She glanced at Kris, and he must have been able to tell what she was thinking, because he said, “He does own it.” Which still made no sense. If you inherited something, it would come from your parents. If it came from your grandparents, your parents would inherit it. So—no.
Maybe Owen had won the lottery. Had anybody in the history of ever, though, won the lottery and bought a cattle ranch? And actually worked it? No.
Next idea. Tech wunderkind. Nobody said they all had to be skinny and pale, right?
She surveyed Owen. Plaid flannel shirt. Jeans. Boots. Workingman’s hands. No-nonsense haircut and close-cut, non-hipster beard. The enormous size and obvious strength of him, and something in the way he sat that told you he didn’t sit a whole lot.
Not a tech wunderkind. Even with a standing desk. Just no.
“And the second answer is,” Owen said, “that you can sell humanely raised beef for a higher price, that’s how. Don’t get me wrong, though, there’s still not much glamour to it. You’re talking a lot of manure, and a whole lot of freezing mornings checking your fence line. Gotta love it to do it, or you wouldn’t do it at all. And the third answer …” He pulled out his phone and swiped around. “This is my place.”
“Oh,” Dyma said blankly, peering at the phone intently. “You do have horses. And a log house. And mountains.”
“Well, yeah.” He was still looking amused. “Horses kind of go with the territory. That’s why they’re on the license plate. And I don’t have mountains, not on my land. They’re in the background, but they sure look nice there, don’t they? Got some real nice high country, though, with white marble cliffs that are about the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen. You could quarry the stone out, but it always seems like a shame to do it.”
“So you can ride a horse?” she asked.
He smiled some more. “Hard to be a rancher out here if you can’t. Got to be a pretty big horse, of course. Good thing horses come in different sizes. Here. This is my best horse. Grizzly. Crossbred Percheron. He’s big, but a whole lot faster than he looks, and a pretty good cutting horse, too. The Percheron was a war horse. Heart of a lion.”
“Kind of like you,” Kris said.
“Aw,” Owen said. “Now you’re just being nice.” He started going through more pictures, talking about cattle breeds and diets and pastures and the high country, and Dyma sat there, totally absorbed. “I grew up on a ranch,” he told her. “Not this one, but my dad was a ranch manager. And, yeah, I saw a lot of things. So when I got in a spot to set up my own, I figured—here’s my chance to do things differently, right?”
“Right,” she said, and smiled back at him. Hugely. “That’s so awesome. Show me Grizzly again. He’s so beautiful.”
Jennifer thought, Of course he’s liking you that much. You’re telling him he’s awesome and complimenting his horse and asking him questions about himself. Which was when he put his phone away and said, “So what about you? You sound like there’s a life plan. Let’s hear it.”
“University of Washington. Engineering. A&A. That’s Step One.”
“Aeronautics and astronautics? Seriously?” He laughed. Not in a mocking way. In a delighted way.
“You know what it is,” she said. “Nobody knows what it is.”
“Hey,” he said. “Mechanical engineering here. University of Texas.”
“Wow.” It was a breath, and then she shoved up the sleeve of her slim-fitting tee and showed him her bicep.
He grinned. Enormously. And laughed. “Man, I never thought I’d meet somebody this cute who had Bernoulli’s Equation tattooed on her arm. What are the odds?” And Dyma sparkled and shone and smiled and put a hand into her hair, Owen looked at her edgy haircut and her piercings and clearly wondered how many more she had and where they might be and exactly how much fun she enjoyed having and how reckless she’d be doing it, and Jennifer thought, This is so dangerous..
She didn’t know what to say or do here, in this moment, so she told Kris, “If you have a degree in astrophysics and are about to lecture me on the dynamics of flight, just don’t.”
He laughed. “Nope. Mine’s in business. It seemed easier, and I’m pretty sure it was. Ask me what I know about it.”
“All right. What do you know about it?”
“Just enough to know I should’ve paid more attention,” he said, and this time, she laughed. He added more seriously, keeping his voice low, “Don’t worry. Well, maybe worry, because she’s about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. You know how they say, ‘Cute as a bug?’ I think that’s what you made there. But the guy you’re worried about isn’t going to be Owen.”
She glanced at the two of them. Dyma had both elbows on the table—Jennifer had spent eighteen years telling her not to do that, though she might as well have saved her breath—and was gesturing with her hands and talking a mile a minute, while Owen was turned all the way towards her, listening hard. She said, “Not what it looks like to me.”
“I’ve got three little sisters,” Kris said. “Trust me. It’s not going to be Owen.”
His blue eyes were serious, and so was the rest of him. He’d said “trust me” again, but he’d meant it. She could tell. And she felt exactly like she had when he’d tackled her out of the way of that snowmobile. Breathless. Stunned.
Almost convinced.
Harlan said, “Good night,” watched Jennifer head out of the restaurant and through the bar with Dyma—and, yeah, she had some walking-away moves—and asked Owen, “Ready for that beer now?”
Owen said, “I could drink a beer.”
The bar was packed by now, as a place would tend to be when it was the only possible choice, because even so much as walking out the front door wasn’t an option. Being stuck here like this made Harlan itchy. He was more of a next-place guy than a put-down-roots guy, but once you showed up at Yellowstone in the winter? There was no place else to go.
Maybe the itchiness was due to more than that, though, because the two of them had no sooner dropped onto barstools than a thirtyish, outdoorsy blonde with legs that wouldn’t quit, who looked like she could ski all day long and then come back for some real fun, walked up to them and asked, “Excuse me. Aren’t you Harlan Kristiansen?”
“Who?” Harlan asked.
“The football player. You are, aren’t you? I saw you in that insurance commercial.” She was taking a good hard look at him—all of him—then glancing at Owen. “And you’re somebody, too. You have to be.”
“Everybody’s somebody,” Owen said gravely.
She hesitated another minute, and Harlan said nothing. Which, yeah, was rude, and probably didn’t happen to her much, since she was the high-gloss type, but he wasn’t going to encourage her. Finally, though, she headed off, back to a table where another woman, a brunette, waited. Harlan caught her out of the corner of his eye, pointing him out, working up her courage for another approach.
Owen said, “Maybe take the beers to my room,” and Harlan said, “Yeah. Sounds good.”