Page 93 of Red Boar's Baby

“Me too,” Diana said, and she was gazing off the porch, across the arroyo at the sun-bleached sprawl of her old family ranch. “Me too.”

CHAPTER30

Summerin the desert was a long, calm season. The flowers and comparatively lush landscape of spring had long since vanished, their soft greens and golds and splashes of pink replaced with the browns and muted red-gold that people more typically associated with this part of the country. Some might call the summers brutal, and in some sense they were. But living with them meant relaxing into their rhythms. It meant learning to appreciate the comparatively cool, sun-kissed mornings, the soft evenings and brilliant stars in the always startling chill of the night.

You couldn’t live in the desert without loving it, Diana thought. Well ... you could. People did. But those people preferred to shuttle between their air-conditioned homes and offices, perhaps with a stop at an equally climate-controlled restaurant in between.

Right now she was sweltering in the meager shade of the trees at the top of her family’s old pasture, lying on her back and watching a bird circle lazily in the clear blue bowl of the sky.

The sound of someone approaching made her prop herself up on her elbows. She watched Costa ride up the pasture on the back of one of his family’s horses. The pasture, after years of neglect, was far too dry to support livestock—at least for now. Perhaps, with care and work, it could be lush and useful again.

Costa swung down from the horse’s back and led it into the shade of the trees. “Figured I’d find you up here.”

“Your tracking sense is truly uncanny,” Diana agreed. She sat up. “Where’s Em?”

“She’s at Jenny’s.”

Diana nodded. Em was now officially Madison Emmeline Tyler, soon to be Madison Emmeline Costa when the adoption paperwork went through. But she would always be Em to them.

One thing about Costa’s family ranch was that there was never any shortage of willing babysitters. If anything, the difficult thing was finding time to spend with Em by themselves.

“What do you have there?” Diana asked as Costa took down a large basket that had been strapped behind the saddle.

“I think my aunts decided that we must be starving over here.”

Diana laughed. “How could we starve when they’ve already brought us a month’s worth of food?”

The purchase of her family ranch from the Halversons had just closed a week ago. The insurance settlement from the loss of her house had been easily sufficient for a generous down payment, and from there—well, they would make it work, she thought.

The details of exactly how she was going to get her job to flex with living on the ranch at least part of the time was something she hadn’t figured out yet. But she’d already gone through a couple changes of career so far, first of all leaving the Army, and then settling into her Arizona job; perhaps it wasn’t too late in life to experience another. Tucson had some interesting opportunities, including local pilot jobs, as well as park ranger work or perhaps switching to a full-time first responder career. She was looking forward to exploring some different options.

After all that had led up to it, she was a little surprised, but in a good way, that her relationship with Costa had turned out to be so easy. They had simply settled into the new thing that they had now, which turned out to be a step away from the old thing, after all. They were taking it slow; after all, they’d waited twenty-odd years, so another few months wasn’t such a big thing.

Some might say they were already moving too fast, between buying the ranch—which had both their names on the paperwork—and fostering to adopt Em. But they weren’t living together yet; Diana had a new apartment with a year-long lease, which she felt would give them plenty of time to settle into their new roles without having to pick up an entire shared household’s duties immediately.

As always, they were doing things their own way, in their own time.

Costa unpacked the picnic basket. There was a folded throw on top, which he spread out and then began to stack with sandwiches, individually wrapped slices of pie on their own saucers, potato salad, cookies, a jar of lemonade ...

“They really do think we’re going to starve,” Diana said, picking up a sandwich.

“Well, not for the next few hours, at least.”

Costa, no stranger to traveling in the hot and dry back country, had also brought water for the horse. He turned it loose to wander the pasture if it wanted to, and the two of them dug into the picnic basket, interspersed with light kisses slightly flavored by lemonade.

They chatted lightly about work, Costa skirting around talking about Vic’s investigation of the shifter underground fighting rings; apparently that was on the move, but Diana knew he couldn’t give her too many details, so she didn’t push for it.

“I heard Caine and Gilly have set a wedding date at last,” she remarked between bites of an absolutely heavenly slice of blackberry pie.

“How’d you hear it before I got a chance to mention it?”

Diana laughed. “The interns. We stay in touch. They are strangely fascinated with Caine’s love life.”

“The new interns have imprinted on Caine like a bunch of ducklings,” Costa said. “It’s adorable. He says he hates it, but he seems to be taking to his new mentor role like—well, like a duck to water.” He held up another slice of pie. “Want this?”

“I couldn’t eat another bite. I’m stuffed.”

“Then help me put this away, and we might commandeer the blanket for other activities. That is, if you’re not too stuffed to be?—”

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