Lenore fired up her machine, muttering to herself. She moved a lot slower than Brandon would have, but she got the top cut made, then the bottom cut, and she turned off the saw and wiggled the notch out with her hand. She held it and beamed at him.
He chuckled. “I like watching you learn new things,” he said.
She moved around to the back of the tree, easily making the cut that toppled it forward.
As the leaves rustled and settled to the ground, Lenore turned off her saw and said, “This is the best thing I’ve ever learned how to do.”
Brandon laughed. “I’m going to find you all over the homestead with a chainsaw now, aren’t I?”
“You bet you are,” she said with a grin.
“Two down,” he said with a sigh, despite her enthusiasm. “Only one hundred to go.” He faced the forest just as Lenore came to his side and bumped him with her hip.
“Not one hundred,” she said. “You only have to do fifty. And I’ll do the other fifty.”
With that, she moved to the next tree, pulled on her saw, and started back to work.
Brandon moved out of the way, ducking his head to hide whatever might show on his face. Hereallyliked watching Lenore work. It was rare to find someone with such a hardworking and determined spirit. She wanted to learn, and she picked things up quickly. He loved seeing her get joy and satisfaction from doing something she hadn’t done before.
They traded off, moving from tree to tree until they’d felled the front row. Then Brandon showed her how to get the limbs off and debark the trunks. He’d seal them with a weatherproofing coating before he built the chicken coop.
As he watched Lenore finish a log, pick it up, and put it in the pile that was ready to be used for building, he couldn’t help remembering what it felt like to hold her in his arms—if only for a brief few minutes.
If his phone hadn’t rung, he would have kissed her. Then he wondered if he’d be brave enough to do that on their date tonight.
He’d never kissed a woman on the first date before, but he’d also never lived next door to and worked alongside the woman he was going out on a first date with either.
So anything was possible.
13
Lenore could not believe that she was getting ready for a date.
Brandon had only been on the homestead for ten days, and everything about it felt different. They’d prepped the land for the chicken coop today and cut and prepared all of the wood to build it.
Because of Penny Walker’s death, Brandon had not pressure-washed the barn yesterday. He said he’d get up early tomorrow and do it so it would be ready for them on Wednesday.
Lenore knew things rarely ran on schedule around a homestead, and yet, at precisely six-thirty, Brandon knocked on her door.
“It’s me, Lenny,” he called as he entered.
Lenore looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of her bedroom door. She owned exactly one dress and one skirt, and she hadn’t wanted to wear either of them tonight. When she’d asked Brandon where he was taking her for dinner, he’d come back at her with a question of his own.
“What do you like?”
Lenore hadn’t even hesitated to tell him that she rarely went out to eat, and anything would be fine. He said he’d picksomething amazing, and she currently wore a black pair of jeans and a short-sleeved sweater the color of bright, ripe raspberries.
She’d washed her hair with a gallon of room-temperature water—which could either be a good thing or a bad thing—and thankfully, her hair had cooperated with the blow dryer and lay in neat, straight strands over her shoulders and down her back.
She’d brushed on a little bit of mascara and touched on a tiny bit of lip gloss, and she really didn’t know what else to do. So she left the bedroom and found Brandon in the main part of the house, sitting on the couch with both dogs practically on his lap.
“You guys,” she said, and both Admiral and Susie-Q just looked at her like,What? We’re not doing anything wrong.
She giggled as Brandon smiled and rose to his feet. “Wow,” he said, his eyes scanning down to her boots and back. “You look incredible.”
He took her hand with such practiced ease that she knew he’d dated far more than she had.
“I’m a little nervous,” she said.
