Page 10 of The Rancher’s One and Only

“Well, you would know,” he said.

“Is Jessica coming by today?”

Rowdy shrugged. “I’m not sure. I think so.”

Jessica was one of Rowdy’s best friends. He’d moved to the property before them, in fact. When it was just a bare plot of land with a dilapidated house, which they’d bought for a steal almost a decade ago, Rowdy was the one who had taken up residence here. He was the one who’d remodeled the farmhouse and made it habitable. And he’d gotten to be good friends with a barrel racer that he’d met on the circuit, who lived locally. In fact, she was the reason he’d found out about the property.

Now she helped out with a lot of things, and she was a wicked baker, and often helped stock the fridge with food.

“If she does come, it’d be nice if she could stop at the grocery store.”

Rowdy cocked an eyebrow. “She’s not an errand girl.”

“I didn’t say she was. But, our guest was saying something about eating military rations, and I am wondering if she might like some groceries.”

“She has a car,” Dakota pointed out.

True. She did.

“Yeah. Of course, it’s a whole haul down into town, and then you have to deal with being an outsider.”

They all knew how that went. They’d been new here, and they were bringing in tourists, which half the town was thrilled about, and half the town was kind of mad about.

But that was life in progress out in the middle of nowhere. Increasing business was helpful. For most people. But then others felt threatened by it.

“Okay. First thing today, I’ve got to manage the horses. And then, we’ve got to finish up with leveling and graveling the Oregon Trail camping spot.”

They’d debated having actual wagons to circle for the night but had gone with luxury tents instead. They were making a big common firepit for all of the guests to sit around, and trying to create the feeling of a wagon train.

They had done their due diligence, making defensible space all around where they’d be having the fires, and now it was a matter of setting up different amenities. And making sure the ground was totally level. Which had been a long haul with different pieces of heavy equipment, and now they had a dump truck of gravel coming in.

Rowdy was primarily responsible for the horses. They were his thing.

Dakota was making sculptures to be positioned around the property. Most of them were done, but he had a bit left to do.

Jax was… Well, he was essentially the muscle. And that was fine. He knew who he was.

Well, mostly. Sometimes he questioned the veracity of his own intelligence coming to a place like this. He was used to variety. He spent a lot of time in Vegas when he did the fights. There was a variety of food, activities, women. Here…if he slept with somebody, he was going to have to run into them again in town. Over and over again. And he wasn’t looking for that kind of commitment. That kind of attachment.

And they’d discussed it: they couldn’t go sleeping with guests.

They had an agreement that if there was some kind of insane chemistry, and the guest was extremely on board with it, then an exception could be made, but no hooking up with women who had partners or husbands. Nothing that could get the place review bombed. Or get any of them shot because that was the thing. They didn’t actually want women to come here for sex tourism.

Though he paused and considered that for a second; why did they think that was a bad thing?

Frankly, Jax was feeling a little bit hard up. It had been a lot of work and no play out here for a decent chunk of time.

“All right. Let’s break. Get some work done.”

He was sweating his ass off several hours later, beneath the brutal sun, spreading the dirt around the area, but it was starting to look really great. They already had some artful rocks with bark and plants making a circle around the camping spot, and this was really finishing it off and tying it all together. Giving a soft place for people to set blankets and sit. After this, he was going to make some benches out of logs to go around the firepit. He was looking forward to that.

He discovered through the process of this that he was pretty good at building things. He’d never done it before in his life, but with the right tools and a set of instructions, he could pretty much figure anything out.

He heard the sound of a motor, and he knew it wasn’t a pickup truck, so it couldn’t be Rowdy or Dakota. He turned, and saw Ernestine in her tiny little car, rumbling down the gravel road, stopping when she saw him.

She got out of the car, and it took her a second, but then she smiled, and waved. “What are you doing?”

“Oh,” he said. “I’m finishing up this camping area.”