Chapter Three
May 27
It was near noon when Logan made it back to his ranch house. He could smell an array of lunch goodies that Maddy had made for him. His heart, however, was centered on Lea Ryan. How was she? Taking off his Stetson and hooking it over a wooden peg on the wall near the door, he pushed his fingers through his flattened short black hair. The day was beautiful, a welcome change from the winter, for sure. He made his way down the hall. To his surprise, he saw Lea in the kitchen helping Maddy. They didn’t see him as they chatted amiably with one another, laughing now and then. He smiled, relief flowing through him.
“Hey, ladies,” he announced, sauntering in, “anything I can do to help?”
Lea looked up, surprised, her hands frozen over a salad she was making for lunch.
Maddy tittered. “Just come and sit down, Logan. We girls will handle the serious stuff.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, grinning. As he walked over to the kitchen table at one end of the L-shaped kitchen, he asked, “How are you doing, Lea?” He pulled out two chairs and sat down in one of them.
“Better,” Lea said, bringing the bowl of salad over to the table. “I got some good sleep. I feel more like my old self. I’m assuming my truck has been hauled off to a shop?”
“Yes,” he said, “I’ve had it taken to a garage in Silver Creek. I talked to the local insurance agent and she’s going over to examine it.” He shook his head. “It’s a scrap heap, Lea. Sorry to tell you that, but whoever hit you, meant business.”
She wiped her hands on the pink apron around her waist that Maddy had given her earlier. “I want to know what the sheriff is doing about it.”
“Lea?” Maddy called. “Go sit down. I’m bringing the sandwiches.”
Taking off the apron, Lea placed it on the counter and did as she was told. The housekeeper brought over four huge beef sandwiches. Surely, three of them must belong to Logan. She doubted she could finish eating one of them!
“Maddy? Don’t you want to join us?” Logan asked, pointing to another chair.
“Naw, you two go ahead. Lea’s dying to hear about her truck and who hit it. I’ve got to run to the grocery store for you. I’ll be back in about an hour.”
“Okay, but did you eat?” Logan pressed her.
“Of course, I did. You’re such a mother hen, Logan. I swear . . .” She turned, shaking her head, smiling, waving good-bye to them.
“Oops,” he told Lea, “now you know my nickname.”
“There’s worse ones,” Lea said, taking the salad from him and putting some into her bowl.
“I suppose,” Logan groused, a grin edging his mouth as he took the first beef sandwich onto his plate and slathered some creamy horseradish on it. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay.” She pointed to the base of her nose. “There’s swelling over it, but not much. I’m hoping Jody was wrong about me having a shiner.”
Passing the plate of sandwiches to her, he said, “It will be temporary. No headache?”
“No, thank goodness.”
“How about your whiplash?”
“Much better after taking a hot soak in the tub. I went to sleep after that.”
“Good.”
Lea munched on the sandwich. “What did the sheriff say?”
“Deputy Emma Harris took the report. If you feel up to it? I’ll take you in tomorrow morning and you can talk with her about it. She’s not ready to say much at this point. She did contact all regional garages to be on a lookout for a pickup with front or side damage. Where your pickup got hit, there’s a lot of blue paint scraped off and she’s hoping someone will come in with the vehicle and they can look for blue paint, which could tie them to the scene of the crash.”
“That’s smart,” Lea said. “My parents are worried sick, but I tried to downplay it. I don’t want to think that someone wanted to kill me.”
He frowned. “Emma said the jury is out at this point. It could have been a hit-and-run, where the driver panicked after he hit you and took off. Sometimes that happens.”
She picked up the paper napkin, wiping her lips. “I’m sorry to land on your doorstep like this. I was looking forward to the job interview.”
“So was I. We still can,” Logan said. “If you’re up to it, I’d like to spend about an hour with you on the projects I’d like you to work on and you can tour our wood shop.”
“Okay, that would be fine.”
“Sure you’re up to it?”
“The nap really helped me. I don’t feel shocky anymore, Mr. Anderson.”
“Call me Logan. Okay if I call you Lea?”
“Sure. Where did you put my tools you took out of my truck?”
“I’ve had them put into my wood shop.” He hooked a thumb over his left shoulder. Finishing one sandwich, he reached for a second one. “I looked at the chisels you use for wood sculpting, and they’re really expensive, good ones.”
“Phew, that’s good news! My father, Paddy, helped me collect my chisels over the years. They are birthday and Christmas presents.” She smiled fondly in remembrance of those times.
He warmed to her reaction. “I know you mentioned your father was responsible for you getting into his craft. Looking on your joint website, I really thought your work was incredible, Lea. I’m excited about hiring you.” He saw her cheeks grow pink, and her willow-green eyes sparkle. “I know we’ve talked on the phone, but I think you seeing what I’m going to show you, will persuade you to take on this long-term project.”
“I’m excited about it,” she said, eating her salad daintily after pouring a bit of Maddy’s special blue cheese and peppercorn dressing on it. “This is the first time I’ve ventured out of Oregon, and it’s scary and exciting all at once.”
“I was impressed that since reading those books you told me about, you wanted to come to Wyoming. Most people like to visit in the summer and then run home because our winters are pretty harsh. Around here in Silver Valley? Not so much winter. We live in a perfect spot between mountain ranges, and the weather is much milder. It’s a mini-climate, of sorts.”
He liked her short red hair that gleamed with copper, gold, and sienna highlights. The tendrils were soft around her temples. Logan felt like a giddy, excited teen. Something magical was occurring between them and he swore he could see it in her green eyes. Logan had a lot of personal questions for her, but didn’t want to go there, if at all, right now. Still, he found himself far more curious about Lea’s personal life than he could have ever imagined. Logan had decided she was Irish fey magic. Since meeting her, he couldn’t erase her from his daily demands and he couldn’t figure out why.
“Wyoming has been a dream for me,” she admitted, finishing off the salad and now focusing on the beef sandwich.
“Do you miss the ocean, though? I know Brookings sits right on the Pacific.”
“Very much. Where we live, we are surrounded by a dense forest of evergreens that grow almost down to the beaches of Brookings. Those trees always made me feel like a child among them, that in my wild imagination, they were like doting grandparents surrounding me, always there.”
“They made you feel safe?” Logan wondered, seeing her eyes go a darker jade color for a moment. She had beautiful lips and she tucked the lower one between her teeth for a moment.
“Yes . . . I guess you could say that. I honestly never thought about it in that way, but I always felt like I was being lovingly watched over.”
So, safety was an important quality to Lea? Damn, more questions, but no answers. Lea struck him as being shy and reserved, plus she felt fragile to him. Anyone would, of course, after a major crash like the one she’d just survived, so Logan wrote it off to that awful incident.
“As soon as we’re done eating, I’d like to start driving you around the ranch so you can get a feel for the land. There’s something you need to see and know about,” he suggested. Instantly, he saw her perk up, eyes bright and shining once more with burning curiosity.
“That sounds interesting,” she said.
“But fun,” he amended. “Something good is about to happen to you . . .”
* * *
Taking one of the white ranch trucks, Logan drove them down a long dirt road between major corrals. Lea had a small Canon camera with her that she held in her lap, wanting to take photos once they arrived at wherever they were going. Logan had promised that she’d want to get out and explore.
As he drove, he said, “I’m fourth generation Anderson. My family is from Scotland. We still have relatives in the Highlands and they continue to raise Highland cattle. My mother’s side of the family arrived here in Silver Creek right when silver was discovered in the mountains, west of the valley. That was a hundred and thirty years ago. My pioneering relative, Horace Anderson, was a miner and had heard about the strike. He was one of two brothers, and he took his family to America, while the other brother remained behind to continue the raising of Scottish cattle. Horace had just married Evangeline and they were in their late teens when they headed West. Once out here in Wyoming, Horace found out that mining wasn’t for him. He turned in the silver he’d found, sold the mine, and used the money to buy the Wild Goose Ranch. At that time, it was just ten thousand acres without anything on it except dense forest, good water sources, and plenty of grass. They turned from mining to a lumber business because everyone needed wood to build their mine shafts. He is the one who did something amazing that’s become a part of our ranching history.” Logan took a side road that led up to a series of gentle, rounded hills. Parking, he got out and Lea followed him.
“In this grove, there’s a thousand acres of tiger maple that Horace and Evangeline planted.” He moved his index finger from right to left.
Lea’s mouth fell open as she saw the trees were just leafing out. And yes, no question, they were maple. “They planted all of these?” she asked, stunned.
“Yes.” Logan smiled and turned, watching her amazed expression as she absorbed the grove. “The hardwoods like maple, oak, Greene’s mountain ash, quaking aspen, and paper birch were needed for mine shafts. There was already lodgepole pine and blue spruce on other areas of the ranch property. They’re softwoods and not designed to take the weight a hardwood can in a mine. There was already mountain maple here, and a lot of it, enough to supply the miners. It was Evangeline who got the tiger maple seeds and she spent ten years planting these hills, which became a grove by itself. Tiger maple was in huge demand by furniture makers everywhere on the East Coast because of the beauty of the grain. There was already a quaking aspen grove”—he pointed to the south—“and Greene’s mountain ash, to the southeast, local trees that grew well here. Horace later created a huge five-thousand-acre quaking aspen grove, and to the southwest, paper birch, which is a hardwood in high demand for furniture making, as well.”
Lea whispered, “Wow . . . this is a wood carver and carpenter’s dream come true.” She smiled over at him.
“That’s why I wanted to bring you out here. We’re going to visit each of these groves this afternoon. It was Evangeline who, after twenty years when the trees matured, made connections with some of the finest furniture makers in the East for all of this lumber. Horace had a sawmill built, hired good people, and pretty soon, it was a booming business that made them richer than any silver mine would have. As a result, he bought thirty thousand more acres of land to add to what they’d begun with. It became the largest property in Silver Valley.”
“But what a lot of hard work.”
Nodding, Logan said, “No question.”
“Then, when did the cattle enter the picture?”
“Horace and Evangeline had one son, Abner. He married a local girl, Abigail, whose father had a big cattle ranch. Together, they kept the lumber business, but expanded another part of the forty thousand acres. Abigail was a cowgirl and knew everything about raising beef, creating pipe fencing because it withstood winters here in Wyoming and was less labor intensive than constantly repairing wooden fences. They are the ones who built the three huge barns you now see at the main ranch area, down below the hill where the ranch house sits. Their son, Frank, my grandfather, learned the lumber and cattle business. Each successive generation has enriched the family ranch in one way or another.”
“Do you still sell the lumber to the East Coast furniture makers?”
“Yes. I’ve split up the two. You’ve seen two other buildings about half a mile from the main ranch house: One is for my lumber employees and the other is for our cattle employees. Barry, my foreman, oversees it all and he’s a good manager. His father was a lumberjack in Washington State, so he grew up around sawmills, cutting down trees, and knows the lumber business. His mother was a ranch girl, and they lived on a small spread in the Cascade mountains of Washington. He got to know both businesses and luckily, my grandfather Frank found him, hired him, and the rest is history.”
“But you have to know the businesses as well,” Lea said, gazing at the magnificent stands of tiger maple.
“Oh,” he said, scratching his hair and then settling his Stetson back on his head. “My father, Mike, took me out riding with him at three years old. My mother, Jessica, is an artist. She is not only a painter, but a wood sculptor, which led her to teach me about the lumber business. I got good training.” He grinned fondly.
“Is this what you wanted to do?” she wondered.
“Yeah. My mother says I have more of her genes than my dad’s. She taught me woodworking and furniture-making when I was a kid, and I love it to this day. Most of the things that I’ve made, when I have the time, are utilitarian, like furniture.” He gave her a warm look. “Your portfolio of wood art reminds me a lot of my mother’s work. I’d like to show you a book that was written about her talents.”
“Oh,” Lea said, “I’d love to see it!”
“She’s very famous,” he said proudly. “And every once in a while, my parents will fly up from Phoenix, where they live now, and she’ll take a truck and visit the different tree groves, collecting limbs that have fallen, for future art pieces. She’ll send it by UPS and she’ll have enough wood of various grains and colors to last her another six months.”
“What a wonderful background you have.”
“I’m proud of my family,” he said, “because they have been environmentalists from the time they set foot onto the Wild Goose land. We work with the federal government and we now have a pack of timber wolves running free and wild on the property. Our creeks are cold, clear, and unpolluted. We have an annual trout fisherman’s championship here on the ranch in early September. It draws trout fishermen from around the world.”
“Wow,” Lea murmured, impressed. “Your family does so much, and yet they were all sensitive to feeding the land, not just taking from it or ravaging it. That should be known.”
“We are well-known,” he assured her. “The only fly in the ointment is there, to the south.” He pointed to the area. “A guy by the name of Harvey Polcyn, who owns Polcyn Natural Gas Drilling. He’s been in central Wyoming for the last ten years, fracking.”
Scowling, Lea muttered, “Fracking? That’s bad for everyone.”
Snorting, he put his arms across his chest, staring darkly to the south. “The bad news is that a lot of these ranchers do not own mineral or water rights to their land. And if they don’t, Polcyn comes in and buys the mineral rights and starts fracking, tearing up their land, destroying it, and then moves on.”
“Did those ranchers willingly sell Polcyn the rights to do that?”
“Hell no. We’re a pretty tight lot in the valley. We have an association and no one wants fracking in this area. Especially me. Geologically the valley is built on sedimentary rock, which is porous, consisting of limestone and old ocean beds from millions of years ago. There is natural gas trapped in the seams, but as they push charged water down into these holes, they destroy the strata and that causes earthquakes. And the water they use gets into the ground water, putting dangerous chemicals into it, poisoning the people who drink it. We have ten wells on our land and I don’t want them poisoned, or our cattle or our groves of trees, destroyed.”
“You said you had mineral and water rights, though.”
“Yes, we do.” He shook his head. “Polcyn’s a snake and manipulative as hell. He won’t stop at anything to buy up a ranch and take it for fracking if it owns the mineral and water rights. We’ve seen him doing it south of us in another county. He’s like a cancer spreading across the land, and it’s frightening because he’s very rich and powerful. Most of the ranchers and farmers in this valley make a living, but they aren’t rich. We’re watching him and his progress. I’ve already had six different Realtors want to buy my ranch, but I’m not selling. We’ve found Polcyn hires these Realtors and they go to ranchers with a song and dance about having someone who wants to buy their property for good money. And after the rancher sells, then the seller finds out it was Polcyn who was the buyer behind the scenes, and that his land will be nothing more than fracked and destroyed belowground. Another thing he does is buy up the mineral rights on any property, even if the rancher doesn’t want him on his land. He fracks it anyway. It’s not right, but the laws are not on the side of the property owner.”
“Thank goodness your family does own them, though,” she said, hearing the anger and frustration in his tone.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s get to the other groves. I don’t want to tire you out on your first day here.”
“Oh,” she said, keeping in stride with him, “this invigorates me. Being out in Nature, being with the trees, is like the best medicine for my soul.”
Startled, Logan halted, staring at her. “What did you say?”
Lea repeated it, wondering if she’d said something wrong. The look on Logan’s face was one of stunned amazement.
“I’ll be,” he muttered, looking away and then staring at her hard for a moment. “My mother has said those very same words.”
Laughing a little, Lea said, “I’ve got to meet her, then. We sound like kindred souls.”
“What are the chances, though?” Logan asked, turning and beginning to walk toward the truck once again. “That’s just not what you hear people say every day.”
“I was raised in the woods. I grew up with old-growth forests, Logan. They were my teachers. My mother and I used to walk through them because she said it was good for my soul. That it was healing. I could feel it, Logan. Just like, well”—she turned on her heel, gesturing toward the tiger maple grove—“being here, with all of them. It feels so good to be among them!”
“A tree soul is what my mother said we have as a family.”
“That’s nice,” she said, catching up to him. “Tree soul. I like the sound of it. And it’s true. Your family started with the trees on the land, gave back to them, and always cared for them so your land wasn’t denuded and then degraded by rain and snow cutting into the soil of those hills.”
He shrugged and opened the truck door for her. “Your family has a tree soul, too.”
“My father told me that you’d contacted him about the work you needed done.”
Shutting the door, starting the truck, Logan drove slowly and turned it around. “I didn’t even know that his daughter was a wood artist,” he admitted, “until I talked at length with him. He is very proud of your art, Lea, and urged me to look at your work on the website. When I saw it, I called him back. He didn’t want the job for a lot of reasons, but he said you were available.” He looked over at her as he drew the truck to a stop where the road intersected with the highway. “He told me you are a master carpenter as well, and I saw some of the furniture you’d made for several of his clients. I was very impressed.”
“Thanks,” she said. “That means a lot coming from a family like yours. How proud you must be of your heritage, Logan. I’d be busting my buttons over what you’re caretaking for this generation.”
“Oh,” he chuckled, “you’ve only seen some of it.”
“You mean there’s more than just these groves?” she gasped.
“Oh, yes. As we drive back toward the ranch house later, we’ll take a side road to another place, one that was created by Trudy and Frank Anderson, my grandparents. They’re gone now, but they left us an amazing legacy. I’ll show it to you pretty soon.”
“No hints?” she teased, grinning.
“No. Surprises, nice ones, are always worth keeping that way. I want to see the look on your face.”
“Ohhh, sounds exciting!”
For the next hour, Logan felt a level of happiness that had evaporated at age twenty-three. He absorbed Lea’s excitement as he showed her each grove, five thousand acres of a specific type of tree. He felt proud of his forebears and all their hard work because it was his generation that was truly reaping profits from them as never before. There were no longer silver mines, nor was there a demand for hardwood to create the adits—tunnels—in order to hunt for the metal. The lumber was now considered top grade and furniture makers were still buying, but now, it was shipped around the world.
As they rounded a long, flat curve, he pointed ahead. “There’s the surprise.” He parked beside a group of trees that lay in neat rows. “This is our fruit orchard, Lea. My great-grandparents, Abigail and Abner, are responsible for it. And Abigail was the one who conceived the idea and was mostly responsible for planting the first fruit trees. With so much of Wyoming buried in long, hard winters, a lot of places in the state don’t have the ninety-day growing season fruits and vegetables need in order to ripen.”
“But they do here.” Lea nodded. “What kind of fruit?”
“Montmorency sour cherry and sweet cherry. Both are hardwoods, and Abigail did a lot of research and talking to experts about what were the best cherry trees for the area. And because they are both hardwoods? When their fruiting time was waning, the trees would be brought down and taken to the saw mill, their hardwood in high demand.”
“I love cherries,” Lea sighed. “My mom makes the best sour cherry pie.”
“Grab the recipe. Maddy is crazy about fruit pies and she makes them when the fruit is in season.”
Smiling, Lea looked at the many trees and the different flowering blossoms on them. “What other fruit?”
“We have Contender and Reliance peach trees, McIntosh apples, Parker pears, Stanley plums, and Sungold apricots. We have a special foreman who runs the place and the employees. We mainly sell the fruit to local and regional grocery stores. My grandmother used to sell jams and jellies, as well. We took fruit for ourselves and our employees, but sold the rest. If the fruit is bruised, we work with a regional volunteer kitchen out of Thermopolis, to the north of us, and it’s distributed to poor families throughout the area. Nothing, and I mean nothing, goes to waste around here. If we have fruit that is too bruised, then we compost it along with other vegetables in our huge compost bins behind each barn. Makes great, nutritious soil and it gets used and put back into our orchard or vegetable gardens.”
“This is an amazing place, it truly is,” she said, sitting back, enjoying the pink and white blossoms for as far as the eye could see.
“It was my idea to bring in local honey with local bees.” He put the truck in gear and he drove down the side road.
Lea saw at least a hundred beehives all in neat, clean rows off to one side of the road.
Parking, Logan said, “A lot of hives are collapsing around the world, but we have an excellent beekeeper, and she knows her business. You’ll probably meet her at some point. We use the honey in lieu of white sugar or chemical sugars here on the spread. The rest of our honey is sold regionally. We also donate twenty percent of it to poor families, so that they get some, too.”
“I love honey,” Lea said. “My mom cooks and bakes with it. Funny, how our two families are so much alike.”
“Indeed,” Logan agreed, giving her a wry look. “Let’s go home. I want to show you where you’ll be working if you decide you want the job.”
“I can hardly wait to see it,” she admitted.
* * *
Logan led her to the double-car garage. It stood off to one side of the ranch house. He watched Lea’s jaw drop as he led her through a side door and into the wood shop. The concrete floor was painted a cream color to take advantage of the four skylights above, which allowed more light into the cavernous area. There were two long, wide tables with different types of saws on them, and other tools to make anything from a wood sculpture to an elegant piece of furniture.
In one corner, his wranglers had brought in her huge metal tool box, having taken it out of her damaged vehicle earlier. Beside it, on a stout metal table, was her black nylon bag that contained all her professional wood-sculpting tools. She immediately went over to each of them, opening them up, making sure nothing had been broken or bent during that crash.
Seeing her expression go from tension to happiness made Logan smile to himself as he stood off to one side, allowing her to take in the enormity of this shop.
“This,” Lea said, slowly turning around, taking it all in, “is an incredible, thoughtful, and well laid-out shop. It’s woodworking heaven to someone like me.”
“Sure is,” he murmured. Motioning to the metal shelves along three of the walls, he said, “There’s plenty of work space in here for you, as well. And there’s a specially made desk with good light, plus an architect’s desk that you can raise and lower when you’re working on a design.”
Lea wandered over to the corner. The huge desk was U-shaped, and a comfortable chair sat in the middle of it. She could work and look out across the entire clean facility. She ran her hand lightly across the blond-oak desk. “This is old, an antique.”
“It was Horace Anderson’s desk and it’s over a hundred years old,” he said. “He used wood from an oak tree that had recently died of old age, took the inner lumber, which was still good, and he made that U-shaped desk. No one had thought to design a desk quite like that and it was the talk of the valley. People would drive over on Sunday, after church services, in their buggies, just to look at it and admire its design.” He grinned. “I’ve got photos of it from one of our family albums. He also made the drawers on the right and left of it. You’ll see the quality of his dovetails on each corner.”
Gently removing one of the drawers, Lea turned it and saw the exquisitely created dovetails. “He was a master carpenter and he paid attention to all the details,” she agreed, running the tip of her finger over several of them, which were sanded down to perfection and smooth as a baby’s butt.
Logan wandered over. “Do you think you would be happy working out here, Lea?”
She eased the drawer back into place and looked around. “Very much so. It’s warm in the wood shop, too. That’s pretty unusual.”
“There’s a gas heater in every room of the house, this shop, and the garage. In the wood shop, I did a renovation on it when I took over running the ranch from my parents. We insulated the attic and all four walls, and put drywall over it. It’s a lot warmer now, and it’s especially comfortable in the winter. You can keep it at a temperature that’s good for you while you create out here.”
Shaking her head, she gave him a grin. “My dad’s workplace has no heat. I grew up working out there with him, no matter how cold and damp it got in the winter, but it never snowed like it does here. This place is like a dream come true for me: heat, lots of wonderful light, and plenty of space to move around, not to mention the work tables, which are to die for.”
“Did you see the coffee dispenser over there?” He pointed to the end of one long shelf where a coffeemaker sat, with all the fixings.
“No, but that looks great. I drink a lot of coffee when I’m in my design mode.”
“You can have all you want.” He pointed to the wall next to the desk. “There’s a phone, a landline, that you can use. And there’s a desktop computer and printer for you to use as well. I have a special printer over there.” He pointed to the other side, where a large printer that was three feet wide, stood. “I’ve modernized what I do out here. I’m not a master carpenter like you, but I like building furniture when I want some quiet time. You can draw a design using some special software that’s in the desktop computer, send it to this large, wide printer, and you’ll have a working map that you can use in building or creating whatever you want.”
She walked over to the printer. It had a clear plastic cover to protect it from sawdust. The desktop computer did, as well. Anything electronic was wisely protected. “This is going to make my life a lot easier,” she admitted.
Cocking his head, hands in his pockets, he said, “So? Would you like the job? Creating one-of-a-kind cabinets in the kitchen? Reworking that staircase and rail? It’s going to be a minimum of six months to do all of that, maybe up to nine months, depending upon how it goes.” Never had Logan wanted something more than what was standing in front of him right now. He didn’t try to dig and find out why he felt that way. “Will you allow me to hire you and your artistry?”
Lea looked around the large space one more time. “I’d love nothing more than to work in here. You have a wonderful family history and this workshop is a testament to that. Yes, I’d love to work for you, Logan.”
His heart swelled and he tamed his emotional reaction of joy, trying to remain serious and unreadable. “That’s great.”
“Where would I live? I saw some rooms for rent in Silver Creek.”
“Oh, no,” he said quickly. “You’ll have your bedroom in the main house on the first floor. You’ll eat with me, and Maddy will take care of the rest. I want you comfortable. I know from trying to do artistic pieces, how much the surrounding environment plays on your senses. I want you happy, feeling at home, and looking forward to coming out here five days a week. You’ll have your weekends off. You do whatever you want to do. Don’t worry about using the landline phone to call your parents or talk to your friends. There’s no overhead for you, Lea. You’ll be treated by us as a member of our big family here on the Wild Goose. How does that sound?”
“That’s such a generous offer, Logan. I’ll take you up on it, but I promise not to abuse the privileges you’ve given me, either.”
“You don’t strike me as that type,” he offered quietly. “You’ll have a ranch truck of your own to use while you’re here. I’m sure you’ll want to go explore those groves for the wood color or grain that you’ll be looking for.”
She grimaced. “I’m going to need a vehicle for sure. Mine is totaled. I have to wait to hear from my insurance agent about a replacement vehicle.”
“Barry will assign a ranch truck to you today. You can use it on and off the property.”
“I’m hoping that in less than a month,” Lea said grimly, “the insurance company will reimburse me for my loss and I can buy another one.”
“For right now, you have wheels.”
“Thanks, Logan. I . . . well . . . this is my first foray out into the real world and I didn’t expect such kindness from an employer.”
“Stick around,” he teased. “Ask the people who work for the ranch. They’re treated like family, Lea, not employees. The Anderson clan has always had good hearts, and were kind and thoughtful people.”
“I can see that. I think the first thing I need to do is listen to what you want for those kitchen cabinet doors.”
“We’ll do that tomorrow after breakfast,” he said. Trying to still his inner happiness over her taking the long-term job, he added, “I’ll leave you now. Dinner’s at dusk. That’s how we do it around here: up at dawn, dinner at dusk, and night is bedtime.”
“I can handle that,” she said, giving him a grateful look.
“If there’s anything you want to eat? Let Maddy know. She’ll want to know your favorite foods and meals, too, as well as what you hate to eat.”
Laughing a little, Lea said, “I’ll eat just about anything, Logan, so don’t worry about me.” She looked at the watch on her wrist. “I’ll see you at dusk for dinner. Both start with a D.” She met his smile. Her heart did a little bounce and she tried to ignore how blatantly good-looking he was in a rough, cowboy kind of way. Now, he was her boss.