Chapter 5

Chapter Five

B eau pulled up to the white-sided farmhouse on the quiet street in one of the small communities in Three Rivers. He could feel the life pouring from the house, and it almost kept him from getting out of his truck and going inside.

He did so anyway, calling as he entered, "Howdy-ho, Garth. It's just me."

"We're in the sunroom."

"Of course they are," he muttered to himself. Garth Ahlstrom had run the ranch as the foreman for the past couple of decades—maybe not that long—and he'd retired a little over six months ago.

Beau had gotten the foreman job after him, and he lived in the same cabin where Garth and Juliette had raised their two boys. They weren't quite adults yet, and Beau wasn't sure if he'd find the teens in the sunroom.

He knew he'd find Garth and Juliette, and he grinned at them as he entered the golden-lit room at the back of the house. "It's warm here," he said.

"We turn the fans on in the afternoon." Garth looked up at him from the wood and knife in his hand. He'd been carving for as long as Beau had known him, and Garth claimed he needed something for his hands to do so his mind didn't run away from him. "What brings you by?"

Beau groaned as he sat down in an available chair. "Nothing. Where are the boys?"

"Football camp," Juliette said with a smile. Her hair had started to go gray, but she was still soft and wonderful, and Beau had never met anyone as good with animals as her. Maybe Squire, who did work as the full-time veterinarian on the ranch, and Juliette had been the vet technician.

"You have business in town?" Garth asked.

Beau nodded and clasped his hands between his knees. "Yeah, yep." He took another breath. "Had some pick-ups at the feed store. Grabbed some breakfast." He raised his head and looked over to his friends. "Prepping the cabin for someone to move in this weekend."

Garth's eyebrows lifted right up to his already-gray hair. "Someone's moving in with you?"

"The other cabins are full," he said.

"You're the foreman." Garth exchanged a glance with his wife. "Who is it? Why are they moving in?"

"Johnny went back to Tennessee," Beau said. "We need a new Stable Manager, and since Three Rivers is a drive and a half from everything, we decided to list it with board."

"Ah."

"I didn't anticipate hiring a woman." Beau let the words sit there as he looked out the screens and into the backyard. "Pond looks good."

"It's a woman?" Juliette asked. "You're moving in with a woman?'

"She's technically moving in with me." Beau's chest tightened slightly, but he'd had a few days to get used to the idea of Charlotte living in his cabin. She'd been out to the ranch twice since. First to look through the cabin and accept the job. He'd given her the paperwork and all that.

Then, she'd come yesterday to pick a bedroom and take some measurements. She'd turned in her paperwork, and she'd be moving in tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

Beau could barely believe it, and he'd come here expressly to tell Garth about this and see what he said.

"Who is she?" Garth asked, his voice the forced casual that said he was working through some surprise before saying too much.

"I actually know her," Beau said. His shoulders rippled as he did a wavy shrug. "I mean, kind of. I know her brother. Mason and I were college roommates for that one year I went to school."

Neither Garth nor Juliette said anything, and Beau looked over to them. "I met Charlotte—she's about seven or eight years younger than Mason—when I first came to Three Rivers. He interviewed there too."

"Before my time," Garth said.

"Barely," Beau said. "He met his wife, and they settled on a ranch down in the Hill Country. They've sold it now, and they bought the Lucas Ranch."

"Oh, boy," Juliette said, her eyebrows going up now. "That's a nice place."

Yes, it was. Beau simply nodded, though the differences between his life and Mason's stood out like black ink on snowy white paper.

"She comes with good endorsements," Beau said. "Used to show horses." He didn't say anything about the vibrating in his chest whenever he pictured her in his mind, or how his fingers tingled even now to touch her hair.

"Anyway, she's coming tomorrow. In true Kelly Ackerman fashion, I'm catering lunch for anyone who comes to help."

"Great," Garth said. "Me and the boys like free lunch."

"The boys have football camp tomorrow," Juliette said.

"Then just me." He grinned past his wife to Beau. "What else aren't you sayin'?"

His first instinct was to say nothing again. But he trusted Garth explicitly, and Beau had never been one to hold his words too deeply inside. "I maybe think she's real pretty," he said, his mouth suddenly made of glue and sand. "If I'd met her anywhere else, I'd probably ask her out."

"Oh, boy," Juliette said again.

Garth simply stared at him, his grumpy foreman cowboy face etched into his skin. Beau had seen it so often over the years, he could draw it from memory. He glared, then blinked, then looked out into the yard too.

Beau followed his gaze, his lungs stuffed with too much air. He tried to blow it all out, but it wouldn't go. Plus, he just had to breathe in more.

"Then ask her out," Garth finally said. "You deserve to be happy too, and maybe it'll be with her."

"Maybe," Beau said. He didn't feel the need to spill about how he'd already said the word "date" to Charlotte. She'd said nothing of it when she'd brought meatball subs and sweet pea salad, and they'd eaten, gone over the contract, and then walked through the cabin.

She'd worn shiny lip gloss on her mouth, and it had followed Beau into his dreams that night—and every night since.

"I'm—she's going to be right across the hall. If it's going to be a thing, I'll know soon enough."

"Yep," Garth said. "What time?"

"She said she and Mason would be there around nine."

"So you have time to do your morning live."

"Yes," Beau said. "Did you see it this morning?"

"Beautiful sunrise," Garth said. "And the baby goats were a nice touch." He smiled over to Beau again, who should probably look at the comments on his livestream from that morning. He realized he'd have to tell Charlotte about it, and he took out his phone to add it to the list of things they needed to talk about.

Towels. Laundry day. Food. The air conditioner.

And now, the live stream he did every morning under the social media handle Sunrise Cowboy. He had hundreds of followers who joined him for coffee and calmness to watch the sunrise and talk about the cowboy way of life, cattle ranching, and more, and Beau wouldn't want Charlotte disrupting his filming.

"I better go," he said. "I've got heaps of work on the ranch today, and then I've got to clean out a bedroom tonight."

"This is a big weekend for you," Garth said. "Move-in on Saturday. Wedding on Sunday."

Beau had very nearly forgotten about the wedding. With a jolt, he said, "Yeah," as he got to his feet. "See you tomorrow. Or don't come. We'll have lots of help."

"See you tomorrow," Garth said, and Beau wouldn't be surprised if he found Garth in his kitchen at daybreak, a thermos of coffee he could drink during the live stream.

As Beau left, he looked up into the cloudless blue sky, the air so hot he almost held his breath as he hurried to his truck. "Thank you for good friends to calm me," he murmured to himself as he got behind the wheel.

He did feel calmer now, and in seventy-two hours, the weekend would be over—and Beau would have two major things behind him.

Only seventy-two hours to go.

"What are you doing with that?" Bennett asked as Beau took down one end of the bowtie display.

"I think just storing it in my closet," Beau said. "Grab that end and lift it off the nail."

Bennett did, and then Beau moved down the length of it until he could hold it without one end dropping to the floor. "Probably a good idea," Bennett said. "Lots of questions around the bowties."

"She's seen them," Beau said. "But, it's…." He didn't know how to finish the sentence, so he simply took the bowties he'd worn to all the cowboy weddings over the years into his room and stood the board up on its end in the corner of his closet.

"Does the desk stay?" Peter Marshall stuck his head into Beau's bedroom. "Maybe she'd like a desk in her room."

"We can leave it for now," Beau said. "I don't know what she has." He moved to follow his friend into the bedroom across the hall from his, where he'd kept his gym equipment and a desktop computer. Some storage bins had been stacked in the closet. Old memorabilia from high school leaned up against the wall.

At least it had.

Now, almost everything had been cleared away. Beau had either moved it into the third bedroom, which he would continue to use, or gotten rid of it. He'd thought about putting it in the loft, but he wanted to offer that space to Charlotte. Perhaps she'd like a small office or place to escape all her own.

Beau's nerves felt frayed, like someone had taken a pair of scissors and run them along the length of his cells, trying to curl them into ribbons. Everything felt too short, shabby, and in need of a good scrub.

"I've got the curtains," Kelly said, and Beau moved out of the way. "Finn's here with the vacuum too."

"Great," Beau said. "Thanks, Kelly." She went past him and over to the window, where Garth and Pete helped her hang a rod for the curtains for Charlotte's bedroom.

"Towels, toiletries, and toilet paper," someone bellowed from out in the cabin, and Beau went to thank Squire for bringing in extra items ahead of time.

"Going okay?" Squire asked as he passed over a fresh stack of towels.

Beau took them and opened the linen closet behind the door in the bathroom Charlotte would use. "Yeah," he said. "The room's cleaned out. Mostly. Finn's going to vacuum it. They're hanging curtains now. We left the desk, and all we have to do is load the bed."

The ranch had bought a new queen-sized mattress for the cabin, as they didn't have extra bedrooms or furniture at the moment.

"Kel had the sheets and stuff," Squire said.

"Okay." Beau put the toilet paper under the bathroom sink, and Squire arranged the shampoo, conditioner, and soap on the counter.

"You okay on dishes?" Squire asked.

"Yeah," Beau said. "All that's fine." He honestly didn't know what Charlotte would need. The contract included a place to live, and that came with furniture—a bed, couches, dining room table and chairs—and the ranch had upheld their end of that.

Charlotte wouldn't need any furniture at all, and she'd texted that she didn't "have much," she was bringing with her tomorrow. That sounded like a subjective thing, and Beau was simply trying to be prepared.

He knew she hadn't been living in a place of her own, so he wanted to supply things like towels that she might not bring with her. It was a long way to town, after all.

Beau left the bathroom and called, "We're bringing in the bed."

"Finn's almost done vacuuming," Pete said as he came out of the bedroom. "Let's get it."

They loaded the frame, boxed springs, and mattress into the bedroom, and Kelly took over dressing it. Only minutes later, those who'd come to help him prep this room crowded into the doorway and looked at the bedroom.

"It's perfect," Kelly said.

"Not bad," Beau admitted. He refrained from asking the others if they found this strange in any way. It had been decided.

His phone chirped, and he pulled it out to look at it. "It's Charlotte." He scanned the text quickly. "She's bringing her brother with her in the morning. Says it's his truck and her SUV, so not much."

She'd sent a picture, and while it didn't look like much, her boxes and bags had filled two vehicles. "She wants to know if there will be help here."

"Yep," Bennett said. "Plenty for that."

"We're doing a ranch-wide luncheon," Kelly said, and Beau very nearly dropped his phone.

"What? No, we don't need to do that."

Squire started to laugh. "Have you met my wife?" He clapped Beau on the shoulder. "Hey, think of it this way. You won't have to clean up after anyone here."

With that, everyone started filing out of the house. Beau followed them, saying good-bye and thank you in rapid succession until only he remained in the cabin. Charlotte hadn't moved in yet, but something about the place felt different.

Maybe because it wasn't entirely his anymore.

He breathed out, and went to find something to eat for dinner that night. "Charlotte will be here in the morning," he told himself. "And Mason too."

Beau wondered if his friend would lecture him about dating Charlotte, and then he wondered what he'd do if Mason did.

"Guess we'll find out tomorrow," he said, and since he rose early, made coffee, and had to get his phone set up for the sunrise, he went to bed.

Now, if only sleep would claim him, he wouldn't be playing and then replaying how tomorrow's move-in might go.