Chapter Three
As usual, they were up at the crack of dawn, drinking coffee in the kitchen of their shared house.
Eventually, they were all going to complete places on the property and turn this house into more of a common area for guests.
A place where they could have get-togethers, and cook a meal if they were camping and wanted access to a kitchen for a while.
Maybe even put a couple of guest bedrooms in it.
Maybe they would rent the whole farmhouse out eventually.
Right now, though, it was their place. And it wasn’t all that hard to get used to living with Dakota and Rowdy again. They were the closest thing he had to brothers.
It had happened at the right time too. He’d gotten to go out on top in the fighting world without risking serious injury.
Some guys kept going—older than he was now—but he had no desire to keep getting the shit beaten out of him for entertainment.
Recovery was much slower than it used to be; getting up took longer.
It was nice to take the money and ride off into the sunset.
“So,” Rowdy said. “We’re sure there is no downside to letting a weird scientist dig around on our property, while we are trying to get all of our stuff finalized?”
Dakota shrugged. “I don’t know that it’s possible to know if there’s a downside or not, but she’s small and doesn’t seem like she’ll take up much space.”
“Unless she’s engaging in some kind of hospitality espionage.”
“I looked her up,” Jax said. “She exists. She really does work at the museum. She’s got degrees and things I can’t even pronounce. Apparently, she’s something of a celebrity in the paleontology sphere.”
Plus he’d had a gut feeling right away that she wasn’t the type to be duplicitous. She just didn’t seem…
She didn’t seem like she could lie if she wanted to, and he didn’t have a solid reason for why he thought that; it was just a gut feeling.
Rowdy laughed. “Well. Good for her. I guess we’re all a form of niche microcelebrity.”
It was true enough. Rowdy was a big deal on the rodeo circuit, and Dakota’s ironwork sculptures were extremely well respected in the art scene—and went for tons of cash at auctions.
By comparison, Jax felt like it was a little bit ignoble to have made his fame by punching people and getting punched in return, but that was life.
You took opportunity where you could get it.
And one thing Jax had been as a kid was angry.
He figured out how to take that anger and turn it into something more, something better.
Something that got him paid. Something that had a structure to it.
He was a black belt in three different disciplines of martial arts, plus an MMA champion.
It was kind of funny because if he didn’t know Rowdy and Dakota, he would have no reason to know of them, because he wouldn’t be in their world at all. He supposed it was the same for Dr. Ernestine Martin.
He didn’t know anything about dinosaur bones or fossils. Couldn’t say he was that interested in it. But she was apparently a wunderkind of bones.
According to her bio, she was about twenty-eight. She had graduated from every program she’d ever been in extremely early. Gotten her PhD absurdly young. Been out on digs in Europe, the Middle East and Australia before she was even eighteen.
But that was all just for his own curiosity. He wouldn’t see her much over the course of her being here. There was no reason for him to.
They had too many fine details to finalize.
And after a series of permit hiccups with the county, they were behind.
It was all going to work out. He knew that.
But it was a real drag. It had put them all under undue stress, because they’d spent a lot of extra money, all because of some issues with surveying.
It wasn’t their mistake. And they were still working to get the guy who’d done it to pay for them having to move buildings, but in the meantime, they’d had to do it, and had had to actually move structures that were already in place.
Fucking nightmare.
Now they were back on fine details, which were easier. But everything just felt tense.
He did have to wonder, though, if she uncovered something interesting there, if that would end up being a draw for people who were into that sort of thing. And what he’d learned from his searches was that a lot of people were into that kind of thing.
Just because it wasn’t in his world didn’t mean it wasn’t a whole world.
He would have to make sure to talk to her about that.
“You seem deep in thought,” Rowdy said.
“Oh, hell no. You know I don’t do that. I have too much brain damage.”
Dakota snorted. “If only. If we could tone you down a little bit, life might be easier.”
“I don’t think that’s how that works.”
“Well, you would know,” he said.
“Is Jessica coming by today?”
Rowdy shrugged. “I’m not sure. I think so.”
Jessica was one of Rowdy’s best friends.
He’d moved to the property before them, in fact.
When it was just a bare plot of land with a dilapidated house, which they’d bought for a steal almost a decade ago, Rowdy was the one who had taken up residence here.
He was the one who’d remodeled the farmhouse and made it habitable.
And he’d gotten to be good friends with a barrel racer that he’d met on the circuit, who lived locally.
In fact, she was the reason he’d found out about the property.
Now she helped out with a lot of things, and she was a wicked baker, and often helped stock the fridge with food.
“If she does come, it’d be nice if she could stop at the grocery store.”
Rowdy cocked an eyebrow. “She’s not an errand girl.”
“I didn’t say she was. But, our guest was saying something about eating military rations, and I am wondering if she might like some groceries.”
“She has a car,” Dakota pointed out.
True. She did.
“Yeah. Of course, it’s a whole haul down into town, and then you have to deal with being an outsider.”
They all knew how that went. They’d been new here, and they were bringing in tourists, which half the town was thrilled about, and half the town was kind of mad about.
But that was life in progress out in the middle of nowhere. Increasing business was helpful. For most people. But then others felt threatened by it.
“Okay. First thing today, I’ve got to manage the horses. And then, we’ve got to finish up with leveling and graveling the Oregon Trail camping spot.”
They’d debated having actual wagons to circle for the night but had gone with luxury tents instead. They were making a big common firepit for all of the guests to sit around, and trying to create the feeling of a wagon train.
They had done their due diligence, making defensible space all around where they’d be having the fires, and now it was a matter of setting up different amenities.
And making sure the ground was totally level.
Which had been a long haul with different pieces of heavy equipment, and now they had a dump truck of gravel coming in.
Rowdy was primarily responsible for the horses. They were his thing.
Dakota was making sculptures to be positioned around the property. Most of them were done, but he had a bit left to do.
Jax was… Well, he was essentially the muscle. And that was fine. He knew who he was.
Well, mostly. Sometimes he questioned the veracity of his own intelligence coming to a place like this.
He was used to variety. He spent a lot of time in Vegas when he did the fights.
There was a variety of food, activities, women.
Here…if he slept with somebody, he was going to have to run into them again in town.
Over and over again. And he wasn’t looking for that kind of commitment. That kind of attachment.
And they’d discussed it: they couldn’t go sleeping with guests.
They had an agreement that if there was some kind of insane chemistry, and the guest was extremely on board with it, then an exception could be made, but no hooking up with women who had partners or husbands.
Nothing that could get the place review bombed.
Or get any of them shot because that was the thing.
They didn’t actually want women to come here for sex tourism.
Though he paused and considered that for a second; why did they think that was a bad thing?
Frankly, Jax was feeling a little bit hard up. It had been a lot of work and no play out here for a decent chunk of time.
“All right. Let’s break. Get some work done.”
He was sweating his ass off several hours later, beneath the brutal sun, spreading the dirt around the area, but it was starting to look really great.
They already had some artful rocks with bark and plants making a circle around the camping spot, and this was really finishing it off and tying it all together.
Giving a soft place for people to set blankets and sit.
After this, he was going to make some benches out of logs to go around the firepit. He was looking forward to that.
He discovered through the process of this that he was pretty good at building things. He’d never done it before in his life, but with the right tools and a set of instructions, he could pretty much figure anything out.
He heard the sound of a motor, and he knew it wasn’t a pickup truck, so it couldn’t be Rowdy or Dakota. He turned, and saw Ernestine in her tiny little car, rumbling down the gravel road, stopping when she saw him.
She got out of the car, and it took her a second, but then she smiled, and waved. “What are you doing?”
“Oh,” he said. “I’m finishing up this camping area.”
“I did see that on your website. Is this part of the Oregon Trail experience?”