Chapter Four
May 30
Logan tried to quell his excitement at seeing Lea once again. His news wasn’t all good, but a mix.
Taking the steps to the ranch house, he took off his Stetson as he went inside. Maddy was in the kitchen preparing dinner for tonight. She gave him a wave hello and then returned to what she was doing at the counter.
At ten a.m. the chill was off the valley and welcome May warmth was starting to come in to replace it. He wore a rust-colored goose-down vest over his long-sleeved chambray shirt, stuffing his elk-skin gloves into the back pocket of his Levi’s.
“Is Lea in the shop?” he asked.
“No, in her bedroom office. She’s working on finalizing those drawings she’s been making for the kitchen cabinets,” Maddy replied.
“Okay, thanks.” He headed toward the hall. Her bedroom door was open and he called her name as he stood in front of it. No answer. Something told him she’d left her office and gone down to the wood shop.
“Hey,” he called, entering the shop from the side door, seeing Lea at one of the long tables, many pieces of paper spread out from one end to the other. “Maddy said you were finishing up the drawings. Can I look?” Even though they were living in the same house, he rarely saw her unless it was at meals. She had been hard at work drawing up designs for the doors to the cabinets in the kitchen. He was curious about the designs, but didn’t make a pest of himself by leaning over her shoulder to see what she was working on. She wore a loose pair of jeans, dark blue tennis shoes, and a long-sleeved, gold waffle tee, setting off the color of her shining hair, bringing out the coppery freckles across her nose and cheeks. She looked up, surprised.
“I didn’t expect to see you until supper,” she murmured, straightening, giving him a smile of welcome. Lea pushed away several tendrils from her cheek.
“I had some news about who hit your truck,” he said. Closing the door, he added, “I didn’t want to wait until tonight to tell you.” He saw Lea’s brows pull into a frown and she lost her smile. He knew she had been worrying about who had done this to her. Unfortunately, his answer wasn’t going to satisfy her much, or him.
“Oh?” She wiped off her hands on a nearby terry cloth towel. “Did Sheriff Seabert call you?”
“Yes.” He halted at the other side of the table, wanting to look at all her charcoal drawings for the cabinets, but resisted, holding her concerned gaze, her eyes turning a darker green. “They found the truck that hit you, and it belongs to Polcyn, the fracker. It was discovered by a hunter on a back road about forty miles from here, and he called it in. A day before your truck was hit, Polcyn’s office called in to the sheriff’s office and reported one of their white trucks was missing. It had been stolen and no one had seen who had taken it.”
“Then I was hit by a guy who stole their truck?”
He shrugged, giving her a grim look. “Maybe. Polcyn would do anything to buy this ranch out from under me. He’s worth a billion dollars, with fracking companies all across the Midwest, and now, in Wyoming. I don’t like saying this, but I think Polcyn hired someone to pretend to steal one of their trucks, in order to do his dirty work.”
Her frown grew deeper as she absorbed his explanation. “He hired a hit on me?”
“It probably wasn’t meant to be you specifically, would be my guess,” Logan said heavily. “Just anyone driving in through the front gate was the target for that morning. Another harassment warning shot over my bow that I need to let Polcyn buy our ranch.”
“Damn,” she muttered, rubbing her brow. “What other ‘warning shots’ has he done to you, Logan?”
“Many of our herds of beef cattle are in very remote pastures, far from the main hub here at the ranch house. The watering tanks are located in each pasture for the cattle. Last year, one of the tanks was purposely poisoned by an unknown person, and it killed twenty of my cattle.”
Gasping, Lea made a sad sound. “That’s horrible! Were you able to prove that he’d done it?”
“Unfortunately, no. Polcyn has money to hire the thugs who do his bidding and keep him out of the picture, even though he’s an accessory to the act. I just can’t prove it, and it’s driving me crazy.”
“That’s horrible! Oh, those poor animals, dying in such a way.”
“It really upset me. The sheriff came out and dusted the water tank, but found nothing. Not even shoe prints.”
“What about tire tracks? If it was an out-of-the-way pasture, wouldn’t they have to drive to reach it?”
“Yes, but we have a decent dirt road around the entire acreage. The sheriff did find tire tracks leading across and between some rolling hills that they’d taken to reach the main road. But despite a lot of footwork on their part, they couldn’t match them with a specific truck in the area. They did go over to Polcyn’s maintenance area and look at every truck’s tires, but none of them matched the tread they found on my property.”
“Could you put video cameras in each of those areas to protect your cattle?”
He scratched his head and sighed. “I’ve thought about it. But that’s a lot of money and time to install something on that scale. I may have to, though.”
“What else has he done that you know of?” she demanded.
“Oh, we’d find the tires on our ranch trucks with nails in them. We’d go to the maintenance area to pick the vehicles up, and when we’d drive them for the day, they’d go flat. Again, no one saw it happen. Our maintenance yard is always open. I don’t lock it up. Never had to, until this started happening. Now we have lights and the place is locked up with concertina wire on the top of the fencing around the entire area.”
“But if you’d had video cameras there? You might have caught them or him, in the act.”
“You’re right,” he admitted tiredly. “This is Polcyn’s doing and I know it, even if I can’t prove it. When I took over the ranch, my parents showed me the geology report that they’d had made years earlier, because we own the mineral rights. It showed a lot of potential for natural gas beneath the ranch. They were worried about fracking, which had just started when they left the ranch in my hands. I’ve been watching Polcyn and his thugs slowly moving from southern Wyoming, northward. This area”—he gestured around the shop—“is one of the richest untouched natural gas areas in the state. That’s why he’s after it.”
“That’s why he wants your ranch so badly,” she said, anger in her tone.
“Yes.” He moved his shoulders, lessening the tension he carried in them. “So, Polcyn has his truck back. The sheriff put forensics on it to check it out, but they found nothing. Whoever had been driving it was wearing gloves, so no one could lift his fingerprints. They found no DNA evidence either.”
“Maybe if you’d had video cameras at the front gate area, we might have seen who it was,” she said.
“Yeah, it’s time to do something like that,” Logan admitted. “There’s a small company in town who does this kind of thing. I think I’ll mosey on into Silver Creek tomorrow sometime, and talk with them.”
“It’s going to be a big expense,” Lea agreed, “but I think it will be a big help.”
“I’ll write it off as a business expense,” he said. “Hey, Maddy said you were done with your drawings. Can I see them?” He wanted to talk about something that was positive.
Lea nodded. “Yes, come around the table. These are just rough-draft charcoal sketches, something I did quickly, to give you an idea of where I’m going with the themes we talked about earlier.”
She had rubbed her palms down the sides of her jeans, telling Logan that she was nervous about showing them to him. “That’s fine,” he said, wanting her to relax. He walked around the table.
“It’s best to start here,” she said, pointing to different sketches on butcher paper at one end of the table. She gestured down the length of it. “Each square has the left and right doors to the cabinet,” Lea explained. “I started near the kitchen entrance door and worked my way around the L-shaped kitchen to give you a feel for what I was doing.”
He marveled at her quick, clean, and concise drawings. They were the size of the cabinet doors. “Wow,” he murmured, leaning over the first set of doors, “this is incredible.” And it was. It showed a pond with cattails and three ducks, a drake and two hens, taking off from it. “That afternoon we spent talking about the scenes on each set of doors,” he said, twisting a look in her direction, “you have translated the idea beautifully, Lea.”
“Oh, good,” she said, placing her hand against her chest. “I was worried that my interpretation of your concept, the stories you told about each set of doors, might not be what you wanted.”
“No,” he murmured, studying the pictures, “it’s perfect, Lea.” Just like she was perfect for him, but Logan refused to go there.
Her face lost some tension, a little hope showed in her expression, instead. He moved to the second set. It was the same pond, but now there were two Canadian geese coming in for a landing, one on each door. “This is perfect. You’ve used the pond as a center point. I like that a lot.”
“Well, your first three cabinets were about that pond. I loved the stories you told about it and I’ve been out to it twice, getting it right so the wood sculpture repeats what is out there in real life.”
He grinned, studying the drawing of the third set of doors. It showed two trumpeter swans, which came to Wyoming to have their young. “These trumpeters look great,” he murmured. “I especially like the babies tucked up under the mother’s wings, and dad is on the other door, keeping watch. Well done.”
“Thanks. I didn’t realize the trumpeter swan is the largest swan in the world. It has at least a six-foot wingspan.”
“They are huge,” he agreed. “We get what Wyoming Fish and Game call the stragglers. But we get them every year, and I always enjoy when they have their cygnets on our big pond. You’ve captured them wonderfully. Truly, you’re an artist.”
“Thank you.”
They moved to the fourth set of doors. Logan saw that the scene had now switched to the rolling hills that comprised half of the ranch. There was an incredible tiger maple, the oldest one, and they called her the grandmother of that grove. Lea had drawn the tree with the gnarled trunk on half of the left door, her spreading arms and leaves extending to the right door. At the bottom of the right door was a mother raccoon and six of her kits following her. It was an unexpected but touching scene and he smiled. “I know you’ve spent quite a bit of time out on the land. Did you see this mama coon and her kits?”
“Yes, and I got them on my camera, too.” Lea turned around to another table, picking up her Canon camera. She turned it on and flipped through a number of photos she’d taken around the ranch property. “Ah, here they are.” She brought it over, their shoulders touching as she showed him the photo.
“That’s really nice,” he murmured, her face inches from his own, his eyes meeting and holding her green gaze. Logan could smell the fresh air, the wood scent that came from being in the shop, in her hair. Wanting to lose himself in her gaze, he straightened and took a step away from her. If he didn’t, he was going to do something really stupid and it would have ruined the trust she was building with him. Logan didn’t know why she was skittish around men, but he knew something had happened to Lea at some point. More than anything, he wanted her trust. And he was sure that she wasn’t attracted to him as he was to her. The unexpected moment where their heads were bowed and almost touching as they studied the photo she was showing him, created a driving need within him.
“That’s a great scene,” he complimented her, purposely walking back to her other sketches on the table. He moved to the next set of drawings. Again, Lea had captured a mother with her newborn fawn lying in the grass, the mother licking it, the pine trees surrounding them.
Lea had turned and set the camera on the desk and then she came and stood next to him. “Are you all right with this one?” she asked, not sure.
“Do you have a photo of this?”
“Well,” she hedged, “not of here, but in Brookings, when I was hiking, I came upon them at the edge of a small clearing.” She gave him a questioning look. “What do you think? Is this something you could look at every time you’re in the kitchen?”
“Of course,” he said. “I’ve seen fawns romping around here, both deer and elk. I know Maddy will go bonkers over it. She loves babies of all kinds, too.”
“It’s a woman thing,” she intoned drily.
Grinning, he chuckled. “You could say that, yes.”
“I decided to sketch it up because even though you’re male, you’re very much the mother hen that everyone refers to you as around here.” She saw his eyes sparkle with laughter.
“My nickname,” he deadpanned, shaking his head. “Yes, I love all the babies around here, too. And that mama raccoon likes bringing her young down to the fishing pond because there’s mussels in the mud along the banks. It’s easy eating for her and her brood to dig and find them.”
She moved to the next set. “I wanted to do a montage of the deer and elk, so on these two panels I have four white-tailed deer—females with their fawns. In the next one, I have the elk, and I wanted to show the bull with his herd of girls.” She grinned.
“That’s quite a set of antlers on that dude,” Logan agreed, impressed. “Come fall around here, you’ll hear the elks bugling back and forth with one another. It’s a sound I love.”
“Sure is,” she agreed. Walking to the next sketch, she said, “I wanted a winter scene with elk—cows, yearlings, and a bull. And this last grouping will round out all the cabinets.” She walked back to the first set of doors, leaning down and drawing out a smaller box from a shelf, setting it next to the sketch. “I’m going to use tiger maple to represent the pond because it has that natural gold ribbing, that if placed right, will look like rivulets being created by a breeze across the surface of the pond.” She laid out a piece she’d already cut to size over the sketch. “Then, I have various other woods here, based upon color and grain, to create the rest of the scene.” She laid the pieces around, filling it in so that it took on the sketch in a more meaningful way. Logan stood there, watching her as she set the cut pieces into the drawing.
“Even unpolished or using your sculpting tools,” Logan said admiringly, “this feels like it’s full of life, like it’s breathing.” He ran his fingertips across the perfectly smooth surface. Each piece fit tightly into the next so there was no space between them. Logan knew the kind of skill it took to do that. He saw that she had gone and collected wood branches from the different groves and they were sitting in boxes with the name of each tree species on the front of it.
“So? You like the idea?”
“Sure do. I like the choices of wood you’ve made and the different grains to give it not only texture, but almost a three-dimensional effect. I’m no good at things like this, so I’m sure I’ll learn a lot from you as I watch you create each of these masterpieces.”
Her cheeks grew red over his sincerely spoken compliment. In some ways, Lea was so damned confident in her skills when it came to woodworking. And yet, she was incredibly shy around him, especially if he gave her a compliment.
“I’m glad you like my idea and my choice of woods. As I make the pieces for each diorama, I want you to come and see it and approve of it before I put it together.”
“I trust your concept,” Logan said. “Surprise me.”
Laughing, Lea said, “Oh, no. That’s not how this goes down. I learned a lesson from my first customer, who said the same thing. He said he trusted my vision and had approved the door I was going to make for him without approving the sketch or the woods I had chosen. Then, when it was done, he was shocked and he didn’t like it. Ever since then, I get people to write off every stage of my job so I never go through that again.”
“Hmmm,” he said, rocking back on the heels of his cowboy boots, hands in his pockets. “I don’t blame you with what happened. But if it makes you happy, I’m all for it.”
“That will make me very happy, Logan.”
“You said that you carve doors, too?”
“Sure do. Why?”
“Well, you’ve seen the front door, and it’s pretty rugged looking, and very aged after too many winters around here. Would you like to create a new door for the front entrance of the house?”
“You keep this up, Logan, and I’ll be here a full year. I’ll be underfoot.”
“Nah, not you. I enjoy your artist’s eye and you have an incredible sense with wood grains and colors. I’ve never seen anything quite like what you’re doing. That fascinates me.” He wanted to add, you fascinate me, but he sensed Lea wouldn’t want to hear that from him. Patience . . .
“Do you want a particular motif or scene on your front door?” she asked.
“Sure do.”
“Like?” she baited, waiting for him to give her some ideas.
Shrugging, Logan said, “Tell you what. I can see by the way you’re driving around the ranch with your camera, you’ll find some remarkable moments with the animals that live here with us. How about you come up with three different design ideas for the door?” He saw her jaw drop and then she promptly compressed her lips, studying him.
“Seriously?”
“Sure, seriously. Why not?”
“Because I’m a stranger in your home, that’s why. I haven’t been here that long to honestly grapple with everything that goes on here. This place is gigantic.”
“Sometimes it takes a stranger to come in and see things that we locals miss because we’re so used to the place. Take your time on this. Do it when it feels right. I’m in no hurry.” He saw the frustration glitter in her eyes, as if she wanted to say something but withheld it. “I know I’m probably not the kind of client you’re used to working with, Lea.”
“That’s for sure,” she muttered, shaking her head.
“But we get along, don’t we?”
“Yes,” she admitted grudgingly, going back to the box and carefully laying each hand-cut piece of wood back into it.
“Why are you looking so concerned?”
“I guess I wasn’t expecting a job quite like this.”
“Can you be more specific?” He leaned his hips against the table, watching her.
Placing the box on the shelf below the table, she said, “I was prepared to rent a room or a small apartment in Silver Creek if I did get this job. I didn’t know how long it would take.” She took a damp washcloth from a glass bowl, wiping her fingers off. “I wasn’t expecting to be living in a home, a wonderful, beautiful home. Or have someone like Maddy and you, who are incredibly kind and caring.”
“What? Are all employers dragons?” he teased, chuckling, liking the faint blush staining her cheeks once again. She placed the washcloth back into the bowl and slid her palms against her jeans. A creeping grin edged the corners of her lips as she lifted her chin, looking him in the eyes.
“I’ve had the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
“There be no dragons here,” he said, smiling into her sparkling gaze.
“Phew. Good to know.”
“Have you got a few minutes?” he asked, not wanting to leave her company.
“Sure.”
“According to Maddy, you rarely leave the shop. I want you to take breaks, go outside, and enjoy Nature. That’s always good for one’s soul.”
“I guess I’m obsessive,” Lea hesitantly admitted, following him out of the shop and closing the door. “I get lost in what I’m doing and I forget everything else. Time doesn’t exist when I’m in that lane.”
“Spoken like a true artist,” he said. Halting in the kitchen, he saw Maddy at the stove. “I’m taking Lea into town with me, and giving her a well-deserved break.”
“Well!” Maddy chirped. “About time!”
“Geez Louise,” Lea griped good-naturedly. “I give up. I surrender.”
Maddy and Logan laughed, giving one another knowing looks.
“You need to get out more often,” Maddy said, shaking her finger in Lea’s direction as Logan opened the kitchen door for her.
“Anything you want from town?” Logan asked his housekeeper.
“No . . . not that I can think of.”
He gave her a sly look. “Sure?”
“Well,” Maddy sputtered, “if you put it that way, I always enjoy a caramel macchiato from The Unicorn bookstore. Poppy just makes the best! Tell her it’s for me? She always gives me extra caramel.”
Lifting his hand, Logan murmured, “I thought so. And yes, I’ll let Poppy know your druthers.”
Lea waited for him out on the porch after pulling on her denim jacket. She was finding that even now, nighttime temperatures dropped to around forty degrees. In Brookings, that was a wintertime temperature, and her body had not adjusted to her new digs yet.
Logan was so tall. His shoulders broad, carrying the proud lineage of his family through the generations. Most of all, she liked his weathered face, partly roughened by the elements, his gaze always showing his emotions, which she could easily read, and she found that remarkable. Most men never broadcasted how they felt. As he pushed the screen door open, he gave her a warm look and she felt it sizzle throughout her body and her heart blossomed with hope. Something that just didn’t come that often to her. But around Logan? It happened every day, without fail.
“Come on,” he urged, “hop in. We’ll drop in and see Poppy first, grab some of her good coffee, and then I’ll show you some of Silver Creek you probably haven’t seen yet.”
She climbed into the white ranch pickup. “Lead on,” she said.
It took all of ten minutes to get into town. The pastures were green, grass growing fast, and some wildflowers sticking their heads up, blooming even in this cold weather. Lea was impressed by the strength of the plants and trees against winter. “In Brookings, we don’t get snow,” she said, turning her head, looking at him. Logan drove with two hands on the wheel and she noticed he wasn’t a distracted driver, even though he had all the up-to-the-minute electronics in his vehicle. In fact, every ranch pickup had not only a two-way radio, but a cell phone that was charged and ready to be used in case of emergency.
“No snow,” Logan said, “but you folks get a lot of rain out there. I lived in Portland, Oregon, for a couple of years and I couldn’t handle the constant rain and gray, gloomy days. I pined for Wyoming.” He gave her an elfish grin.
“I understand.”
“How are you able to take weeks of dreary rain throughout the year?” He shook his head. “I got depressed. I hungered for the sun to peek through those low-hanging gray clouds.”
“Maybe it doesn’t rain as much in Wyoming?” she wondered, watching the town of Silver Creek appear over a slight hill.
“Depends upon where you live in the state,” he said. “We get twenty inches here in this valley. North of us, Thermopolis, only gets twelve inches. There are weather differences all over the state. In the winter, we’ll get fifty inches of snow. Thermopolis gets around fifty-three inches.”
“Wow,” she murmured, “that’s a lot of snow!”
Smiling, Logan slowed down as traffic increased. “Our snow melts sooner because we’re in a very special weather pattern, a rare microclimate in the state, which is good. Still, snow converts to water, and water in Wyoming is always needed because so much of the state is bone-dry desert, especially through the center of it.”
“And yet, this valley is so unbelievably lush.”
“Special place,” he murmured, pulling into a parking spot near The Unicorn bookstore. “Ready for a mocha latte, yourself?” He climbed out of the truck.
“Anytime.” Lea beat him to the door, the traffic always coming and going from the busy hot spot in town. She noticed more people out on the sidewalks. As she opened the door for Logan, who nodded his thanks, she asked, “Tourist season is starting?”
“Yep,” he said, “it sure is. Our time of plenty around here for our small business owners. In the winter, we don’t have any snow sports, so it’s our lean time, economically speaking.”
Lea moved inside and stepped away from the door. Lots of the traffic was at the rear, at the coffee station. There were clumps of people at tables in the restaurant area, where she spotted Brad, Poppy’s husband. “I’m more than ready for that mocha latte. It will be good to see Poppy again. Did I tell you she gave me a tarot reading?” She fell into step with Logan in the wide book aisles.
“No, you didn’t.” His eyes glimmered. “You know, Poppy’s very accurate. She’s dangerous with those card readings.”
“And you would know this how?”
“Oh, when things are slow and I drop in at times, she’ll offer me a quickie read.”
“And you believe in her readings?”
“Well,” he said, “she’s been darned accurate with me over the years. Not that I go around asking her to read for me.”
“Of course not,” she teased.
“You don’t believe in tarot?” he asked, his boots thunking along the wooden floor. Up ahead, four people just left the coffee station with happy smiles on their faces, clutching their lattes or whatever they had ordered.
“I don’t know . . . I’ve never had a reading before.”
“Well, did Poppy tell you to say nothing about what she read for you? She’s a stickler on privacy.”
“Yes, she did.”
“So? Your lips are sealed, eh?” He made a turn, gesturing for her to step up to the counter.
“You could say that,” she said, waving her hand at Poppy, who had just come out of the back, her arms full of paper napkins to put into dispensers. “When she did the reading for me when I first came to town, she told me to expect the unexpected, that events could suddenly happen to me. And no sooner had she told me that? Ten minutes later I got slammed into by that truck at your ranch entrance.”
“Phew,” Logan muttered. “She was right on the money.”
“She warned me to be careful and stay alert.” Lea shrugged. “I never thought about a car crash like that happening.”
“OMG!” Poppy called, placing the napkins on the counter. “If it isn’t Logan the Ghost!”
Tittering over the nickname as they came to a halt at the ordering area, Lea asked, “Why do you refer to him as a ghost, Poppy?”
She was wearing a bright red and yellow scarf in her hair and she pushed tendrils of escaping curls away with her forearm. “Because we rarely see hide nor hair of him, Lea. And you, too!! I haven’t seen you since you walked in my bookstore.”
“I’ve been keeping her busy,” Logan said, grinning.
Poppy hurried to the cash register to take their order. “Well, Logan, you should let Lea out of your cabin every so often. I’ve missed her. What would you like, Lea?”
Lea gave her and Maddy’s order.
“Oh, Maddy loves lots of caramel,” Poppy laughed. “And you, Logan? Your usual? Americano?”
“You bet,” Logan said.
“You don’t like lattes?” Lea asked.
“Nah, I’m a simple kind of wrangler,” he demurred.
Poppy managed a snort. “Oh, sure. Lea? He’s the master of understatement, humble and unassuming. He’s been having an Americano since I came and bought this store ten years ago.”
Shrugging, Logan watched Poppy start to create the three orders. “Hey, Lea, you shoulda heard him protest when I put a tiny dollop on his Americano to gussy it up a little.”
“Not a great whipped cream lover, are you?” Lea teased, grinning over at Logan.
“Like I said, I’m a simple kind of guy.”
“You’re the lord of understatement, Logan,” Poppy warned, bringing him the Americano. She went back to work, finishing off the rest of the order. One of her helpers was stuffing dispensers with napkins. “Hey, Lea, do you find him to be simple?” she hollered over her shoulder.
Laughing, Lea said, “He seems to know a lot about a lot of things, Poppy. I don’t find him to be simple at all.”
Logan rolled his eyes at her. “Simple as in foods. Maddy is the best cook in the valley.”
“Yeah, you ranchers are all alike,” Poppy hooted, bringing over the two cups and putting them in a cardboard carrier for Lea. “Meat and potatoes.”
“Well,” Logan hedged, sipping his hot coffee, “that’s probably true, Miss Poppy.”
Lifting her pert nose, Poppy’s fingers flashed over the cash register. “Indeed, it is. So? You gonna let Lea off the property to come see me some afternoon? Huh?”
Chuckling, Logan said, “She’s free to come and go anytime she wants.”
“What are you, Lea? A workaholic?” Poppy nudged, grinning.
“I really am,” she said lamely. “Logan tries to shoo me out of his wood shop, but I love what I’m doing. I get lost in it and then I lose track of time. Before I know it? It’s dinnertime.”
“Sounds like a disease to me,” Poppy opined, her smile huge.
“Okay, I’ll get up here and visit you.”
“Soon?”
“Yes.”
“What’s soon mean to you?”
Now it was Lea’s turn to roll her eyes. “How about next week?”
Throwing a thumbs-up, Poppy said, “Roger that. Because I heard about that truck ramming you from behind less than an hour after I did that tarot reading. I started to worry about you. I called Logan to find out how you were.”
Lea gave her boss an eyebrow-raised look. “You never told me that Poppy called.”
“Sorry, just forgot. I told Poppy you were shaken up, but all right.”
“Yes,” Poppy said, “and that your truck was totaled.”
“That’s the truth.” Lea grumbled unhappily.
“But Logan has given you one of his ranch trucks as wheels to get around?”
Lea nodded in Poppy’s direction. “Yes, he did. I never expected that.”
Giving her a cocky look, Poppy said, “Now you know why I told you Logan was one of the most eligible bachelors in the county. You see how nice he is.”
Heat instantly shot into Lea’s cheeks and she stopped the urge to rub her burning skin, because Logan was watching her through half-closed eyes as he sipped his coffee, interest in his expression. Scrambling, Lea didn’t know what to say and then added lamely as she picked up the cardboard carrier, “I’ll be sure to see you within a week, Poppy. That’s a promise.”