Page 9 of The Rancher’s One and Only

Chapter Three

As usual, they were up at the crack of dawn, drinking coffee in the kitchen of their shared house. Eventually, they were all going to complete places on the property and turn this house into more of a common area for guests. A place where they could have get-togethers, and cook a meal if they were camping and wanted access to a kitchen for a while. Maybe even put a couple of guest bedrooms in it.

Maybe they would rent the whole farmhouse out eventually.

Right now, though, it was their place. And it wasn’t all that hard to get used to living with Dakota and Rowdy again. They were the closest thing he had to brothers.

It had happened at the right time too. He’d gotten to go out on top in the fighting world without risking serious injury. Some guys kept going—older than he was now—but he had no desire to keep getting the shit beaten out of him for entertainment. Recovery was much slower than it used to be; getting up took longer.

It was nice to take the money and ride off into the sunset.

“So,” Rowdy said. “We’re sure there is no downside to letting a weird scientist dig around on our property, while we are trying to get all of our stuff finalized?”

Dakota shrugged. “I don’t know that it’s possible to know if there’s a downside or not, but she’s small and doesn’t seem like she’ll take up much space.”

“Unless she’s engaging in some kind of hospitality espionage.”

“I looked her up,” Jax said. “She exists. She really does work at the museum. She’s got degrees and things I can’t even pronounce. Apparently, she’s something of a celebrity in the paleontology sphere.”

Plus he’d had a gut feeling right away that she wasn’t the type to be duplicitous. She just didn’t seem…

She didn’t seem like she could lie if she wanted to, and he didn’t have a solid reason for why he thought that; it was just a gut feeling.

Rowdy laughed. “Well. Good for her. I guess we’re all a form of niche microcelebrity.”

It was true enough. Rowdy was a big deal on the rodeo circuit, and Dakota’s ironwork sculptures were extremely well respected in the art scene—and went for tons of cash at auctions.

By comparison, Jax felt like it was a little bit ignoble to have made his fame by punching people and getting punched in return, but that was life.

You took opportunity where you could get it. And one thing Jax had been as a kid was angry. He figured out how to take that anger and turn it into something more, something better. Something that got him paid. Something that had a structure to it. He was a black belt in three different disciplines of martial arts, plus an MMA champion.

It was kind of funny because if he didn’t know Rowdy and Dakota, he would have no reason to know of them, because he wouldn’t be in their world at all. He supposed it was the same for Dr. Ernestine Martin.

He didn’t know anything about dinosaur bones or fossils. Couldn’t say he was that interested in it. But she was apparently a wunderkind of bones.

According to her bio, she was about twenty-eight. She had graduated from every program she’d ever been in extremely early. Gotten her PhD absurdly young. Been out on digs in Europe, the Middle East and Australia before she was even eighteen.

But that was all just for his own curiosity. He wouldn’t see her much over the course of her being here. There was no reason for him to.

They had too many fine details to finalize. And after a series of permit hiccups with the county, they were behind. It was all going to work out. He knew that. But it was a real drag. It had put them all under undue stress, because they’d spent a lot of extra money, all because of some issues with surveying. It wasn’t their mistake. And they were still working to get the guy who’d done it to pay for them having to move buildings, but in the meantime, they’d had to do it, and had had to actually move structures that were already in place.

Fucking nightmare.

Now they were back on fine details, which were easier. But everything just felt tense.

He did have to wonder, though, if she uncovered something interesting there, if that would end up being a draw for people who were into that sort of thing. And what he’d learned from his searches was that a lot of people were into that kind of thing.

Just because it wasn’t in his world didn’t mean it wasn’t a whole world.

He would have to make sure to talk to her about that.

“You seem deep in thought,” Rowdy said.

“Oh, hell no. You know I don’t do that. I have too much brain damage.”

Dakota snorted. “If only. If we could tone you down a little bit, life might be easier.”

“I don’t think that’s how that works.”