"Texas," Becca replied, as if that explained everything. It kind of did.
The road wound through oak trees for a quarter mile before the house appeared, and when it did Ellie understood immediately why Kelly loved this place. It was small as ranches went, but it sat within its landscape beautifully. Made of stone and timber, single story with a wraparound porch, it looked like the sort of place where if you wanted you could simply sit and look at the view all day. And the view deserved looking at… rolling hills dotted with trees and scrub, a paddock with horses grazing in the shade, and in the middle distance a cluster of trees and a glimmer of water that Ellie guessed was the watering hole that Kelly had mentioned.
The sky above it all somehow seemed enormous. Not just Austin-enormous, which was impressive enough already,but hill-country-enormous: a dome of yellows and oranges stretching to every horizon as the sun started to dip, studded with fluffy white clouds, and when Ellie stepped out of the car and took a breath of the warm, fresh air it felt like her first real breath in months.
"You found us!” Kelly appeared from around the side of the house, barefoot, wearing cut-off shorts and a tank top, her hair pulled back under a baseball cap. She looked like a different person from the woman they'd met both times before, less polished, less put-together, more genuine. The ranch version of Kelly was sun-browned and relaxed, radiating contentment.
She hugged Becca first, a hug that lingered and tripped the jealousy switch in Ellie, but then she hugged Ellie for even longer, warm and tight, and the look she gave her was thrilling… like she was welcoming a co-conspirator.
"The drive ok?" Kelly asked, taking their bag without being asked.
"Gorgeous," Becca said, looking around. "Kelly, this place is incredible."
"Wait until you see it in full daylight tomorrow. It'll ruin every other view for you forever." She started walking towards the porch. "Come meet Colt. He's been looking forward to this almost as much as me."
"Almost?" Ellie said.
Kelly grinned over her shoulder. "He's excited to meet you, but he doesn't get to sleep with your wife, so I reckon I've got the edge."
***
Colt appeared on the porch as they walked up, four freshly opened ice cold beers in hand as a welcome. He was tall enough that both Becca and Ellie needed to tilt their heads slightly to look up at him, and Kelly alongside him looked small even though she was a similar height to both of them. Ellie could see why she’d chosen him: tall, broad-shouldered and lean, sandy-haired, handsome in the clean-cut, sun-weathered way that Texan men seemed to specialise in. He had the sort of face that looked like it had been assembled from a kit labelledreliable, or maybecapable…strong jaw, honest eyes, a smile that started slow and ended wide.
"Ellie, Becca," he said, shaking their hands in turn. His grip was firm but not performatively so, and his voice had the slow, easy drawl that Ellie was learning to associate with people who'd grown up in this part of the world. "Welcome to our place. Kelly's been talking about y'all for weeks."
"All good things," Kelly added, handing out the beers.
"Well yeah, she's hardly going to tell me the bad stuff in advance, is she?" He grinned at Kelly, who swatted his arm, and the dynamic between them was immediately, visibly solid. Theirs was the sort of easy, teasing affection that only came from years of genuine compatibility. They weren't performing their relationship. They were just in it.
Colt gave them the tour while Kelly took their bag to the spare room. The house was modest but well-kept: two bedrooms, an open-plan kitchen and living area, and a main bathroom that had clearly been recently renovated. The guest room was at the far end, separated from Kelly and Colt's room by the living area,with its own small bathroom and a window that looked out towards the watering hole. The bed was a generous queen with white linen that looked fresh, and there were wildflowers in a jar on the nightstand.
"Kelly did the flowers," Colt said. He shrugged. “I wanted to put out some jerky and a six-pack but apparently that's not how you welcome civilised guests."
"We’d have liked it either way," Ellie said. "The flowers are nice too though."
They ended up on the porch as the evening light started to fade, the four of them spread across the wooden chairs and the porch rail, beers in hand, and the conversation flowed much more naturally than Ellie had expected. She'd been nervous about meeting Colt, not because she expected hostility but rather because this was all inherently socially awkward. This was the man whose girlfriend she’d watched her wife have a lot of very hot sex with. There wasn't a Hallmark card for that particular relationship.
But Colt made it easy, so did Kelly, and within half an hour Ellie felt like she’d known him for years. He talked about the ranch and the small cattle operation they ran alongside his horse breeding, enough to keep them busy but not so much that it consumed their lives. He’d grown up nearby on a bigger ranch that his parents still ran, but him and Kelly had wanted their own place to build from scratch.
"Kelly's the smart one," he said, tipping his beer towards her. "The real estate brain. She found this place, saw what it could be, negotiated the owner down to a price we could actually afford. I just mend fences and feed animals."
"He's being modest," Kelly said. "He designed the house renovations, he built half the fences himself, and he's the best horseman in the county. His daddy breeds horses," she added to Ellie and Becca. "Colt grew up on a horse before he could walk."
"Named after one too," Colt added with the resigned air of someone who'd made that joke a thousand times. "My daddy wasn't going to call me anything else."
"Kelly told us," Becca said, laughing.
"Kelly tells everyone. She thinks my name is the funniest thing that's ever happened to her."
"Top three at least," Kelly confirmed.
Colt got the grill going and started cooking steaks. Ellie went inside to help Kelly with the salad while Becca chatted to Colt.
“I like Colt,” she said as she cut up a lettuce.
Kelly smiled. “Not what you expected?”
“I wasn’t sure what to expect.” Ellie stopped for a second and glanced at Kelly. “I was worried, we both were, that it would be a little awkward. I mean,” she gestured outside, “he genuinely knows, right, that he’s talking to the woman outside right now who’s slept with his girlfriend a couple of times already?”
