“I was hoping to sleep in the cabin,” she said, sounding unsure.
“Dana, you see that roof?” He pointed to it. “When it rains? There’s going to be leaks all over inside the cabin. That roof is dangerous and I’ll bet it could fall through; those cedar shingles look pretty weather-beaten. There’s no windows or door on it either. You can’t sleep out here because the nights get really cold, sometimes freezing this time of year. It doesn’t start warming up until mid-May. You’ll catch a cold or flu, or worse, if you stay out here.”
Frowning, she muttered, “I really wanted to be with the land. I love the feel of it, the energy.”
“You will,” he said, trying to sound a little less clipped in his answers. She looked bereft. “Where are you staying right now until the mobile home is set up for use?”
“I was staying at the women’s shelter in town.”
“I don’t think you need to stay there, Dana. We have two separate bunkhouses for our single wranglers, one for the women and one for the men. The boss told me there’s an open bunk in the women’s and he’d like you to stay there. It has showers, restrooms attached to it, and there’s a cookhouse, which is really a nice building and like a restaurant, for everyone to eat three square meals a day. He’d like you come and stay there until things get situated here. He would never charge you for it, either.”
Touching her brow, Dana took a deep, shaky breath. “This is so much . . .”
“I’m sure it is, but you need this kind of help under the circumstances, and you chose a good place to buy a ranch.”
He saw tears in her eyes, and she gulped a couple of times, turning away from him, taking swipes at her eyes.
“I-I do need the help,” she muttered, turning around. “I never thought about the creek and how I was going to get through it to the crop areas,” she admitted hoarsely, meeting his gaze. Running her fingers through her red hair, she wanted to be alone to cry. This was all too much for her to take in.
“I know it’s a lot to deal with,” he said gruffly, walking back to the truck with her. “I’ve been down and out in my life and it was the people of this valley who have helped me get a handle on my problem.”
She walked at his side, arms across her chest, head down, the grass beneath her feet blurring now and then. Sniffing, she focused on him. “Silver Creek should be considered a hospital in some respects then. It sounds like you’ve had a rough time, too, and yet, you look whole.”
He managed a strangled sound that was supposed to be a laugh. “I’m sure Mary told you I have PTSD?”
“Yes, she did. Some of our farmhands that worked for my parents were military men, and they had it, too. It’s awful to be wounded like that.”
Nodding, he said nothing.
“If your parents had a farm, why are you here?”
Wincing, Dana choked out, “I can’t talk about that right now, Colin. I’m dealing with enough as it is.”
“I’m sorry,” he rasped, “it’s none of my business . . .”
She looked over at him. “Don’t feel badly about it. Okay?”
Mouth thinning, he nodded, walking to the truck. “If I pull around the log cabin and drive up the main road, I can off-load the equipment. Have you decided where you might want that double-wide mobile home?”
She took a deep breath and pointed to the south end of the cabin. “It seems the only place to put it would be there? What do you think?”
“You’re too close to the creek. There’s a company that will come in and create a huge hole so that your septic tank can fit down in it. You don’t want it near the stream or you’ll possibly pollute it.”
She came to a halt. “Oh, no. I wouldn’t ever want that. Where would you suggest is a good place to put it, Colin?”
“You could put it here,” he said, pointing down at his feet. “It’s a hundred feet or so from the creek. The septic tank could be put up there, giving another sixty feet away from it.”
“How big is this mobile home?”
“It’s thirty-two feet wide and sixty feet long. The interior would give you 1,920 square feet of living space. A pretty large one, with lots of room. I don’t think we’ll bump into one another,” he teased, seeing the pallor of her face turn a bit pink. Was she blushing? The freckles across her nose and cheeks were endearing to him, making her look a lot younger than she probably was. He had a lot of questions for her.
“I’ve never lived in one. Our home was only fifteen hundred square feet—” She abruptly stopped talking.
“There’s a lot of room in it,” he said, seeing pain in her willow-green eyes. “Once I off-load the equipment? I’ll do the measurements and put down some orange flagging so you can see what it’s like. You can then tell me if you like it there, or you want some changes.”
Nodding, Dana was beginning to feel so overwhelmed with her good fortune that she needed time alone to deal with it. She almost blurted out the murder of her parents by a group of white supremacists, and abruptly stopped the words from coming out of her mouth. Colin was way too easy to talk with. He had a gentle side, despite that warrior energy she felt around him. She could see he was doing his best to be amenable to what her needs might be. Her father had a mind like Colin’s, and that helped her relax. She had always told her father that he should have been a civil engineer because he considered things she just never thought about.
Colin climbed into the truck, started it up, and slowly made a wide turn around the log cabin, heading out to where the Quonset hut would be located.
In another week, this place would suddenly be populated with buildings! And in the midst of it all, was her beloved little log cabin. She decided to call Mary and find out if she needed to pay rent to her for living in the mobile home. Dana didn’t want to take advantage of Mary’s generosity in any way. She would call and ask. She pulled out her cell phone and punched in the number.
“Mary here.”
“Hi, this is Dana Scott—”
“I was just gonna call you.”
Brows moving up, Dana said, “Really?”
“I want you to follow Colin Gallagher back to my son’s ranch once he gets everything off-loaded. We want you two to have dinner with us tonight. That okay with you, Dana?”
Gulping, she said, “Well . . . yes . . .”
“Then we can answer all your questions. Chase is having our head woman wrangler get a bunk cubical set up for you at our single-women wranglers’ barracks. You’ll stay there until we can get that mobile home out there and set up for you and Colin.”
“That’s . . . I mean, I really didn’t expect all this, Mary, but thank you.” She tried to take the quaver out of her voice as she turned, looking at where Colin had parked the flatbed.
“Good! We’ll see you sometime this afternoon.”
The phone clicked off and Dana shut off her smartphone, feeling as if she’d been swept up in a tornado, her whole life upended, but in a good way. She had to walk about a quarter of a mile to where Colin was taking off the chains from around the tractor. He had already pulled down a sturdy ramp so that it could be driven off the truck. As she approached, she saw the intense focus he had on his job. Knowing to never approach him from behind, she angled her walk to the middle of the road so he could see her coming.