Chapter 10
KAT
Things could not have been going better.
Three of the guest cabins were erected, and the landscapers were making the area around them cozy and beautiful.
She had hired professional painters to paint each of them a specific, bright color to match their theme.
Having a theme for each would make it easy to name and book them, and people seemed to like that sort of thing.
Also, it would look good on their website.
She’d already begun compiling little clips she’d taken of the calves and lambs to use in short-form content about the ranch.
The story about the calves arriving sick and being nursed back to health would be popular.
She had several clips of one of them sneezing, which she had taken to show to Cole in case he didn’t believe her or they wouldn’t sneeze in front of him.
Now she would use the clips to tell a story.
She’d also taken several short clips of the new lambs, and as they seemed healthy enough, their story would have to be about them being adorable while getting used to their new home.
She quickly wrote down, Now, all they need is some new friends to play with.
Good conclusion to the story, she thought.
It invited people to imagine themselves or their children getting to interact with the lambs.
Her vision was starting to come together, finally.
She could see it in her mind’s eye, and she loved the look of it.
Since the fiasco with the calves, very little had gone wrong, so Kat supposed she was overdue for some kind of catastrophe.
But she couldn’t have predicted it would be something as simple as the painting of the cabins.
If anything, she expected to have a medical emergency with one of the older animals, or maybe the younger ones wouldn’t get along.
Instead, the painters started packing up at the end of the day, and when Kat asked them what time they’d be back tomorrow, they looked at her like she was out of her mind. “You paid for three days,” they said.
“I paid for three cabins,” she corrected.
“We charge by the day.”
“But they aren’t finished.” She had no idea what to say. There had to have been a massive misunderstanding. She’d thought she was paying for three cabins, but apparently, she was only paying for three days. “How much to finish them?”
The man she’d been talking to shook his head. “We’re booked out for the next couple months.”
They didn’t really seem to care. “I can’t have guests stay in half-painted cabins.
” And she wouldn’t be able to do the imagery and advertising she had planned.
Getting guests was going to be tricky. She wasn’t fooling herself about that.
It would take months of work to build up a platform that made money, let alone a platform that brought in guests on the regular.
Right on time for her minor panic attack, Cole showed up. “What’s all this?” he asked.
Kat clenched her fists in her pockets, unsure whether or not she was managing to hide her panic.
“The painters are leaving.” By the wavering tone of her voice, she could tell she’d failed miserably.
So, she gave up trying. “They’re not even finished, and they’re leaving and not coming back.
Look!” She pointed to the bright blue cabin.
“That one’s only half-painted. It looks terrible. ”
The painters heard her irritation, apparently, and responded, “Nothing we can do, lady. You paid for three days, and you got three days.”
Kat clenched her teeth. “That is such a weird way to bill for a paint job.”
Before she could say more, Cole grabbed her by the wrist and said, “We can finish it no problem. Don’t worry.
They weren’t doing that good a job anyway.
” He said it loud enough that the painters could hear, and Kat had to admit it felt good to have someone stand up for her, even if it was a bit passive-aggressive.
But was he just saying that to make her feel better? ”
“Do you mean it?” she asked him.
“Of course.” He seemed so confident that everything was going to be OK that she couldn’t help thinking maybe he was right.
The next day, they left together for the hardware store.
It was the same store where she had first met him.
Already, that day felt like it was so long ago, but it had only been a few weeks.
Strange how quickly you could get to know someone you were comfortable with when it might take years with anyone else.
When they got inside the store, Cole led them straight to the paint section.
Kat wandered over to the swatches to select matches as close as she could.
“Don’t bother with that,” Cole said, dragging her back with him to the counter.
From his pocket, he pulled two wood chips and handed them to the man behind the counter. “Match these for me, would you?”
“Where’d you get those?” Kat asked.
“Don’t worry,” Cole answered with a wink. “You won’t even miss ’em. Remind me, when we get back, to challenge you to find where they came from.”
So he’d taken them off the cabins. She narrowed her eyes but decided to trust him, once again.
He didn’t seem to be in this to sabotage her, having more than proved himself with the lambs.
She could tell he was the one who had arranged the shearing lesson.
She suspected he may have even paid for it, but he clearly didn’t want her to know about it, so she kept her conclusion to herself.
The most important takeaway from that situation was that he didn’t want her to fail, and he would do what it took to help her succeed, even if it cost him. That was enough.
The man behind the counter examined the painted wood chips and asked, “What brand?”
Cole gave him a few more details about what he was looking for. Then, he turned and handed a piece of scrap paper with a brand name on it to Kat. “Pick a color for the third house. They only primed it, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. It was good not to feel lost for once, like having a guide in an elaborate maze.
Something about being with someone who’d done this before just made everything feel so easy.
At the same time, she felt kind of ridiculous for not having matched paint before.
Of course, renting an apartment tended to make painting the place more difficult and pricier than it was worth, so she never did bother with it.
She chose a dark cherry red for the third cabin, which she planned to decorate in a 1950s theme with a diner-like kitchen and celebrity portraits on the walls. The blue cabin was beach themed, and the yellow one had a cozy, floral theme.
While they waited for the paint to finish mixing, they browsed the hardware store just for fun.
Kat picked out three shower curtains that matched the themes of each cabin, and shockingly, Cole didn’t have anything snarky to say about it.
He even helped her choose the last one. “You’ve got to get the classic car one,” he said. “It’s perfect.”
“I can’t believe we actually agree on something for once.”
On the way home, they chatted like old friends, and Kat began to see a little of the Cole behind the mask.
The real him, the version of him he kept hidden behind that sharp exterior, had a playfulness and vulnerability to it that she never would have guessed was there.
From the day of their first meeting, she’d assumed he was an exceptionally handsome man with an unfortunately nasty personality.
It turned out the nastiness was just a kind of armor.
Whatever he was like beneath that armor still wasn’t entirely clear, but she was catching glimpses finally, and she liked what she was seeing.
When they got back to the ranch, Cole helped Kat carry several cans of paint to one of the cabins. “We can keep them inside for now,” he said. “I mean, no one’s staying here yet, right?”
“Yet,” she emphasized. “They will be here soon, and this place is going to grow and be wonderful.”
“I hope you’re right.” He smiled over at her. “Because if you’re not, this will all have been a massive waste of my time.”
She laughed, knowing he wasn’t trying to be mean, but trying to make her smile. “Where should we start?” she asked.
“Cherry red,” he answered without any hesitation at all. When she turned to question him, he said, “Go big or go home, right? Anyway, I want to see what you do with the place. It sounds interesting.”
“OK, we both know that’s not entirely true.”
“Yes, it is. Stop doubting me already. It’s getting old. Now, let’s get going on the first coat.”
He drove with her to the cabin that was only primed, parked, and took out the tools he’d gotten to paint.
At the hardware store, Kat hadn’t even really been able to identify all of them, but Cole seemed to know what he wanted, so Kat had gone along with it.
Now he offered her two options. “You want to handle the brush or the sprayer?”
“Uh…” She hesitated to take either. “Which one’s easier for a beginner?”
“That depends,” he said. “The sprayer is easier because it gets more done in a shorter amount of time.” Kat reached for it, but then Cole finished his thought. “But you can also do more damage in a shorter amount of time.”
She abandoned her grab for the sprayer and snatched the paintbrush instead. “I’ll handle the trim then.”
He chuckled, set down the sprayer, and started prying open one of the paint cans. “It’s already primed,” he said, “so we can start the fun part right away.” When he had the tray and sprayer prepped for painting, he turned to Kat and asked, “Are you wearing clothes you don’t care about?”
Kat looked down at her outfit. The truth was, she didn’t have any clothes she didn’t care about. She wasn’t the type of person to save an old shirt because she might need to get messy in it someday. “I… don’t…”
“Do you need to change, or is this what you’re painting in?” he asked.
She nodded. It wasn’t her favorite outfit after all. It was just something she put on to go to the hardware store. “I mean, I guess I can paint in this,” she concluded. “No big deal. This can be my painting outfit.”
He narrowed his eyes at her after giving her a thorough up and down. “It’s missing something, though.”
The mischief in his eyes should have told her exactly what he was thinking, but she wasn’t really paying attention, so she asked, “What?” Quicker than she could react, he pointed the nozzle of the paint sprayer at her legs and shot a mist of ruby red at her off-white pants.
“Hey!” she shouted. “What was that for?”
“It was for you, obviously,” he said with a smile. “Now your outfit is complete, and you can paint without worrying about potentially ruining it.”
It took her about thirty seconds to get over her shock.
“Excuse me? And what about you?” She gave him the same up-and-down look he had given her.
That twinkle in his eye got brighter when he saw her pick up her paintbrush and load it with cherry red paint.
She didn’t hesitate. She approached him with the brush and drew a long red line down his shirt, from his collar to his belt.
Far from looking angry, Cole burst out laughing.
He was more playful than Kat’s first impression led her to believe.
He patted his chest with one hand. “Good one,” he said.
Then he came closer, so close that Kat actually took a step back.
Her heart was pounding by the time he reached up and cradled her face.
The closer they came to each other, the more Kat became convinced they were on a path they couldn’t deviate from.
A magnetism between them grew more and more powerful with every inch, every centimeter.
She was certain he felt what she did, and then she realized that the hand he had against her face was the same one he had dipped into the paint on his shirt.
He wasn’t falling in love; he was getting even.
She immediately pulled back, feeling like an idiot and a terrible person to boot.
Of course he wasn’t about to kiss her. He was her employee, and she was his boss.
It was not appropriate at all, and he had probably realized that well before she did.
To cover her embarrassing misunderstanding, she brushed more paint onto his shirt and arms, laughing.
“Got you!” she said.
“I guess you did.” He chuckled and turned away toward the cabin. “Now, let’s get this project done. Can’t waste all the paint before the building’s covered.”
He was covering for her. He had to be. Kat was grateful, but she couldn’t stop blushing like crazy.
How had she honestly misread the situation so thoroughly?
She got to work painting the trim to avoid any further conversation about what had just happened, but she couldn’t stop thinking about how close he was, the way his breath felt on her skin, the heat of his body reaching across the space between them to find her.
The first coat on the red building was finished by sundown, and Kat went to bed that night still agonizing over what she had almost done.
There was, of course, the embarrassment, but also a little regret.
If he had gone in for a kiss, she wouldn’t have hesitated to kiss him back.
It would have been his choice, so she would have felt a bit better about their positions.
She tossed and turned so much that night that she wondered whether she would be able to fall asleep at all.
Even when she finally awoke the next morning, she dreaded seeing his face.
But when she finally did leave the trailer to work on something other than the budget, he treated her exactly the way he had before.
It was as though nothing had happened between them.
Kat had no idea whether what she was feeling was relief or disappointment.