Page 56 of The Rancher’s One and Only

“I don’t even think it’s better to bring in someone who’s traumatized,” Dakota said. “Then you just sort of feed off of each other’s tragedy.”

“And there you go. That’s why we agreed. We are doing this. We’re each other’s family. The rest… There’s no fixing it. There is no figuring it out. There’s none of that.”

“None of that happiness in healing,” Dakota said, smiling. “Live, laugh, be fucking broken forever.”

“Great. Let’s finish setting these up. And then, we can plan our dry run.”

Yeah. Then they could plan the dry run. That would be great. He finished up with the tents and texted Ernestine to find her whereabouts. When she didn’t return the text he decided to go look for her at the dig site. That turned out to be a good guess, because there she was, hunkered down in the middle of a rock pile.

“I actually think that I found a fossil that we have never found in this region before.”

“Really?”

“Yes. We’ve never had evidence of mastodons this far west. They’re thought of traditionally as a Great Plains and Midwestern animal. But it looks like… I am pretty sure that what I found is evidence that they did migrate here. Now, that could have been because of changing weather or… It’s very hard to say. But it is definitely activity that I wouldn’t have expected. I have footprints and I think I even have the promise of a skeleton.”

“Well. That’s great.”

“It’s more than great. First of all, this is going to be great for your tourism.”

“You think so?”

“Absolutely.” She jumped up, and she flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck. He cradled the back of her head and kissed her. And he was glad that she wasn’t mad at him for being a little bit distant, but also just… She was so different. So odd. He really enjoyed it. He really did. He really enjoyed kissing her too.

“Sorry I haven’t been around,” he said.

“It’s okay. I really needed some uninterrupted focus on this. And when you’re around I get distracted.”

He laughed. “Do you?”

“Well, yes. Also, I was a little bit…a little bit sore afterward. So I probably wouldn’t have been able to have sex again very quickly.” She seemed like she was considering this. “Well. I’m sure we could’ve made it work.”

He shook his head. “You are something, Dr. Martin.”

“In a good way?”

“Very much in a good way. We got the tents put up for the Oregon Trail camp.”

“Oh! I would love to see it. See? When you’re around I just get distracted. If it isn’t sex, it’s what you’re doing here.”

“Well, I would love it if you had a little bit of time this weekend, because Dakota and Rowdy want to do a dry run of our excursion. So we could stay overnight in the tents.”

“We can?”

Then her face went scarlet. “Oh. Except we can’t stay in the same tent.”

“Yeah, we can. They already know.”

He was taking a chance on telling her. Her face started to turn pink. “You told them?”

He couldn’t quite interpret her tone. If she was angry that he had told them, or if there was something else.

“I didn’t really tell them—it’s more that they had a pretty good guess. I think I’m not as mysterious as I like to believe.”

“Oh.”

“There’s a certain point where you can keep denying something, but it only makes it seem weirder, you know?”

“Well. That’s true. I can understand where you’re coming from with that.”