Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Tyler Colby dropped the last of his bags in the cabin and watched the cab as it reversed into to the parking lot. The driver had waited at the main area of Crooked Tree as Tyler had collected the keys to his place from one of the ranch guys. The total for the cab’s time was huge when it appeared on his phone seconds later, right behind the perfectly timed email from his boss.

Elizabeth’s message was simple. It contained a copy of the schedule they’d worked up between them, and had an added reminder for him to keep detailed records, including receipts for reimbursement. The word receipts was in bold, and Tyler couldn’t help but smile. He’d worked in the Earthquake Studies Office for three years now and had never once filed one of those horrendously complicated and needless expense reports with the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology, much to Elizabeth’s horror. She’d pulled him to the side yesterday and scolded him for not following the rules. Yet another set of rules and the part of his job where he couldn’t tolerate the bureaucracy. Why bother messing around with dollars and cents, when what they should all be doing was focusing on the cutting edge projects that could save lives?

“Stupid-ass forms,” he murmured as he poked into the rooms of Forest Cabin six. It had four huge bedrooms, three of which he would be converting into office space, a decently equipped kitchen, and a small laundry room. A sitting room with comfortable sofas and a TV was in the center of the cabin, with floor-to-ceiling windows and views over a small grass yard that merged into the trees.

Crooked Tree was a stunning place, but it wasn’t all about the trees for him or even the river as it rushed through the ranch. The beauty lay underneath his feet as he imagined the washed away sediment, and visualized the layers of time snaking beneath the land, along with the carved patterns left by retreating ice. The ranch was in a prime position for the next seismic tracker to be added to the network and soon to be part of the early warning system for seismic disturbance.

The sitting room was where he would set up boards, start collating information, and begin constructing the newest addition to the Montana Regional Seismic Network. The new installation would be one of the most remote they had, but he’d argued that there was too much territory outside Helena that wasn’t being monitored. He’d been proven right in the last 3.5 magnitude, 2 km depth point quake that had rattled windows and opened up new cracks in old ground. Then the higher-ups at the Department began to listen and apply for government grants.

Installing a permanent seismic station here on Crooked Tree land was a small step in the grand scheme of things, but it was also Tyler’s baby, and he was going to do it right.

Last July, there’d been an earthquake south of Lincoln that people had felt from Spokane to Billings, but it had occurred along a fault not previously mapped by the team of seismologists he was part of. That was what had drawn him here because this region was less studied than the seismically active West Coast. He was at this location to examine the recent earthquake swarms in Yellowstone, and he was going to find a way to save lives.

That was his goal and had been since he was fourteen.

He pulled out the parts for the first whiteboard setup—it was the easiest starting point—then he laid everything out as the instructions said he should. He had a PhD. Surely he should be able to assemble flat pack boards and A-frames.

“Dr. Colby?” someone called from the open door, and Tyler waved them in, concentrating on setting up his first board and not quite getting tab A to click into tab B. “I’m here with your supplies. Where do you want them?”

“Kitchen counter,” he said, breathing through the mild irritation that this particular inanimate object wasn’t bending to his will. I don’t have time for this shit.

There was a clatter of objects, the rattle of something, and after Tyler finally managed to click the tabs into place, he sought out the source of all the noise. Whoever it was seemed to take great joy in making one hell of a lot of racket, and locating the sound, he found the owner of the sounds crouching in front of one of the base units, juggling cans of food and two jars of sauce. He was in that impossible situation where he couldn’t put something down without dropping another of the items he held, and smoothly Tyler reached down to help. Between them, they put everything where it should be, and then the man stood, and Tyler got his first look at him.

He was taller than Tyler by just a couple of inches, curly hair in disarray around his face, and eyes the color of green glass. He wore a uniform of jeans and a sweatshirt emblazoned with a horse logo, and the cap on his head told Tyler that Horses Are The Best .

That statement didn't convince him. Rock strata and a moving, angry earth, now that was the best.

“Tyler,” he extended a hand, which the man took readily.

His handshake was firm, and it didn’t last long. “Martin. They said I should put the food away for you. So I didn’t want to leave it on the counter.”

His words sounded uncertain, the kind of tone that made Tyler feel Martin suspected being sent to do that job was a huge joke being played on him. Or maybe he was nervous about walking into an occupied cabin?

“Thank you, Martin. Don’t suppose you want to volunteer to cook all this for me as well.” He was teasing. This was banter, but Martin ignored him and took a step back, dropping his gaze to another bag and picking it up to unpack the contents into the double-wide fridge. Tyler pressed on through the awkward silence. “I can’t cook to save my life,” he deadpanned.

Martin didn’t react at all, just lined up eggs in the storage container.

Tyler leaned over and picked up one of them. “I mean, I like eggs, but I can’t do much more than scramble them. I had the best soufflé in Paris once, and the chef tried to show me, but yep, I scrambled the mix when I tried to make one. And I won’t even begin to explain what happened in London when I attempted to make egg fried rice. Let’s just say the firefighters were hot to look at until they started to laugh at me. Apparently I wasn’t the first person to burn up a kitchen, but I was the first who’d done it trying to boil rice without adding water.”

Why can’t I stop talking?

That was a simple question to answer: because Martin wasn’t saying a thing, and there was nothing that Tyler hated more than silence when he was with someone.

“I don’t know why I ordered all this stuff,” he continued. “No, that’s not entirely true. I do know really. I’m here for at least a few weeks, so I decided I wouldn’t eat at the restaurant every day. I need to have some form of self-sufficiency, or so people tell me, but I can’t live off trail mix as I do when I’m out working, and it’s not like I can order in a chef or food.”

Martin didn’t reply, and Tyler wanted him to talk because the man’s voice was smooth, and he had a stoic quietness about him that was intriguing.

“Uh-huh,” Martin finally offered, then turned back to what he was doing.

“Have you worked at Crooked Tree a long time?”

“No.” Martin shut the fridge door and piled up the bags. “That’s all of it.” He headed for the door, and Tyler thought that was them finished, but as Martin reached it, he turned. “Please call the office if you want to order anything to restock.”

Tyler sent him a cautious smile as Martin shut the door behind him, and then crossed to the window to watch him leave. He was driving a ranch SUV, and Tyler got a look at his profile before he drove away. Very sexy in a quiet curly haired kind of way, with those serious eyes.

“Repeat after me, Tyler. You do not want to lust after indifferent men you don’t know.”

But Martin was gorgeous, all focused on his job and shy or deferential. Tyler couldn’t tell. He just knew the man ticked all his weird-ass boxes, and that was certainly one way to spend the downtime at the ranch. Not that there would be much in the way of downtime or even time at the ranch. He had too much to do, which reminded him.

“Whiteboards.”