He stared at her, focusing on not allowing his mouth to drop wide open. She wasn’t sure she wanted children. She was him in male form!
So why wasn’t this having a bigger impact? He could ask her out right now, mentioning that he’d love to talk more about this complex topic over dinner at her favorite restaurant in Prairie City.
But he couldn’t even summon the interest in asking her out. When she was even more perfect for him than he knew ten minutes ago.
“I guess the most important thing is keeping an open mind—and staying true to yourself,” she said. “So what do you think? Want to look at houses and the condos? I know of four within walking distance to Main Street that may fit the bill—they’re all a little different. Two have turn-of-the-last-century charm and two are recent builds.”
“I’d like to see them all,” he said. “It’ll help me decide to get a sense what’s out there. I hope I’m not wasting your time. I’ll understand if you’d prefer if we made an appointment for when I know what I want.”
“All part of my job,” she said with a warm smile.
They stood and headed toward the door. She opened the closet, handed him his overcoat and slipped on that long red wool coat with the leather belt she’d been wearing the first day he’d seen her. The day he’d met Molly. Re-met Molly. She tossed her long curled ponytail over down past one shoulder, a faint hint of her perfume in the air.
Still, absolutely nothing. Amazing. He wouldn’t have thought it even possible.
As they got into her silver car, Danica added, “Sometimes you have to see that what you thought you wanted doesn’t meet any of your needs. And sometimes, something you never would have put on the list is perfect. It can be a numbers game. And other times, you get lucky right off the bat and find your dream home with the first showing.”
He stared at her, wondering if she knew about his old crush. Or that he’d kissed Molly and put the kibosh on that. After all, she and Molly were best friends, but they both clearly kept some truths to themselves. From Danica’s expression and voice, with absolutely zero personal glint in her eyes, he decided she was just speaking generally. A little too applicable, though.
“So we have something big in common besides Bear Ridge High class of too many years ago,” she said as she headed into the light traffic.
He glanced at her. “What’s that?”
“Molly! Isn’t she just the best?”
She sure is, he thought. “I’m lucky to have her as my administrative assistant. Do you happen to know what her favorite flowers are? She did a great job on client research this morning, and I’d like to thank her.”
Danica beamed. “She loves red daisies. She calls them ‘the day brightener.’ If it were summer she’d pick them right out of her yard and have a bunch on her desk.”
“Perfect,” he said. “Thanks.”
She smiled, and he couldn’t help but think about how he used to wish she’d turn that beautiful smile on him in the halls at school, on Main Street as teens. But now, Danica Dunbar was simply a lovely human being and highly recommended Realtor who was showing him houses. And that she knew Molly’s favorite flowers was quite a plus.
Why did it seem everything was reversed now?
Maybe they should look at the one-bedroom condos first—and he should buy one. No room for the family he was sure he didn’t want.
“So which would you like to see first? The houses or the condos?”
Say condos. Say condos.
“The houses,” he found himself saying.
* * *
Molly had barely eaten three bites of the turkey-and-cheese sandwich she’d packed for today’s lunch. Were Danica and Zeke making out right now on some scenic overlook? In an empty house she was showing him? Had he already asked Danica out for every night of the rest of their lives?
She forced herself not to bite her nails. She’d been so consumed with thoughts about the date she’d almost forgotten today was the grand turn-around of Tim’s Tasty Tacos. She’d called her dad just a little while ago and the moment he’d answered the phone she knew business was booming.
She glanced out the front window of Dawson Solutions only to see Zeke coming across Main Street with a bouquet of red daisies. Her favorite flowers. Sigh. He must have forgotten that Danica’s favorite flowers were red tulips, which wasn’t like him. Her boss remembered everything. Her friend liked all flowers, but for a man gunning to win Danica’s heart, daisies didn’t seem very “grand gesture.”
She expected him to turn left toward Bear Ridge Realty, but he came into Dawson Solutions. “Afternoon, Molly. I miss anything?”
Forget what you missed—what did I miss?
She sat up straight and reminded herself she was at work. “Several calls from potential clients interested in meetings, a call from Peter Winkowski and a request for a follow-up meeting from Shelly Neffer.”
He nodded and held out the bouquet. “For you. For all your hard work on the Ranelli account. Your research was impeccable and saved me countless hours.”
Molly tilted her head. “These are for me?”
“They are. I got a tip that red daisies are your favorite.”
Her heart gave a little ping. “Well, thank you, Zeke.” She popped up to get a vase from a cabinet at the coffee station, filled it with water and put in the pretty bouquet. Zeke Dawson had given her flowers! For a moment, everything else went out of her head.
But as she set them on her desk, her burning question came right back and she couldn’t wait a second longer. “So was the meeting...successful?” Did you ask her out?
“Danica showed me two condos and three houses, but none of them was quite right for different reasons. I’m going to take one of the buggies out on the ranch this weekend to explore some areas and think more about building on the property.”
She nodded slowly, waiting for him to keep going, to mention that he finally had gotten his date with Danica and they were going out Saturday night.
“At first I thought a high-end one-bedroom condo would suit me fine,” he said, “but what if I wanted to have my nieces and nephews over? They’d crash into each other in such a small place. Danica pointed that out.”
Molly kept waiting for him to get around to his finally asking Danica out after years of waiting. But he was talking houses and how the small yards wouldn’t work if his siblings with dogs wanted to come for a barbecue.
“What’s the point of a yard if I can’t throw sticks for Dude and River?” he said. “Fetch is one of their favorite things. And my nephew Danny? Two years old and already headed for captain of the track team. I’d probably want to build a playhouse for all of them, too.”
Sounded like a man who was in the beginning stages of thinking ahead to a family of his own. A dog of his own.
Because Danica would turn him around.
A lump formed in Molly’s throat.
“So when’s the big date?” she asked. “Saturday night?”
Zeke looked at her as if she’d grown another nose. “Date? Well, that hardly seems really appropriate since she’s my Realtor now. Don’t you think?”
Molly gave a dry chuckle. Ha, ha, real funny. He was making fun of their situation, wasn’t he? Which didn’t seem like him, but perhaps he needed to make light of it. Sweep it all under the ole rug.
But not only wasn’t he laughing, he wasn’t smiling. “I’m serious.”
“Wait, what?” she asked. “You are?”
“It’s a working relationship. Realtor and client. I think business and romance should be kept separate. And not just in a boss and subordinate situation but in all cases. I told you I got burned with a former colleague, so that’s probably just too fresh. Maybe once I’m settled on a house—either in town or on the ranch—I’ll revisit asking her out. If she’s not seriously involved with someone by then.”
M
olly forced her jaw not to drop to her lap. What in the world? Okay, yes, he had been hurt by a former coworker. But c’mon. His Realtor was not his colleague. He was making excuses for not asking out Danica Dunbar, woman of his dreams. If Zeke had asked Danica out, she likely would have said yes.
Because she had no idea that Molly was madly in love with the man.
So what gives?
As Zeke stood in front of her desk flipping through the messages she’d taken, she studied him. Carefully. He looked so...content. At peace.
Wait. A. Minute. Another possibility occurred to her. Could it be? Was it actually possible?
Had Zeke discovered that he didn’t actually have a crush on Danica anymore?
“Zeke, I’d like to ask you a personal question. You don’t have to answer, of course.”
“Okay,” he said. Warily.
“You spent almost three hours with Danica this afternoon. Was it like you expected—I mean, on a personal level?”
She was getting the clear sense it wasn’t. Or he would have asked Danica out instead of coming up with a flimsy excuse about business and pleasure. She wanted to stand up on her chair and do a little happy dance.
“It was,” he said very seriously.
Her heart thumped and she stared at him. “Oh.” Had he been too choked up with emotion to ask Danica out? Had he gotten tongue-tied from being so close to her?
“I’ve known for a few days now that the old crush is gone,” he continued. “But I was hoping it would still be there so I could distract myself.” He paled for a moment as if he hadn’t meant to say that last part.
Oh! Her frown was immediately turned upside down. The twenty-year crush on Danica Dunbar was over. Because he had feelings for Molly! She glanced at her vase of sweet red daisies, her heart leaping around in her chest.
“Well, I’d better get to work,” he said. “I took a long few hours to myself, so...”
“Of course,” she said in her professional voice, scooting her chair in and poising her hands over her keyboard. She fought the grin bursting inside her as he headed down the hall toward his office—very possibly thinking about her.
There was still the matter of his certainty that he doesn’t want to be a father, she realized. She bit her lip. He’d said that outright a number of times and it came from somewhere deep inside him, as rooted as his family tree.
But that was an old hanger-on—she was sure of it—just like his crush on Danica had been. Everything about Zeke—from his actions, behavior, conversation—centered on family and how important it was. So she’d just have to show the baby whisperer of Bear Ridge that he was made for fatherhood, made for a family of his own. That would take a blowtorch, though, to get through the cinder-block walls he’d erected around his heart.
But right now, Molly Orton felt like she could truly do anything.
Chapter Ten
“It’s no use,” Ford said, swiping the metal detector over a patch of ground between two trees. “I’m never going to find the diary.”
“You’ll find it,” Zeke said, though he also had his doubts. They just had to keep looking.
The two of them were across from the barns at the ranch, wearing lighted helmets so they could see two inches in front of them in the dark. It was just past seven p.m., and this wasn’t an optimal time to be looking for something outside. But Ford had texted him for help just as he’d been about to leave the office, and given Zeke’s day, he needed to be in cold air, a constant shock to the system, doing something that would require concentration. Only way to stop thinking about Molly—especially now that he’d acknowledged, even to her, that his twenty-year crush on her friend was over.
It had been more than a year that Ford had been trying to find his late mother’s diary, which their dad had buried in a metal box on the property decades ago. Ford would not even have known about it, but Bo Dawson had left Ford a map in his deathbed letter, detailing where he’d buried it. The map was in marker, with a lot of goofy-looking trees, dotted lines, something resembling the big barn and an X marks the spot. Apparently, Bo had found his then wife’s diary and had been so incensed by whatever Ellen Dawson had said that he’d run out of the house with it in an old fishing tackle box, dug a hole, dropped it in and covered it back up. After reading the letter from his dad and looking at the map that Bo had drawn on a piece of white paper, Ford had tracked down an old friend of his mother’s to ask if she knew what could have been in the diary that would have set off his dad. The friend said she had no idea but recalled Ellen had tried in vain to find it for weeks before storming out in a huff with her bags, taking Ford with her.
All the siblings wanted to know what was in that diary.
“Dad was clearly drunk when he drew the map,” Zeke said as Ford swiped the metal detector again. “Maybe he buried it miles from here.”
“Could be. But he drew this spot between the trees, straight down from the barns. I feel like it’s probably here somewhere since there was no other reason to pick this area over another. Nothing special about it otherwise.”
“It is close to the barns, though. Would he have buried the diary where someone could have easily seen him?”
“I thought about that. According to the story I heard secondhand from my mom’s friend, it was the middle of the night when he buried it so no one except the night hands would have been around.” He shrugged. “I should give up but I can’t. I just feel like I’ll find some missing piece of the story—my parents’ story. My story.” Ford’s mother had died back when he was in the police academy, and Zeke recalled how grief-stricken his brother had been, vowing to push ahead with his training because his mother had been so proud that her only child was going to serve and protect.
“Well, let’s keep looking,” Zeke said. The past few days had been on the warm side and the snow was mostly gone, making it easier.
“What was in your letter from Dad again?” Ford asked, squinting at Zeke. He could tell Ford was trying to remember.
“No maps, thankfully. He asked me to use my business sense to help Noah with the financials when he took on rebuilding the ranch.”
Ford shook his head. “Now why couldn’t Dad leave me a nice, uncomplicated letter like that? No, I get a map to buried anxiety.”
Zeke smiled. “Maybe it’s something good that set him off. I can’t imagine what, though.”
“Me, either. Oh, who the hell knows. I’m giving up for the day. For the week, I should say.”
Ford limited himself to looking only one day a week. It’s how he kept his sanity about the diary.
At first Zeke was bothered by his own letter from his father, that it contained nothing more than Bo’s surprise at having a numbers whiz for a son and the request to help Noah. But once he’d started going over paperwork with Noah when the ranch was still a scrap heap, he realized what an undertaking his father had left him. Bo had no money to get the ranch going, and back then neither had Noah, but they’d all pooled their resources, Noah heading the job, hiring the crews, attending the livestock auctions, et cetera, and from afar and by video calls, Zeke had talked him through the books. Through it all, Zeke had felt he was rebuilding the ranch last spring with Noah and then Daisy, who’d come home to help. Maybe his dad hadn’t thought beyond, Well, you’re a business guy and this is a business, so would you help? Or maybe he thought a lot about it. All Zeke knew for sure was that he’d gotten closer to his family because of it. And that was priceless.
Zeke had stopped second-guessing Bo Dawson a long time ago. But the not knowing bugged him. When it came to his father, he could use a crystal ball that would provide answers. Zeke did not have an addictive personality, wasn’t much of a drinker and wouldn’t gamble even on buying a lottery ticket. But what if he was like Bo when it came to being a parent? What if, like his own father, Zeke wouldn’t be there for his kids emotionally? What if he just checked out? How wo
uld he ever forgive himself? Lord knows he’d never forgiven his dad.
Work, work, work, his first girlfriend in Cheyenne had complained, eventually ending their relationship. He hadn’t realized he was being a workaholic or keeping that ex on the outside. It was the not realizing, the having no clue he was hurting someone else, that kept him up at night.
Which was why he was trying so hard to let Molly know, from the get-go, that they couldn’t explore what was clearly between them. The thought of hurting her—now that really kept him awake and popping Tums.
Zeke stared up at the twinkling stars, wishing he could blink his eyes and make himself sure he wouldn’t let down those he cared about. He supposed he could talk to Ford about it again, but how many times was he going to ask the same question? He was getting the idea that the answers weren’t going to come from outside himself.
A low honk sounded, and he and Ford both turned around.
It was Noah in one of the ranch carts. “Hey, Zeke, I’m on my rounds and you’re just the brother I needed to talk to. On Saturday, I’m holding the inaugural Teen Rancher’s Summit in the lodge. I thought I had the first day mapped out but I could use one more speaker and it’s your area, if you’re willing.”
For a minute, Zeke had no idea what Noah was talking about, then remembered him bringing up the new initiative he’d started for the teens who attended the town’s community center after school and on weekends. The center catered to low-income families and at-risk teenagers, and Noah, who’d been through the wringer as a teen and had some skirmishes with the law, had started a program meant to interest them in ranching and to inspire them in general. The posters he’d hung at the center had generated strong interest.
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