Page 62 of Swift and Saddled

“Not a fan of foods touching?” I asked.

“Not a fan of anything ruining the perfect flavor of my coconut cream pie,” he said. Huh, I didn’t have him pegged as a coconut guy. I was going to store that information for later.

“I’ll do my best to keep these boxes stable,” I said, and gave him a mock salute. He opened the truck door for me and I slid in. He put the boxes of pie on my lap and placed a quick kiss on my temple before shutting the door.

“So, where are we headed?”

“You’ll see,” he said with a small smile. “Tell me about the rest of your week.” I assumed he meant tell him about my week since Wednesday, which was the day of the storm and the power outage and the day that we…you know…banged.

We hadn’t seen much of each other, but we’d seen enough of each other for me to know that he was busy on the ranch with the aftermath of the storm, but I didn’t know the specifics.

Honestly, the last few days had been the most eventful ofthe renovation. Before that, everything had gone mostly smoothly. That meant there was some overdue chaos, and it started after the storm.

“The storm blew off a shit ton of shingles and revealed some damage on the roof that we hadn’t noticed, so a new roof is on the agenda, but luckily the roofers can come next week. The cabinets for the kitchen came, but they’re the wrong color, so that’s also on the docket.” I shook my head. “Oh, and we also ran out of flooring because the measurements were off, and I dropped and broke an entire box of tile.”

After I’d finished giving him the rundown of the week from hell, I wondered if I should’ve downplayed it. For a second, I worried that I was too comfortable with Wes, that I’d crossed the line even more than I had already. I wanted so badly to tell him about my week that I’d forgotten what we were: an employee and her boss.

A new roof—even a partial one—was a big deal. So was openly admitting that a measurement was off. I’d taken care of all of it, of course. I’d expected to replace the roof before I got here, so it was covered by the budget, but I did have to make sure I didn’t put that money anywhere else in the meantime. The additional wood flooring would be there Friday, cabinets were semi-easily painted, and the box of tile was an extra I was taking down to the basement. Plus, I had my two-week buffer, and at this point, I knew I was going to have to use at least some of it—mostly for the cabinet painting.

I held my breath as I waited for Wes to respond.

Wes let out a low whistle. “One of those weeks, huh?”Yeah, definitely one of those weeks. And the weird thing about it was that shit like this only seemed to happen at the site when Wes wasn’t around.

He was a good luck charm.

“Are you worried at all?” I asked, trying to gauge whether or not he was as calm as he seemed.

“Are you?” he responded.

“No, I’m not,” I said, and I meant it. I could do this.

“Okay, then. I trust you to do your job, Ada. If you’re not worried, I’m not worried.” Wes shrugged his shoulders. “And if you were worried, we’d figure it out together. This project is both of ours.”

I let out a small sigh of relief, which he must’ve noticed because he reached his hand across the bench seat to where mine was resting, grabbed it, and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

“Where have you been this week?” I really hadn’t seen him since Thursday morning. After we’d spent the night in his bed, we made breakfast early when the power came back on. Amos came home while we were cooking, and the three of us ate together before both of them left to assess any damage that the storm had done on the ranch. He still came by the site at the end of the day so I could drive his truck back to the Big House, but later than normal, and he left again once we got back to the Big House.

“The storm did a lot of damage,” he said with a sigh. I knew that already. “We already had some weather damage from the winter”—I remembered how he had talked about cabins flooding on my first day, which is why I was staying at the Big House—“and we haven’t gotten around to fixing all of it, so some of it got worse. Plus, storms like that can spookcattle, and they can end up in places they shouldn’t, so we’ve been having to drive a bunch of them back. We have to clear fallen trees and stuff too. There’s always a lot to do after a weather event like that.”

“Is that why Emmy’s and Brooks’s trucks have been at the Big House every morning when I leave for the job site?”

“Yeah. Emmy is still on the ranch at least four days a week because she does horse training in addition to lessons, but both she and Brooks have had to pitch in on other ranch work this week too. Brooks has always been our handyman—he can fix almost anything—but this week he’s had his work cut out for him.”

I thought back to when I first met Emmy—I wondered if he’d fixed her truck up yet. I’d have to ask.

Even though I’d been at Rebel Blue for a few months, I still had no idea what it took to run a ranch day-to-day. One thing was for sure, I was in awe of the Ryders. All four of them were different, but one thing they had in common was that they loved their ranch, and they all worked fucking hard to take care of it and everything that that encompassed—cattle, sheep, horses, stables, ranch hands, everything.

I admired them. I thought it was a special thing to love something that much.

Wes turned onto a winding dirt road that led us up a mountain. It got steep enough that he had to downshift a couple of times. “Seriously, where are you taking me?”

“We’re almost there,” he said, “I promise.” The road was surrounded by dense trees, almost like a tunnel. I’d never seen anything like it before. “In about thirty seconds, we’re going to break out of these trees,” he said. “And you’re goingto see the best view that Meadowlark—maybe even all of Wyoming—has to offer.” Wes’s thumbs were tapping on the steering wheel—like he couldn’t contain his excitement—and it honestly looked like he was holding his breath.

Just as he’d said, we soon broke through the trees, and even though we were much closer to the edge of a cliff than I ever wanted to be, he was right. I was utterly wonderstruck by the view. I think my mouth literally dropped open. I didn’t think I’d ever been this high up before. I felt like I could see the whole state of Wyoming laid out before me. The sun was setting, and the sky was painted purple and pink above the tree-covered mountains. I saw a few doll-size houses amid big patches of land and bodies of water. Wildflowers dotted the meadows like paint splatters.

Before I could take it all in, Wes flipped the truck around. He put his arm on the seat behind me, looked over his shoulder, and started backing toward the cliff edge. If I hadn’t been terrified that we were going to drive right off it, I would’ve thought a million inappropriate thoughts about the way he looked backing up the truck so smoothly.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded just as the truck came to a stop.

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