3. Thad

The sun rose in the east, spreading rays of orange light over the pasture. I stood on the outside of the fence watching our horses graze on grass that glistened with droplets of morning dew. My toolbox remained by my feet, ready to assist in the repair of one of the cabin's front porches. A rotted board had come loose, creating a safety hazard. We didn't want an unsuspecting guest to fall through and hurt themself.

However, as I'd come out into the summer morning, I'd realized it was too early to start working with a hammer and nails. Other than the cabin with the faulty porch, we had no vacancies this week. Guests typically slept late before going to breakfast. They didn't care if their hospitality manager couldn't sleep and had decided it was a great idea to start work early. I stored my toolbox near the cabin's front door for later and headed back to the house. I'd fix the porch after breakfast.

Today, the weather promised warm temperatures and sunny skies. A perfect day to explore all or some of our offerings. We had a full day of activities to choose from, including horseback riding, fly-fishing lessons, hikes around the property, relaxing by the bonfire, wine tasting, and a chance to rope cattle, under the strict supervision of Soren. For the most part, we rented to families, but there were honeymoon couples, girls' getaway weekends, and reunions of one kind or another. We'd had all types in the twenty years or so since we'd opened the ranch to tourists. I never tired of meeting the interesting people who came to stay with us. I'd not gone far for college and had returned to my family's ranch after graduation. There was no place I'd rather be.

I turned to go back to the house, stifling a yawn. The insomnia was starting to get to me. I had Sammie to thank for this new malady. I'd never had trouble sleeping. In fact, it had been a family joke that I could fall asleep anywhere at any time.

Two seasons had passed since Sammie and Chloe had come to live with us and changed my world. I'd like to say it took me that many months to fall in love with her, but that was a lie. I fell for her the first time I ever saw her standing in my office with her ratty suitcases and adorable little girl.

My desire for her was an itch I couldn't scratch. An itch that didn't want to be scratched. Sammie was a friend. Sort of. She kept her past hidden, changing the subject when it came up. It was obvious, even to me and my lovesick heart, that she was not available. A person with an unreconciled past could not move into the future with someone else.

There was her Southern accent too. No one who had grown up in Philly talked that way.

Even so, she'd transformed our bachelor pad into a home, reminiscent of the days of my childhood. At first, I'd told myself it was only nostalgia that made me yearn for more time with her and Chloe. They were a family, as we'd been when we were young.

As I climbed the steps up to the house, my phone buzzed from a pocket of my sweatshirt. I didn't bother to look, figuring it was a message from a dating app I'd signed up for a few months back. The population of Bluefern was only several thousand people, with few single women. Most of the women I connected with online were from Bozeman, which was an hour from us. In a desperate attempt to move on from my debilitating crush, I'd gone out on a handful of dates in the last few months. None of them did what I'd hoped—take my mind and heart off of Sammie.

It was just turning seven when I walked back into the house. The moment the door closed behind me, the aroma of freshly brewed coffee hit me. I heard voices coming from the kitchen, one soft and feminine, the other the low and rumbly tone and cadence of Soren. He always woke at dawn to take care of the animals and get prepped for a day of outdoor activities before returning for breakfast. Sammie and Chloe were usually up before me by only a few minutes. Caspian closed the restaurant each night, thus he often slept until midmorning. He'd been especially prone to lie about in bed since he and Elliot had fallen in love, and she'd moved into the house.

I unzipped my sweatshirt and headed into the kitchen. Soren sat at the table sipping on a cup of coffee with his laptop displaying the website of our local feed store. He hated administrative work, but it was a necessary evil.

Sammie was at the stove, scrambling eggs. Dressed simply in jeans and a T-shirt that clung to her slender frame and her hair in a ponytail, she looked young and innocent. Happy even, a change from when she'd arrived here, skinny, shaky, and suspicious. Back then, her clothes had hung on her in a way that hinted at an unintended weight loss. Circles under her eyes told me she hadn't slept well. Since she'd moved in with us, color had returned to her cheeks, and her eyes often sparkled. She'd almost lost the wary, nervous way of moving about, but not quite.

I caught a glimpse of Chloe in the mudroom just off the kitchen singing to herself as she hung up her coat.

"Morning, all," I said.

Soren grunted but didn't look up from his work. Sammie, on the other hand, flashed a bright smile in my direction. "Good morning. Have you been out already?"

"I couldn't sleep, so I got up early and went out thinking I'd repair the rotten board at cabin D, but then realized hammering this early would not be welcomed by people on vacation."

Sammie's brow furrowed as she glanced at me with concern displayed in her eyes. "Why couldn't you sleep?"

I wanted to tell her the truth. I'd wakened in a cold sweat from an eerily realistic dream that a man with a shotgun had come to kill Sammie and Chloe. However, if I told her I'd had such a vivid nightmare about her, she'd wonder why on earth I was dreaming about her in the first place. If she only knew how often she visited me in my dreams, some of which were X-rated. Those took a while to recover from as well.

Instead, I only shrugged. "No idea. One of those nights, I guess."

Chloe came running in, pigtails flying, shouting about helping gather eggs with Soren that morning. "Tad, I got eggs all by myself."

"You're becoming a rancher, Miss Chloe." I picked her up and twirled her in a circle, waiting for her squeal and giggle before I set her back onto her feet.

In the meantime, Sammie had poured me a cup of coffee and added just the right amount of half-and-half. "Here. You look like you need this."

I thanked her for the coffee and plopped down at the table next to Soren.

"Did you have another date last night?" Sammie asked.

She was referring to the half-dozen "dates" I'd had with women I met online. None of them had interested me whatsoever. "Not last night. Actually, I've sworn them off."

Sammie's nose wrinkled. She folded her arms over her chest. "Really?"

"Yep." I left it at that. No reason to explain that I'd decided it was impossible to meet anyone when your heart already belonged to someone else. The women could sense it too, as if I reeked of unrequited love sweat. They saw right through me. Only last week, one of the women I'd had a coffee date with me had called me out on it. She'd asked point-blank if I was getting over someone and looking for a rebound.

I'd vehemently denied it, which wasn't technically a lie. I couldn't "get over" a woman I'd never had in the first place. Regardless, she hadn't texted me after the date.

Sammie switched the gas burner on the cooktop to Off and scooped a pile of eggs onto a plate. "Chloe, sit at the table, please. It's time for you to eat."

Chloe climbed up to her booster seat and asked if she could have toast too.

"You may, but only after you eat your eggs and fruit." Sammie placed a small plastic plate in front of her daughter. "You need protein for your brain to grow, and you'll fill up with toast and have no room left."

"How come?" Chloe asked.

"I'm not sure. You'd have to ask Uncle Rafferty." Sammie winked at me. "He knows all about how the body works."

"He's a doctor," Chloe said, sounding pleased with herself. "I went to him, right, Mama?"

"That's correct," Sammie said. "Now eat up. You have a big day."

Before I could stop her, Sammie had set a plate of eggs and berries in front of me.

"I thought we talked about this." I chose a fork from the glass in the middle of the table and grabbed a napkin.

"Don't worry about it." Sammie set a plate piled with eggs in front of Soren. "You have to eat, and it's no trouble to scramble up some eggs and wash a few berries."

"I don't like you waiting on us," I said. "You have enough work without adding Soren and me."

"It's the least I can do for looking after Chloe on Friday nights." She pointed a fork at me. "It's a huge sacrifice."

I glanced over at Chloe, who had finished her eggs and was now popping berries into her mouth one after the other. "Don't forget to chew, Miss Chloe."

"I won't," Chloe said, mouth full.

"This looks great, Sammie. Thank you." Soren snapped his computer closed and grabbed three pieces of toast doused in butter. The guy could put away food. Given the physical nature of his job, it was not a mystery why. "Where are the lovebirds this morning?"

"Still in bed, I think." Sammie sat down at the end of the table with a plate of her own but didn't eat. Instead, she twisted a napkin around her finger "Your mother asked if I'd come by the office this afternoon for a meeting. Do you know why?"

"I do." I grinned, excited to share our idea with her.

"I'm not in trouble?"

"Why would you be in trouble?"

"I don't know," Sammie mumbled. "I thought I might be getting fired."

"Caspian would never fire you. He says you're his best server."

"Really? That's nice."

Why was it so hard for her to believe? The answer was hidden somewhere in her past. Whoever had driven her to run away had also destroyed her self-confidence. I felt certain of it. "In fact, we have an idea—something we'd like your help with."

I'd not said anything to Sammie as of yet, wanting to work out the details with Mama and Finley first, but I might as well tell her now, so she didn't worry all morning. Sammie had done such an excellent job decorating for Atticus and Annie's wedding that it had given Mama an idea. "Mama thinks we should offer a wedding package to our guests. She wants you to launch it."

Sammie stared at me, her light blue eyes a mixture of fear and anticipation. "Me?"

"We were all impressed with how fast you threw together Annie's reception. Especially with the rain and everything."

Soren lifted his head from his attentive breakfast eating. "Yeah, Sam, it looked really nice. Even I thought so, and I'm not really the bows-and-flowers type."

"That's very nice of you to say. Both of you." Sammie's eyes glistened. "But I don't know anything about wedding planning."

"You can learn whatever you don't know," I said. "Anyway, no one can teach good taste. You're either born with it or not."

She gazed at me blankly.

"Which you have," I said, realizing she hadn't understood what I was trying to say. "You have a natural eye for what things should look like—elegant and understated and very beautiful." Kind of like you, I thought but didn't say. "You and I can work together to put a marketing plan in place. We'll want to add a section to the website. I'm thinking we use some of Annie and Atticus's wedding photos. The photographer got some great close-ups of the tables."

"But what about my job at the restaurant?"

"Do you really want to wait tables the rest of your life?" I asked.

Her expression darkened. "I hadn't really thought about it before."

"Not that there's anything wrong with it," I said hastily. I'd put my foot in it. "I just meant, going forward, it might be nice to have evenings to spend with Chloe and a little more income."

She sighed, dipping her chin in a sign of defeat. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

"You'll have to do both until we get some bookings," I said.

"A destination wedding on a ranch. That sounds really nice, actually." Had I detected a wistfulness in Sammie's voice?

"I think it's a great idea." Soren pushed his empty plate aside. "You'll be great at it too. You've got the right temperament to work with the public. People are rough sometimes. Hardest part of the job for me."

"Yeah, there's a reason you're in the barn," I said.

"Very funny." Soren shot me a dirty look. "You're not supposed to agree when someone says something self-deprecating."

I chuckled. "Sorry, man. I was just kidding."

"It's all right. All true anyway," Soren said.

"The brides could be challenging," I said to Sammie. "Not everyone could do it."

"Y'all really think I can do it?" Sammie asked. "I've never done anything except waitress and take care of my—of Chloe."

Y'all. A perfect example of why I didn't think she was from Philly.

"You can do it," I said. "I have really good instincts about this kind of thing. So does Mama."

"It's worth discussing, I guess." Sammie slouched over her plate, pushing a berry from one side to the other.

"Hey, if you're not interested, it's no big deal." Her reaction stung a little. Mama was trying to help. She had a special place in her heart for single mothers. Before Pop, she'd been one. According to Atticus, even before our real father died, she was basically on her own.

Her head jerked up. "No, I'm interested."

"Are you worried about childcare?" I asked.

Sammie worked three lunch and two evening shifts at the Bunkhouse. She'd told me she liked to work the evening because the tips were so good, but it was hard to leave Chloe at night. One of those evenings, Mama came over to the house and looked after her. On the other evening, Soren and I watched Chloe. Even though Sammie acted as though it was a huge favor, it really wasn't much work for us. I did most of the work while Soren dozed on the couch. I couldn't blame him since he'd been up since the crack of dawn. Typically, I fed Chloe a meal already prepared by her mother, put her in her jammies, and read to her before tucking her into bed at seven thirty.

"No. The preschool at the church is great. She loves it there," Sammie said. "If I had to work more, I could add on a few more days."

"Then what is it?"

"All those happy couples." Sammie tugged at a piece of skin on her thumb.

"Make you feel lonely?" Soren asked.

"Something like that, yeah," Sammie said.

"And love has been nothing but disappointment in your own life," Soren said matter-of-factly. "So how could you give them a great experience if you don't even believe in marriage? Right?"

She raised her gaze toward him, and they exchanged an understanding glance. "Exactly."

Jealousy sliced through me. They clearly had an understanding between them. I shoved off from the table. "If you're interested, come by at two. If not, forget I said anything." I picked up my plate, took it to the sink, and scrubbed it with the brush harder than was necessary. If I could, I would have thrown the darn thing at the wall just for the satisfaction of hearing it break.

Instead, I stuck the plate in the dishwasher and without another word headed upstairs to shower and get ready for work. Let those two bond without me. Clearly, I wasn't wanted.

* * *

An hour later,I walked into the office. Finley was already there, arranging some flowers in a vase. Coffee and scones were set out on the buffet. Curtains were open, allowing the morning sun to brighten the room.

"Hey." I set the toolbox on the floor and took hold of a pile of bills Finley had stacked on the counter for me to pay.

"Good morning." She peered at me over the head of a pink daisy. "You okay?"

"Didn't sleep well." I flipped through the envelopes without really seeing them.

"I'm sorry. Anything I can do? And why are you carrying around a toolbox?"

"No, I'm fine. The toolbox is for that rotten board."

"Right. Of course." She smiled and tossed honey-blond hair behind her shoulders before returning to her task.

I went into my office and pitched the mail onto the desk. Finley had already lifted the shade and put a small bouquet of roses by my computer. So thoughtful of her. Had I been short with her just now? She didn't deserve my bad mood. I stuck my head back out. "Thanks for the flowers."

"You're welcome."

"And sorry I'm grouchy," I said.

"Not at all. You don't have to be perfect all the time, you know."

I left my office and came around to stand at the counter. "Do you think Sammie likes Soren? I mean, as in—is she attracted to him?"

She tugged on one of her hoop earrings, looking genuinely perplexed for a moment. "Is that what has you in a bad mood?"

"That and other things."

She stood but remained behind the counter, as if I were a guest. "I can't say I know everything about her because that's impossible, given how she is."

"Right." I nodded, anxious to hear what else she would say about the subject. "She's secretive."

"I'm not sure that's the right word. She's guarded and private. There's a difference."

"Is there?" I asked.

"Sometimes people just want to leave their pasts in the past. Because they're too painful."

"Like you?" I asked.

"Like me, yes." She hesitated, moving a rose from one side of the vase to the other. "Anyway, to answer your question, I don't think she has a thing for Soren."

"Why not?" I needed concrete examples.

"He's not the right brother."

"What do you mean?" Did she like Rafferty? Of course she did. He was a doctor and insanely good-looking. He had his own house.

"I mean, Mr. Clueless, that I think she likes you."

My heart leaped to my throat and began beating double time. "Do you have evidence? Has she told you anything?"

"Like I said, she doesn't disclose much," Finley said. "Regardless, it's my strong suspicion, given how she lights up when you come in a room, that her brother of choice is definitely you."

I wanted so badly to believe her and for her instincts to be right. "You think?" My spirits lifted just thinking of the possibility.

"My apologies if this is crossing a line, but I'm going to anyway." She placed her hands atop the counter, leaning slightly. "Why don't you just ask her out?"

"For a dozen reasons," I said. "Primarily, because I'm certain she would say no."

"Take my word for it, she won't," Finley said. "I see the way she looks at you."

Could I risk embarrassment and actually ask her out on a date? What about the awkwardness of living together?

"I don't know. It seems risky," I said. "For a lot of reasons."

"Isn't love always risky? For a lot of reasons?"

"When did you get so sassy?" I asked, a teasing lilt to my voice. "You were so sweet when you came to us."

She didn't reply to my question but simply pointed at the door. "She'll say yes."