right, closest to the smithy’s shop, sat the hastily built table and chairs that served as a resting spot outside of the stable. Straight ahead, the corral stretched out with horses milling about. A few paused to look up at them. And beyond that sat the structure Roman wanted Miss Brown to see.
They moved around the corral, past where he hoped to eventually build the second barn. Nothing sat beyond it now but grass and small hills, but it would face a side road, one that already existed and headed east toward the mining camp at the base of the Wet Mountains, a few miles away. The miners mostly kept to their camp and the entertainments there, but on occasion, the distance didn’t prevent them from a good time in Crest Stone, particularly since the Starlight Saloon went into business.
“What is this?” Miss Brown asked when he stopped outside the little partially built house.
“It’s to be a home,” he said, letting his gaze flicker to her to see her reaction.
“Oh,” she said in surprise. “May I go inside?”
He nodded, and then bit down on his lip as she entered the doorframe. The place was hardly complete, but he’d already laid out each room and put a stone fireplace in the parlor. He hoped she wouldn’t think it too small.
“Am I standing in the parlor?” she asked, turning to him.
Roman nodded, encouraged by her curiosity. “If you step back that way—between those pieces of wood—you’ll be in the kitchen.”
She did as he said and turned, looking all around her. “This is a big kitchen. Much larger than the one I grew up with.”
He smiled and leaned against part of the wall’s frame. He didn’t know much about her circumstances in Virginia, other than that she came from a family of modest means and that her father worked as the bookkeeper for some large company. It pleased him greatly that he might be giving her more than she’d grown up with, particularly since he’d feared her life out here would be a step down from what she’d had.
Ifshe agreed to marry him, that was.
He shoved down the fear that he couldn’t possibly be enough for a woman as good as Miss Brown and tried to concentrate on how she examined what would be the kitchen, a smile playing upon her face. What was she thinking? Did she imagine herself cooking up a big dinner? Or sitting at a table and gazing out the window toward the dark mountains off in the distance? Or—
“What is this room?” Miss Brown asked, interrupting thoughts that were quickly carrying Roman away.
“That would be the bedroom.”
“Oh.” Her cheeks colored a pleasing pink.
Roman pushed himself up straight. “There will be a fourth room upstairs. It won’t be very large, but big enough for . . .” He couldn’t bring himself to say the wordchildren. Somehow that seemed to be assuming too much. Although he thought he wouldn’t mind seeing Miss Brown blush even more.
