Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Sweetie
The bison really shook me up, and I gripped my steering wheel like it was the only buoy in a sea of mountains and sharp, switchbacking roads.
He’d been there to welcome me. I was sure of it, and how ridiculous was that?
If you asked anyone who knew me, they’d laugh in your face if you told them Beatrice Baker had been seen communing with a very large land mammal.
In fact, I’d earned the nickname “Sweetie” initially because everyone at Lee Construction thought I was so nice, but I had just been settling in and learning my way around my new job.
Once my coworkers realized I really wasn’t that sweet and that I tended to be a bit of a Brunhilda on the job, the irony made the nickname stick, not that any one of those knuckleheads knew the actual definition of the word irony.
The guys probably thought I didn’t have a nurturing or animal-loving bone in my body. I’d never had a dog or a cat. Not even a goldfish. Why on earth I thought I’d felt a connection with a bison was beyond me.
Driving slowly through the Jackson Hole valley, I found my way in the intensifying night.
The road to Bax’s place rose in elevation quickly, and the fields and open areas I’d driven through earlier disappeared and gave way to climbing pine forests with dark mountains bookending them in every direction.
For a good twenty minutes, I’d been convinced I was lost and that any moment I’d hit a deer or an elk or something. There were wildlife signs everywhere, not that I could actually read them because apparently the entirety of Teton County had taken an anti-streetlight stance.
When I took my second-to-last turn onto Old Fish Creek Road, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Brand’s directions told me I was only five minutes away from the house he’d grown up in, and finally, I saw the new sign he’d just installed at the start of the Lee’s property that had thankfully been backlit and read “Spitfire Ranch at Lee Valley.”
Like it was on tiptoes instead of tires, my truck crept up the graded and graveled drive slowly, and I scanned the still darkness for animals, but when I saw Bax’s big, two-story farmhouse and parked in front of it, stress left my shoulders and I took a deep, steadying breath.
You made it.
Standing on the small porch, Bax Lee was also backlit by a warm glow coming from inside the house Brand told me his brother had inherited when he took over running the Lee’s family farm.
Bax held himself upright with a crutch beneath each arm. A thigh-to-toes plaster cast encased his right leg. He’d covered it with a pair of loose jeans, but I knew it was there, and it made his leg look twice as thick as the non-broken one.
In the dark, I couldn’t see the house well, but it felt a little run-down to me, which surprised me since Brand’s house in Sheridan was new and modern.
Bax squinted, trying to get a better look at me. “Thought you got lost,” he said as I stepped out of my truck. “I expected you a little earlier.”
The night we’d met flashed through my head, when he’d said in front of my coworkers, “My brother call you Sweetie ’cause you got a sweet little ass?”
Still waitin’ for an apology, asshole.
“No,” I said. “I wasn’t lost, but there’s no streetlights around here. I had to drive five miles an hour ’cause I’m terrified of hittin’ somethin’. I mean, the least y’all could do is put some road reflectors along your driveway.”
“Oh.”
I laughed into the quiet between us. “You never thought about it?” The stillness in the dark was a little unnerving. Sheridan wasn’t some big, busy, bustling city, but it wasn’t this quiet.
“Honestly? No, which is dumb, but it’s just that I grew up out here, you know? I don’t need lights.”
Wanting to see him better, too, I climbed the porch stairs and stood in front of him. His eyes traveled the shape of my face, and mine did the same to his.
Yup, the fucker’s still gorgeous.
I’d forgotten how sexy Bax was. His hair looked the same as it had last week on my computer screen, thick and light brown and kind of messy, and he had the same strong, athletic build I’d noticed back in Sheridan two years ago.
And those baby-blue eyes? Damn . Women had been brought to their knees with far less.
But I was right that something was different about him. It wasn’t only his reliance on crutches curving his shoulders inward a little.
“But your future customers didn’t grow up here, and you want them to be able to see so they don’t trip over a rock or crash their cars into a tree and break their necks. I’m surprised Brand hasn’t suggested a lighting plan.”
“Maybe he did. He could have.” Bax looked down at the cast on his leg. “I’ve been a little distracted, I guess.”
“Yeah, I heard. Got yourself beat up by a bull?”
He nodded. “Sorry I can’t help with the cabins.”
“It’s cool. I don’t really need your help.”
He didn’t like that. His eyebrow jumped the tiniest bit, which made me realize that maybe I’d been a little harsh. It was habit. When I met a man in a work situation, my instinct was to prove my dominance and worth. And that goes double for Mr. Smart Mouth Lee.
“Right. Well, I guess you’ll probably wanna get settled in. Brand set up a cabin for you, and my sister stopped by with some grocery staples earlier. If you need anything else, please feel free to come up to the house anytime. There’s people comin’ and goin’ at all hours.”
“Where is it?”
Both eyebrows rose this time. “The house?”
I rolled my eyes. “The cabin?”
“Oh, right.” He chuckled. “Uh, it’s… Well, if you turn around and drive half a mile back down the lane, it’s the second right you come to… Ah shit, but it’s not lit, like you said. You might not see it. I’ll drive you.”
He looked at his cast again.
“I mean, you can drive. I’ll ride with you. Show you where to go, but you’ll have to drive me back.” He sighed. “Fuck. That’s sounds like too much work. I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re tired from your drive.”
“It’s fine,” I said, watching exhaustion take over his features, like candlelight being snuffed out in a pitch-black room. “C’mon, let’s go and then I’ll get you back here. Tomorrow, we’re gettin’ some damn road reflectors.”
Bax was not graceful with the crutches. He almost fell off his porch when he lost his balance.
I imagined him landing on his ass and snickered to myself, but then I felt bad about laughing.
Memories of my dad after his back surgeries came back to me.
He couldn’t do anything for himself for a long time.
I’d had to help him with everything. And the pain?
God, I couldn’t even imagine. I was sure Bax was in pain now, but he tried not to show it.
He had to sit turned toward me a little in my truck because the cast was completely unbendable.
For him to fit, I had to adjust the bench seat as far back as it would go.
Even sitting forward at the edge of the seat, I could barely reach the pedals, but Bax’s leg still looked like a long, denim log stuck through my floorboard.
And he wouldn’t let me help him, not even to shut his door, but soon enough, we were bumping along back down the gravel lane.
“Where’s your daughter?” I asked.
“Athena’s asleep. She’s got school tomorrow. I don’t usually stay up this late either, but lately…” He looked at me, stopping himself from saying whatever he’d been about to admit. “Anyway, I watch a lot of late-night TV these days. Turn here.”
He motioned out his window to a barely recognizable dirt road to the right.
He hadn’t been lying when he said I would’ve missed it without his help.
The road looked more like a hiking path, until I realized that the trees and brush hanging over the dirt just needed to be weed whacked a bit. I added it to my mental to-do list.
We drove almost another half mile, and when he pointed to a cabin coming into view off to the right side of my truck, with cozy golden light spilling out its windows, I pulled in twenty feet from the front door and parked.
I couldn’t see any other structures nearby because the night was lightless besides the twinkling of a few stars, but I knew from the blueprints I’d studied that the frames of the other cabins were near.
Not too close so guests would have privacy, but not too far so they wouldn’t be completely secluded in the forest, although, each cabin’s location had been chosen for its proximity to a lake on the property and to offer the illusion of seclusion and stunning views of the mountains.
Breathing deeply as I got out of the truck, I let the perfume of the pine trees ground me.
I heard a stream or river running close by.
It reminded me of when I was a little girl and my dad would go hunting and come home with a deer, and then my mama cooked the steaks over a fire behind our house while I played in the creek back there, trying to catch minnows with my bare hands and waiting for supper.
Bax watched me over the roof of my truck.
It was as if I could feel the direct stare of his eyes on the back of my head.
For some reason I couldn’t name, I felt self-conscious around him.
It wasn’t a feeling I was accustomed to.
I didn’t usually give a shit what people thought of me, as long as they knew I was confident and competent, so why would I care now?
Besides, Bax had to know that about me already or else he wouldn’t have agreed to let me stay on his property and finish the builds.
Or maybe he hadn’t agreed. Maybe my boss put his foot down and insisted, and Bax hadn’t really had a say in the matter.
“It’s nice out here,” I said. “Quiet.”
“Yeah.”
He dragged my backpack from the front seat, slung it over his shoulder, and then took off with his crutches toward the cabin. I grabbed my suitcase from the bed of my truck, and when we were standing on the little ground-level log porch, he turned back to me.