“Anyway, if you want to meet up tomorrow, I’m happy to run interference on that interaction.”
“Please.”
“Okay. Tomorrow morning? And then, Marlowe, if you want to look at the cabins after that.”
Marlowe nodded slowly, and he tried to ignore the color creeping into her cheeks. “Yes. First the bakery, then the cabins.”
And when he left there, he had the strangest feeling that he had just agreed to something else entirely.
Chapter Seven
It was good to get out of the hotel. Good to see the town. Mustang River was adorable. A little bit wild West, a little bit modern hipster. The buildings had both old-fashioned charm and some mid-century flair, depending on when they were built.
There was a western outfitter at the end of the block that was painted green with gold flashes and had a statue of a cowboy on one end of the building, and a saloon girl at the other.
There was a kitchen supply store with all kinds of specialty oils and a furniture store with everything made out of solid wood, hand-carved.
The prices in there made Marlowe’s eyebrows about fall off her face.
Things were closing up as she and Cara wandered through town, heading slowly toward the restaurant at the end of the street that had come highly recommended.
By Cara, who had been looking at reviews online.
There was a giant, old west restaurant at the center of town called the Wagon Wheel, that served smoked meat andbarbecue, but she had decided they should save that for another time.
They were going to an Italian restaurant called La Befana, which had a lot of rave reviews but was unassuming, tucked into a small brick building at the end of the block.
It was such an interesting patchwork of a town.
Marlowe was the kind of person who had to read up on every little detail about a place before she went, particularly when she was going to move there, which meant that she had done a lot of reading on the history of Mustang River.
It had originally caught some spillover from the gold rush back in the late 1800s, though it hadn’t been as populated as some of the places further west.
It had started out as a stopping point for people headed toward the Willamette Valley and then had become a place in its own right. The main street had burned down no less than three times, and after that, they had built more buildings out of brick.
The wooden buildings on the main street that were there now were reproductions of the buildings from the 1800s, while the brick buildings were original. Off that main street, you had the more modern places. Now art galleries and boutiques, all angular lines and expensive windows.
It had a unique flavor to it. And even after everything, she didn’t regret that she had decided to come here.
They walked into the building and were ushered quickly to a table by a perky young woman at the front of the restaurant, dressed all in black. The wait staff was more than attentive, and she wondered if this was the kind of job that was competitive in a town like this, which was relatively small but had high tourist traffic.
She imagined it paid much better than other sorts of jobs younger people could get. So, it made sense that everyone whocame into contact with their table was attentive and almost too friendly.
By the time they were finishing their main course and ordering dessert, they knew exactly what their waiter had studied in college, and he knew that they were working out at the Painted Ridge Ranch.
“The guy who used to own it was so rich. And nobody thought he had any kids. But then it turned out he did,” the young guy said, gesturing broadly with his hands.
Marlowe looked down surreptitiously and read his name tag.
Chris.
“Really?” She was interested because it was another perspective on the Grayson family, and Cody in particular, even though she would like to pretend that she didn’t care all that much about Cody. The reality was, she did.
“Yeah. It surprised everybody. I think they felt the property would go up for auction. But then it turned out that Cody Grayson was his son. Well, and obviously Walker and Lila.”
It was interesting because he clearly expected her to know who Cody was. “Was that surprising?”
“Well, Cody’s pretty famous around here. He won the bull riding championships ten years ago, and he really made a name for himself in the sport. I’m not that into it. Well, I’m into the cowboys, but not… You know,” Chris said, laughing.
