Chapter Eighteen
August 25
Logan lifted his straw hat off his head and wiped his brow with the back of his gloved hand. Lea had just entered the ranch house, picking her way through new lumber lying around and the many hired people who had come to help rebuild their home. He smiled as she entered.
“Hey, where have you been?” he called, settling the hat back on his head.
“Oh . . . places,” she said coyly, holding a large brown sack in one hand. “I saw the lunch van coming to feed the folks who are here helping us. It’s going to be time for everyone to eat and find shade.” So many people volunteered to help rebuild that Logan, in turn, had called the local food truck to come and feed everyone a hefty breakfast and lunch.
It was eighty degrees Fahrenheit and that was far hotter than this valley normally saw. It was climate change. Lea looked around, pleased. The entire area that had been burned was being rebuilt. New lumber, new logs were trucked in, drywall put up and painted, and the fireplace cared for, as well. Even the smoky smell was finally going away. They had spent their first week in their own bed at the ranch house and it felt good to be home. “Let’s take the swing on the porch. I have some lunch for us.”
He grinned. “Sounds good. So, you said you were visiting Poppy this morning? Did you get lunch from her restaurant?”
“Sure did. Your favorite: vegetarian lasagna with all the trimmings.”
“She and her husband, Brad, have been life savers,” he said, coming over and walking her out to the shady side of the porch. “And both of them are pretty darned good cooks,” he added, his hand coming to rest on her back.
As they rounded the corner, he spotted a big, wrapped present sitting at one end of the swing. “Hey, what’s that?”
She smiled. “Happy birthday, Logan. You do know that today is your birthday? The townspeople have come together to help us get the wood shop and garage rebuilt. I think you lost track of time.” She laughed.
“You shouldn’t have,” he said, leaning down, kissing her temple.
“Let’s eat while the food’s hot,” she said, sitting down and patting the cushion next to her. “We’ll let you open your gift afterwards.”
He sat, took off his hat, and placed it on the small table at the end of the swing. They opened the cardboard boxes that contained the food. “Mmmm, smells good,” he murmured, handing her a huge salad with all the fixings. Even the cutlery was made of stout cardboard, everything recyclable and healthy for the Earth. No plastic, that was for sure. She sat back after opening a packet of ranch dressing, drizzling it over her salad.
“We’re almost done with the remodel,” he said between bites of the spicy lasagna and the thick French bread slathered with butter and garlic.
“Today should be the last day,” Lea agreed. “And then? We can have our lives back, sort of.”
“Dan Seabert called a little while ago,” Logan told her. “The judge has thrown Polcyn back into jail.”
“Good. He put him on an ankle monitor and he was free to roam his house,” Lea grouched, frowning.
“Well, no more. Polcyn defied the judge’s limits on where he could go. Now he’s going to spend a year or more in jail, waiting for his trial.” Logan’s voice dropped to a growl. “Couldn’t happen to a better person.”
“I’m just glad we had the phone records and that Jenny got one of those four guys to flip. If she hadn’t, Polcyn would be free to come after us again. I was so worried about that.”
“Anyone would be.” He reached over, caressing her cheek. “Now we can sleep soundly again.”
“Dan has been a blessing to us,” Lea acknowledged. “He’s really pushed to get Polcyn behind bars. He and Jenny worked together like the good team they are, and fortunately, the judge in Cheyenne took seriously what they had to say about Polcyn attacking the ranch. Some judges might not have.” She shook her head.
“The law is the law,” Logan said. “There’s not supposed to be any politics in the law. It’s blind, as it should be.”
“Chase was just over at Poppy’s,” she said, changing topics. “Do you know what he’s going to do?”
“No. What?”
“Well, he’s run a big organic cattle ranch for nearly as long as your family put down roots here,” Lea said. “Chase came in like a kid who found a frog in a pond.”
Chuckling, Logan said, “What’s he all excited about?”
“Apparently, Poppy has been doing a lot of work behind-the-scenes with Chase. He was wanting to get out of the business of cattle, and was looking for something more Mother Earth friendly to raise on his ranch.”
“I’d heard rumors that he was wanting out of the cattle business for some time now,” Logan said. “So? Is he going to do it?”
“Well”—she hesitated—“maybe . . . it all depends on him finding the right person, a master gardener he can hire, who will stay at the ranch and help him with this new vision.”
“What is his vision?”
“I guess he’s been working on a concept for a couple of years with Poppy’s input. He feels that with the loss of honeybees happening at such a horrendous level, thanks to pesticides, that he wants to put in more hives, sell the honey, but also sell the hives and bees to farms and ranches anywhere in the country. He wants to enlarge everything.”
“That isn’t going to keep him monetarily solvent,” Logan said, finishing off the lasagna, wiping up the last of the marinara sauce with his final piece of garlic bread.
“He knows that. But I give him credit for going green. It has to be our future because fossil fuels are killing the Earth.”
“I won’t disagree with you. Funny, I was thinking about bringing bees to our ranch.” He gave her a searching look. “We could put them on the edges of our alfalfa pastures. I wonder if he’s got a honeybee wrangler yet?” He grinned. “How do you feel about that?”
“I’m all for sustainable living, Logan. I was raised to be environmentally conscious.”
“I like that we’ve built compost bins and put them in each grove, as well.”
“We’ve always had a compost bin at my parents’ home. That, and we have a recycling center, too.”
He gave her a sly look. “For the past couple of years, and, I admit, after hashing over different ideas with Chase and some of the other ranchers, I’ve been considering some changes, too.” He looked up at the house. “I held off talking to you about them, with Polcyn’s attacks on us. I was afraid I’d lose you before I could convince you to stay with me.”
Giving him a thoughtful look, she placed her empty salad box on the end table at the other end of the swing. “I know we haven’t said much since we admitted our love for one another. Things have been crazy ever since that night.”
“It has been hectic,” Logan agreed. He placed his arm around her shoulders, drawing her next to him. “And out of all this bad, came something good.” He looked into her eyes, which had a new luster in them since they’d made love to one another. His heart expanded with joy. “I have you. And you have me. It doesn’t get any better than this, Lea.”
She leaned up, kissing him for a long, long time. When their mouths parted, she saw that gleam in his eyes: He wanted her. She wanted him. “Now’s not the time, Logan.”
“No,” he said unhappily, “but I can dream . . .”
She relaxed against him, looking out beyond the porch. “Things are getting back to normal.”
“For us, yes,” he agreed, frowning. “For Maddy and Alvin? It’s a different story. He’s going to always need her around to help him from now on. She won’t be coming back as our housekeeper.”
“We can hire someone to do that for us on a weekly basis,” Lea said. “Pay them a good salary, too.”
“I was thinking along those lines,” he admitted. “With the wood shop almost done, and you buying a new set of woodworking tools, you’re going to be back to work, doing what you love to do.”
“I know we haven’t talked a lot about it, but yes. I like working and will continue to do what I want. With my parents coming out in mid-September for a visit, I’m looking forward to my dad helping make the wood shop even better. He called me earlier today and told me he had sent a lot of his extra wood-shop tools via carrier, for me. I can hardly wait to get started on that front door I promised you.” She grinned.
Logan absorbed her happiness. “The door got destroyed in the fire.”
“Only the wood I’d chosen for it, and the pattern. Both are easy enough to replicate.” She eased out from beneath his arm and stood up, going to fetch the gift from the end of the swing. “Speaking of which? Happy birthday, Logan.”
He took the large gift, which was a lot heavier than he first realized. “This must weigh twenty pounds,” he said, gesturing for her to sit down next to him.
Laughing, she nodded. “It’s actually twenty-one pounds. Go ahead, open it up.”
“I wasn’t expecting anything,” he admitted, placing the gift, wrapped in silver and gold paper, on his thighs. There was a bright red ribbon around it.
“I know. It’s been so busy around here . . .”
“How did you find time to do this?” he wondered, pulling off the ribbon and handing it to her.
She looked up at the sky, her smile deepening. “I’ll tell you in a minute. Open it up!”
Logan did so. What he saw took his breath away. He ran his fingertips over the wood sculpture of the oldest tree in the oak grove. He’d recognize it anywhere, especially because it was the fairy tree where people came to make their requests and prayers to the little people. Only, the ribbons were delicately carved and painted to make the oak look like a year-around Christmas tree. And even more touching, an eight-year-old boy sat against the oak’s mighty trunk, reading a book. Giving her a look of awe, he croaked, “This . . . this is beyond beautiful, Lea. When did you do this?”
“I took photos of it and then started working on it. Luckily”—she sighed—“I had it all done, except for painting the ribbons. I’d taken it over to Poppy and Brad’s bookstore to use her brushes and paints. It was over there in her art studio when the fire hit us and destroyed everything in the wood shop. I got really lucky. I was so glad that this piece had been saved, because of all the stories you’d told me about it as a kid growing up, how you used to love coming out to this old oak, sitting beneath it and reading your books.” She smiled a little. “At that time, there was no WiFi out there, and all you had were good ole books.”
Shaking his head, he couldn’t stop touching the huge wooden carving. “And I’ll bet you’ve used fallen limbs from that same oak to create it here?”
“Oh, yes. That was a week-long scrounge, believe me. I knew what I wanted, and put a lot of the downed branches in the back of my pickup. But some were newer and still had dampness in them, so I couldn’t use them. I needed very, very old branches that had fully dried. That way, they wouldn’t crack or possibly fall out of the sculpture as they shrunk.”
“This deserves to go somewhere special,” he rasped, his voice filled with emotion as he stared down at it.
“Since the fireplace was affected by the fire, why couldn’t we hang it up above the mantel? I think it would look beautiful there. Don’t you?”
Nodding, he placed the sculpture on the floor of the porch. “I like it,” he said, standing and pulling something out of his front pocket. “Now,” he said, “close your eyes and hold out one of your hands. I have something for you.”
She smiled. “It’s not my birthday, Logan.”
“That’s okay.” He approached her. “Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”
Her smile grew. “Okay, just because it’s your birthday.” She did as he asked.
Logan gently placed a bright red velvet pouch, half the size of her palm, into her hand. “Open your eyes,” he whispered, kneeling down on one knee, his other hand on her thigh.
Lea did so and looked at the pouch. She glanced over at him and saw the love shining in his eyes. “You’ve been busy, too, I see,” she teased. Every time he smiled, that sculpted mouth of his simply turned her into yearning heat. The man did not recognize his own sensuality, and she silently promised him that she would show him how wonderful a lover he truly was.
“A little,” he chuckled, lightly running his hand on the top of her jean-clad thigh. “This is for you . . .” He watched her open the red cord on the pouch. She peeked inside.
“You’ll have to turn it upside down,” he suggested.
Lea nodded and did so. A wedding ring and engagement ring fell into her cupped palm. She gasped, jerked her head up, staring at him in shock.
“Logan!”
“I know it’s a little soon,” he apologized, “but I’m not sorry I did it.”
Pressing her hand to her heart for a moment, emotion flooded her as she stared down at them. “They’re so beautiful.” She picked up the gold wedding ring that had a channel-set group of five rectangular green stones that flashed like fire. “What kind of stones are they?” she asked in a hushed voice, turning the ring, watching the light play through the faceted gemstones.
“My father is a rock hound,” Logan explained. “He found sapphires in the Montana mountains a long time ago. He found several green ones. They come in all colors, not just the blue ones that most people are familiar with. He’d held on to them for a long time. I called him a month ago and asked if he was willing to make channel facets of those green sapphires he found, and he did it. My dad is a serious jeweler, too.”
She nodded, setting it down and picking up the flat, gold engagement ring. There was a tree carved around the entire circumference of it. “This is so beautiful,” she whispered. “Who did the etching of this?”
“Me,” he said humbly. “I know it’s not artistic like what you create, Lea, but my heart was in it. I know how much trees mean to you and it’s more than just because you use their wood to make your magical pieces of art.”
Closing her fingers, holding the rings, she leaned down, her other palm against his cheek, kissing him softly, with all her heart and soul. Lifting her mouth away, she drowned in his darkened eyes, felt his fingers brush strands of hair away from her temple.
“Marry me when the time is right, Lea. No pressure here. I want you in my life for the rest of my life. I never thought anyone could fit me like you do. We love the same things: Nature, trees, and the land. We care about one another, but we also care about the Earth, and that’s important to me. Family is important to both of us. And so are the people who work here on the ranch. They’re my second family and I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
She straightened and placed the wedding ring into the pouch and handed him the engagement ring. “If we hadn’t almost died that night of the fire, I might have said that I did want to wait, to mull it over, think about my life and what I thought was important,” she whispered. “That night taught me that time is precious. That I could be gone in a blink of an eye.”
She handed him the ring. “Put this on my finger, Logan. I want the world to know that we love one another. Do you think your parents might be able to fly up here and be here at the same time my mother and dad will be here? I’d like to invite them to be a part of our journey together. I’d like to hear from them when they think is the best time for a wedding.” She saw his eyes widen, and then they filled with tears. Logan had lost so much when Elizabeth suddenly died. And she wanted, in some small way, to give back all those lost years of grief and loneliness, because this man was made for a partner: someone who was as strong as he was, who shared the love of the land, and treated people with kindness and generosity.
He eased to his feet and pulled her to hers. “Come here,” he rasped thickly, sliding his hand beneath her left one. Holding her stare, her own eyes glistening with unshed tears, he slipped the ring on her finger. “There,” he choked. “The rest of our lives are tied to one another, Lea, and I can’t think of a better way to live. Can you?”
She solemnly shook her head, moving into the circle of his arms, leaning fully against him, relishing the contact, his strength and his love for her alone. “No, I can’t think of a better way to live. I want to share my life, my heart, with you. Forever.”