“Up.”
“For a man who readsallthe time, that’s not particularly descriptive.”
“There’s a clearing on the ridge above the ranch.Sully told me about it.Apparently, Fosters have been watching sunsets up there for a hundred years.”
Something shifted in Bonnie’s expression—a flicker of memory, bittersweet and complicated.“I know that spot,” she said softly.“Jenna and I rode horses up there once right after she and Rob got engaged.I’d just found out I was pregnant with Cassidy and was freaked out.I didn’t want to become a parent quite so young as I was.Brent wanted me to get an abortion, but that didn’t feel right, either.Jenna and I went up there to talk it out.That’s the place where I decided to have Cassidy.And Sweet Lord in Heaven, I’m glad I did.She’s the light of my life.”She was quiet for a moment.Then she added, “It’s a good place.”
He glanced over at her.She met his gaze, and whatever she saw in his expression made her smile.“I’m glad you picked it.It deserves better memories than the ones I left there.”
The view was, as advertised, outrageous.The valley unfurled below them in long, rolling waves, the hay meadows stretching to the pastures, which stretched to the road, which led to the mountains beyond, their snow-capped peaks blazing white against a sky that was cycling through shades of yellow and peach toward orange, copper, and pink that no painting or photograph could do justice to.
The wind was, as he’d calculated, blocked by the tree line.He’d gotten the temperature right, the humidity right, and the time of sunset right
What he had not taken into account was the mud.
Three days of warm chinook winds had melted the snowpack on this ridge and above it faster than the still frozen ground could absorb it.The clearing was now a shallow lake of red-brown Montana clay.His boot sank three inches on the first step.
He stood there with one foot in the mud, the cooler in one hand, the camp chairs dangling from the other, the blanket under his arm, and stared at the clearing with the expression of a man whose careful planning had been betrayed by hydrology.
Bonnie got out of the truck.Looked at the mud.Looked at him.
“Did your precise weather calculations account for snowmelt?”she asked.Her voice was perfectly, dangerously innocent.
“I checked thedew point,” he said, with the dignity of a man who had failed to check the ground saturation.“The dew point was fine.”
“The dew point.”
“Thirty-one percent humidity tonight.No fog risk.I was very thorough.”
“You were very thorough about the air.”She surveyed the mud field.“But less thorough about the ground.”
He looked at the camp chairs, which would sink to their crossbars.He looked at the blanket, which would become a mud blanket.He looked at the cooler full of lemon chicken and pecan pie and three separate thermoses of hot beverages, any one of which would have been sufficient if he’d been capable of choosing a drink.
“But I thought of everything,” he said blankly.“I even brought three thermoses.Coffee, cider, and hot chocolate.I didn’t know which you’d want.”
“Three thermoses,” she echoed.A hint of a smile flitted at the edges of her mouth.
“I approached it statistically.”
“You approached abeverage decisionstatistically.”
“In my defense, your preferences weren’t in the data set.”
Bonnie made a sound.It was quiet at first—a faint choking noise that turned into more of a cough.Her shoulders shook next.Then her hand came up over her mouth.But too late.The laugh broke through, helpless and startled and uncontrolled.She laughed until tears ran down her cheeks.
“You ...”She gasped.“I’ll bet you brought a star chart, too, didn’t you?”
He looked at the cardboard tube sticking out of the bag behind his seat.“Jupiter’s visible tonight and I wanted to be able to show it to you.”
She sat on the tailgate and laughed until tears tracked down her face.Gray stood in the mud with his arms full of gear and watched her laugh, loving every minute of it.
Not because she was laughing at him.People laughed at him regularly, and he’d made his peace with being the kind of oddball who inspired that reaction.But because she was laughingfreely.Without checking herself.Without composing her face for an audience.She’d forgotten, for a moment, that she was supposed to manage, edit, and disguise everything she felt.
He started to laugh with her.“In my defense, the clearing was dry on Wednesday.”
“You scouted thelocation?”
“Yes.Yes, I did.I scouted the location.”
