She’d spent the day getting to know these cowboys, and they were all amazing. She stepped into Finn and gave him a hug. “It means so much to me, Finn. Really. Thank your wife and kids too.”
She approached Henry. “Tell Angel hello and thank you so much for coming.”
“Anytime,” Henry said easily.
She moved over to Colt, and because he wasn’t married, the hug was a little more awkward, but she still managed to say, “Thank you for your time, Colt. I hope it doesn’t put you back too much at the apple orchard.”
“I’m still going to come tomorrow,” he said. “And bring you the hoses you need.”
“You don’t need to do that,” Lenore said. “The tank doesn’t work.”
“I think I can hook it up to that leak, and we can at least run it to the garden.”
Lenore nodded because she was suddenly too tired to argue. “Okay,” she said.
Plenty more thank-yous and waves and goodbyes were said as she and Brandon walked everyone around to the front of the cabin and got them on their way.
When it was just the two of them, Brandon reached over and threaded his fingers through hers. “Not a bad day,” he said. “Even if we didn’t get water in the cabin, it was a good idea.”
“At the very least,” Lenore said, her mind now stuck on what it might cost to drill a well.
To be honest, it would probably cost as much as a five-thousand-gallon water tank, as those ran between five and six thousand dollars. If she could get somebody to come drill a well—even at fifty dollars per foot and they had to drill down one hundred feet, that would be five thousand dollars.
And where are you going to get five thousand dollars?she asked herself.
She turned toward Brandon. “Thank you so much for today,” she said.
“Of course,” he murmured.
She tipped up onto her toes and kissed him, hoping he knew how much he meant to her and how grateful she really was—and that she had started to fall for him. She pulled away and snuggled into his chest, her arms wrapping around his back. “Would you take me to church with you next week?”
“Yeah, of course,” Brandon said, a touch of surprise in his voice. “I also wanted to ask you something about Thanksgiving.”
“All right,” Lenore said.
“It’s such a long drive,” he said. “And I was thinking we could stay on the ranch on Thursday night. We’ve just got the chickenshere, and we can make sure that they have enough feed and water until we get back on Friday.”
Lenore pulled away and looked up at him, trying to decide how to answer. A slip of trepidation moved through her—but it felt an awful lot like excitement as well. “What about the dogs?”
“They can come,” he said. “I’ll take Dumpling to my cabin, and they can hang out there too.”
She nodded. “Where would I stay?”
“With Dawson or Caroline,” he said easily. “Or Duke and Zona. Or Dwayne will be back at his parents’ house, and I’ll have an extra bedroom. You can stay with me.”
She grinned at him. “Sounds like something to be thankful for.” She couldn’t believe the words had come out of her mouth, but she sure liked Brandon. Besides, she wouldn’t be sleeping in the same bed as him.
She stepped back, dropping her hand to his. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go spend the evening in my cabin. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I have electricity.”
24
Brandon released Lenore’s hand to make the turn from the highway to the dirt lane that led up the hill and onto the ranch where he’d grown up. Sudden anxiety flooded him, making his stomach swoop and tighten.
“So this is it,” he said as he crested the gentle slope. He came to a slow stop and let Lenore drink in the property in front of them. It didn’t look as chewed up and bruised as her homestead, because there hadn’t been any new construction or changes at Hidden Hills in a while now.
Her homestead would absorb the changes too. Right now, there was just a lot of new earth that had been overturned, and new structures that needed the grass to grow up around them, and recent developments that made everything seem a bit…harsher.
“Duke and Zona live in that house there on the right. My momma and daddy’s homestead is up ahead on the left.”
