Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
I press the radio closer to my mouth. “I borrowed it.”
“You’ll pay for that later, darlin’, and I think you know exactly what I mean,” Boone says.
My cheeks suddenly get hot because I do know what he means, and it makes me want to steal a few more coolers.
“Did the elk come back?” Boone asks.
I look out at the herd again, where two of the calves are playfully sparring. “They came back,” I say.
“Hell yeah, they did,” Boone says.
Then Rhett’s voice comes across the channel with the same calm authority that still has the power to straighten my spine and warm my stomach at the same time. “Wren, status?”
My eyes narrow, even though he can’t see me. “My status is that I’m standing in a meadow trying to do my job, while all three of my men use a secure radio channel to harass me about a cooler.”
“Your scheduled check-in was six minutes ago.”
“I was watching elk.”
“Your scheduled check-in was six minutes ago,” Rhett repeats.
Boone laughs, and though I don’t hear any response from Cade, I swear I can feel his amusement in the air.
I turn slowly and take in my surroundings, remembering briefly how this time last year I was stuck at a desk bordered by gray cubicle walls. Now, there’s a meadow, trees, and late-summer sun pouring over the pass. I haven’t completely left behind the fear from all that happened out here, but it’s settled into something that’s less panicky and more like the original awareness of potential dangers that I had when I first came here.
“Fine,” I say into the radio. “Status: alive, uninjured, mildly irritated, emotionally moved by elk, and in possession of one borrowed cooler.”
“Copy,” Rhett says.
“She misses us,” Boone says.
“She always misses us,” Cade adds.
I lower the radio and laugh under my breath because he’s right.
By early afternoon, I’m back at my research shed, which is a little weathered outbuilding that the men repaired and painted for me as a surprise. One day after a regional meeting in the city, I came home to find the door painted a beautiful grassy green. Inside, there were three matching green handprints on the doorframe. Mine is there now, too.
I covered one wall with maps, and a monitor in the corner shows wildlife feeds from the trail cameras. Field guides, soil samples, and specimen jars fill the shelves. I smile every single time I come through the door.
As I finish uploading the data I collected in the morning, I smell smoke, but it’s not the dangerous kind. It smells of applewood, charcoal, and Boone’s spice rub.
I lock the shed, grab Boone’s cooler from the back of my truck, and follow my nose to the cabin’s back door with my mouth watering.
Boone opens the door just before I reach for the handle, and his smile hits me with the same force it always does after we’ve spent a day apart.
He reaches to help with the items I’m carrying. “My cooler.”
“I brought it back.”
“After putting dirt in it.”
“Professionally collected soil samples.”
He steps aside so I can enter. “I ought to charge you a rental fee.”
“You already threatened to make me pay.”
His charming grin turns into something warmer and darker and full of the same promise that made my face heat earlier.
“That I did.” He slides an arm around my waist, pulls me against him, and gives me the kind of kiss I often daydream about when I’m out working in the field. Even though we had breakfast together, he kisses me like he hasn’t seen me in a week, and he smiles against my mouth before he ends the kiss.
He pats my bottom and winks before he returns to the stove, where peppers and onions are sizzling in a skillet. “Wash up,” he says. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
As I round the corner into the main room, my eye goes first to the wildflowers in a crock on the dining table. It sits in the center of a woven runner I’d admired at a summer market, and Cade had insisted on buying.
There’s a fuzzy throw over the arm of the couch, and a photograph I took of a bull elk hangs above the mantel. When I said it was the best picture I’d ever taken, Rhett had it enlarged, framed, and hanging there two days later.
There are plants on the windowsills that Boone insists are mine, though he’s the one who waters them every morning. There are four mugs beside the coffeemaker, four toothbrushes in the bathroom, and four pairs of boots by the door.
I’m washing my hands at the kitchen sink when Cade comes in. He pauses for a split second when he sees me, and his shoulders ease. He crosses straight to me, stopping close enough that I have to tilt my head back to look at him. He brushes a loose strand of hair from my face and lets his hand linger against my cheek, then he leans down and presses a gentle kiss to my lips.