Lenore nodded, her mouth thinning into a tight line. “That’s fine.”
Brandon prayed she would be comfortable with him and not worry too much about the state of the homestead. “I’d also like you to be really open with me,” he said, immediately clearing his throat. “I want to know what’s a priority for you. Because like I said when I first came—I don’t think we’ll be able to get everything done in three months. We’ll have to choose the things that are the most important.”
She nodded. When her gaze came back to his, she wore a measure of vulnerability that hadn’t been there before. “I’d say this chicken coop,” she said, reaching out to touch the post of it.“I want it to be strong and sure and protect my birds. I can raise them for meat and eggs. They’re one of the most vital pieces of livestock a homestead can have, and I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t keep chickens.”
Brandon scratched out a note about the chicken coop. “I’d say the barn,” he said, turning toward it. “It’s where you store everything—chicken feed, hay, supplies. We can put horses in there during storms.”
He turned back to her. “Do you have a root cellar?”
“No,” she said.
“I think we could probably make one, maybe on the north side of your house. I’d want to go look over there. I’m not sure what you’ve got in the back.”
“I’ve got a deck.”
“Like mine.” He grinned at her like twinning was winning. “If we could dig under there and make root cellars, you’d have a way to store food year-round.”
Lenore nodded. He wondered what she was thinking, as he knew he was thinking long-term though he’d only be here for a few months.
“I know you want enclosures for more livestock,” he said. “But I think we should focus on solar power and water. If you had power and water, you could grow anything here. You could doanythinghere. You could stay on this land forever.”
Lenore reached up and swiped her eyes. “Power and water sound good.” Her voice broke on the last word, and Brandon watched as she lost the battle against her tears. Her whole face crumpled, crushing Brandon’s heart with it.
“Sorry,” she said in a tiny voice, madly wiping at the tears, but they just kept coming.
Brandon had quite a bit of experience with women—some who cried. But even if he hadn’t, he knew exactly what to do. Hetucked the pencil into the top of the clipboard and opened his arms.
Lenore walked straight into his chest. She fit against him easily, and her arms went around his back and held him tightly as she wept.
A sigh moved through his body. He controlled it as it came out of his mouth, so she wouldn’t hear. Zona’s last words to him before she’d left yesterday ran through his mind:Be good out there.
He’d scoffed—because he was going to be amazing out here at the homestead. But he knew what she really meant.
It was that he better be goodto Lenore.
And he’d better not start something with her that he couldn’t finish.
Brandon immediately thought of the projects he might start and not be able to finish, but they quickly disappeared. Because what he really needed to figure out was whether he was on a female fast…or not.
9
Lenore stood in Brandon’s arms, surprisingly comfortable within the strength of his embrace. She wasn’t surprised that she had broken down into tears, only that it had happened within the first five minutes on the first day of having him there.
He simply had no idea how much it meant to her that he had come. That he had stayed. That he had signed that contract. Even that he wanted to start early.
She finally managed to compose herself enough to step away. Brandon released her easily, and Lenore quickly wiped her eyes again. They seemed to be leaking so much, and she couldn’t get rid of the wetness. She lifted the hem of her shirt and quickly dried her face.
Brandon said nothing and barely gave her any room to breathe. After a moment, as Lenore took a deep breath, her emotions stormed through her in the strangest of ways. He switched the clipboard to his other hand and turned to face the chicken coop. She did the same, startling as his hand brushed hers.
A moment later, he slipped his fingers between hers and said, “Just hold on to me for a minute.”
Lenore’s chest tightened all over again, as if someone had wound a rubber band around her body and kept twisting and twisting andtwisting. The only thing preventing her from spiraling into sobs was the warm, steady strength of Brandon’s hand in hers.
She drew another breath, her throat tight but her chest relaxing. With one more breath, she was able to open her mouth and say, “I’d love it if we could fix up the chicken coop and get more birds here. That would be a top priority for me.”
Brandon nodded, and Lenore caught the movement in her peripheral vision.
“I think it’s smart to have the barn be one of our very top priorities,” she said. “I know it needs to be weatherproofed and cleaned out. There are probably some supplies in there that we can use for other projects.”
