How in the hell had he drawn the short straw to drive Rachel through Rocky Mountain National Park? For fuck’s sake, he’d just spent the last two hours toting all her crap around as she took zillions of graduation, family, friends, and campus pictures. Now he was going to be spending the next three to four hours with her. Just the two of them alone in his truck. Her closeness and scent were driving him crazy. They would have to converse and he had no idea what they could talk about for that long.

It was because of all the camera crap she’d brought with her. It took up over half of the backseat, which was why she couldn’t ride with Beau and Alyssa because Beau’s back seat was already half-filled with Alyssa’s graduation gifts and clothes. Drew, the traitor, had laughed, slapped him on the back and gotten in Cade’s truck with Chase and Grandpa K, saying he had to go to work in the morning so needed his beauty sleep.

Rachel would probably want to stop at every turn out and rest stop to take a zillion more pictures. This was confirmed when she took the memory card out of her camera, wrote Graduation on it and put a fresh, new one in the camera. He groaned inwardly.

“I’m so glad the road is open. Alyssa’s been wanting to take this drive through the park since her first day on campus, but with it only being open the few summer months when she came back home to see all of us, she’s never had the chance.”

Adam nodded. She squirmed in her seat and he didn’t know if she was excited or nervous.

“I’m thrilled to have the chance. I’ll try not to drive you too crazy stopping every five minutes. But this might be my only chance to drive through the park without actually driving it myself, which means I can really look to see what a good shot would be.”

Now he felt like a jerk, for dreading this. “You are welcome to stop as much as you like we’ve got a good five hours of daylight left, so we should have plenty of time even with stopping in Estes Park for some dinner. As long as we’re out of the park by dark we’ll be fine.”

She beamed at him and her hazel eyes sparkled with excitement. “I really, really appreciate it, Adam. And will owe you one. A big one.”

His mind went straight to the gutter on how she could repay him. All of them involving some sort of nakedness. He shifted in his seat to hide his reaction and cleared his throat. “No payment necessary.”

“I’ll think of something.”

He didn’t let his mind go anywhere with that statement. He kept his eyes on the road like it was the hardest drive on earth, when, in fact, he was following Beau down a nearly deserted highway. Since Beau had gone to CSU for eight years to earn his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, he knew the best way to, and from their home, both through the park and not.

“You know I was thinking about that drone that keeps showing up,” Rachel said.

He grunted.

“Well if you really want to find it you could set up some motion-activated cameras.”

He turned his head and looked at her for a moment.

She stumbled on, “If you put them up above the height the cattle would turn them on, and point them at the six to eight-foot level, you might be able to see where it’s coming onto your land. I know it’s a lot of ground to cover, but maybe you could rent some, or I don’t know… it was just a thought.” She folded her arms and looked out the window.

As he turned the idea over in his mind, he saw her tense up even from his peripheral vision. “That’s actually not a bad idea.”

She looked back so quick her hair snapped. “You think so?”

“I do, it would take some investigation, and planning but it’s the best idea I’ve heard so far.”

She smiled so wide, the joy filled the truck. “I thought you thought I was an idiot mentioning it. You have so much land and cameras are not cheap, and I don’t know what resources—”

“It’s okay Rachel. I needed to think about it for a minute. Have you already researched this idea?”

“Well I might have looked at things online, a bit.”

He chuckled at her expression of pride mixed with anxiety as she continued on. “There are a lot of different options. Many remote cameras are used for hunting. The problem is they don’t have a very long range, so you would need a lot of them. The ones I saw online have about a sixty-five-foot trigger distance and a one-hundred-and-twenty-degree wide angle sensor, for about eighty dollars. You would need a couple hundred of them to cover your perimeter.”

“True, but we could do a portion of the land at a time, it wouldn’t have to be the whole thing done at once. Maybe do a quarter at a time, for two weeks then move them. I think we could see what direction the drone is coming from and then investigate from there. Once we didn’t need them anymore we could probably sell them to hunters at half the price and not be out a ton of money. I’ll talk to my dad about the idea.”

She looked so pleased with herself for having a good idea he nearly laughed out loud.

* * *

Rachel was so thrilled Adam hadn’t treated her like an idiot and really was considering her idea. She’d been freaked out when she’d realized he was the one that would be driving her back to their ranch. The two of them in his truck alone for several hours seemed like torture of the highest form. He’d been very helpful with toting around all her equipment at graduation, but she always still felt like he was indulging her, and he really thought she was an inconvenience.

She’d gotten that idea stuck in her head the very first minute she’d met him, and she hadn’t been able to shake it. So, when he said her idea was a good one it had relieved a lot of anxiety. When he was being nice he was so darn attractive, she wanted to jump him. It had been a while since she’d had anyone she was remotely interested in that way. She lived in such a small town there just weren’t that many prospects. But that didn’t account for the crazy attraction she felt for Adam. Chase, Cade and Drew were also very attractive men and she didn’t feel anything toward them. There were also a couple of the hired hands that were cuties, but again no interest at all. Just this big cowboy with a grumpy attitude.

She entertained herself with ideas of where they could get naked. Not the truck, vehicles were just not that comfortable, at least not the front seat. If all her crap was not in the back it might work, but the seat was still pretty narrow. She looked out the window at a pretty meadow, that might be good, but it was too close to the road. An old barn came into view. Now that would work, it was falling down and weathered, but maybe behind it.

The truck started slowing down and over to the side of the road. Crap did I say that out loud? Can he read my mind?

She looked up. “W-why are we stopping?”

“I thought you might want to take some pictures, you were staring at that old barn pretty hard. Alyssa must have thought so too, because they are stopped up ahead.” He waved his hand toward Beau’s truck.

She looked and saw Beau’s truck pulled onto the shoulder of the road about fifty yards ahead. Her cheeks flamed, and she fumbled with her seat belt. Nearly dropping her camera as she stumbled out of the cab. “Oh yes, of course, it’s a very cool structure it would make a terrific study. Be right back.”

The man was going to think she was a complete idiot. He’d told her she could stop any time and apparently Alyssa was looking out for her, too. If she hadn’t been having hot fantasies, she would have noticed it and wanted to take pictures. God, she had to get herself under control, immediately if not sooner.

She took a few pictures just for form, but her heart wasn’t in it and she knew they wouldn’t be that great, she tried to settle down and get some good ones, but she was too rattled.

She got back in the truck and smiled sweetly. “Thanks for stopping.”

“No prob. Just let me know if you see something you like.” He shrugged and started up the truck.

She saw something she liked, all right, but it had nothing to do with photography.