Dylan returned to the cabin in somewhat of a stupor. Had he been thinking properly, he would’ve gone back to his own cabin, put the file away, and headed back over to Dean’s to play ping pong.

“What in the world was that?” Shane asked, a laugh bubbling out of his mouth. “Did you fancy her or something?”

“Fancy her?” Dylan scoffed, heat rising to his face. Had he been that obvious? “Who talks like that?”

Kurt handed him a cup of coffee like he belonged in this cabin with these older, established men. Dylan looked at it and took a sip, nearly spitting it out when he said, “He’s interested for sure.”

“Come on,” he said. “I was just asking her questions.”

“Yeah,” Shane said. “Like, ‘how can I get your phone number so I can ask you to dinner?’” He laughed again and clapped Dylan on the back. “Hey, I’m not judging.”

“Sure seems like you are.” He fisted his phone before stuffing it in his back pocket. “I just might need help with the forms.”

Dwayne passed him with his own cup of coffee in tow. “Get them done as quickly as you can. If she has to come up here and observe, who knows how many more cattle we’ll lose?” He paused in the doorway. “And do you want me to assign you to this?”

Dylan blinked at him. “Who else would you assign? I’ve been going out to the far reaches for years.” Dwayne couldn’t take that from him. Could he?

“What if she doesn’t get assigned to our case?” Dwayne asked. “What if it’s some smelly old male scientist you’ll need to shadow for a few weeks?”

Foolishness raced through Dylan. “I’d still want this assignment,” he said. “Hazel has nothing to do with it.”

“Oh, Hazel has everything to do with it.” Shane breathed her name out like Dylan had done such a thing. Of course he hadn’t. Had he?

His brother laughed, and he, Kurt, and Dwayne took their leave to sit on the front porch, sip their coffee, and talk about boring ranch business.

Dylan set his coffee cup in the sink and rinsed it out so May wouldn’t have to clean up after him. He exited through the back door so he could avoid any more ribbing and went on home to his empty cabin, his mind rotating from Hazel’s beautiful eyes to her obviously capable ability to relocate wolves.

He wasn’t sure which was sexier, only that he wanted to spend more time with her so he could learn everything about her. Then he could decide what her most attractive quality was.

The next day, his phone rang while he swung lazily in the hammock behind the guest house. He jolted from his near-nap, hoping it wasn’t Dwayne. The man had a way of sniffing out a cowboy that took a break for too long, and while Dylan had never really fallen into that category, he was slated to go out to the northern zones in an hour, and had to work until well into the night to keep an eye on the herd. He could afford a nap.

“Yup,” he said after he’d answered his boss’s call.

“You haven’t left yet, have you?”

“No, sir.” Dylan pushed himself with one foot to get the hammock swinging again. He loved Texas, couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

“Felicity has some food for you at the homestead.”

Dylan perked up at the mention of food and promised to drop by and get it before he left for the fenceline. An hour later, with half a dozen blueberry muffins for breakfast, and two BLT’s for dinner, he swung his leg over the ATV and set it northward.

He went along the paths between the alfalfa fields, saw the abandoned grove of peach trees, and passed three cabins before he even got close to his destination. The further from the ranch he drove, the less weight his shoulders seemed to be bearing up. And he didn’t even know why. He didn’t have a particularly hard job around the ranch. He liked all the men he worked with.

There was just something freeing about being out in the open wilderness, with no cell service, and no one to talk to. Just his own thoughts, his own self. A man and his God.

Please help our paperwork to go through quickly, he prayed, something that had been on his mind since that morning when he’d emailed in the completed forms. They weren’t hard, and he hadn’t needed any assistance from the lovely Hazel Brewster. He’d considered calling her, and then decided that there was no way he could ever tell Shane she’d caught him dancing on the porch with Greta and then called her to ask a question he already knew the answer to.

So he’d simply filled out the forms and submitted them, as if Hazel were the old smelly male scientist Dwayne had kidded him about.

And please allow Hazel to be the one to handle our case, he added. Might as well put it all on the line. It was just between him and the Lord anyway. Shane didn’t need to know.

He arrived at the cabin, which was in the best repair out of any on the ranch. Dylan knew, because he spent a lot of time in it, fixing it up and making it his sanctuary. Dwayne hadn’t approved anything, but Dylan had patched the roof so it was airtight. He’d cleaned the windows with vinegar until they were so clear he wasn’t sure if they were open or closed. He’d purchased curtains at the last Peach Jamboree—nice, manly curtains with horses and cowboy hats on them—and hung them over the windows.

He’d painted the front door white and the side door a baby blue that reminded him of Austin’s eyes. He’d refinished the floor inside and used some leftover barn stain to make it a rich, chocolately shade that gave the cabin an upscale feel.

If he had the time and materials, he could’ve sectioned it into more rooms, but since the cabin was mostly used by him or a crew of cowboys as they worked on the long fence lines that ran around Grape Seed Ranch, there was no need.

There were already two large, private rooms on the far side of the house, with a bathroom between them. Those doors closed and locked, and Dylan had left them as-is. The big room the front door opened up to held four long couches in neat rows, and honestly he sometimes preferred the one against the back wall to the cot in the bedroom.

The side door opened into a small kitchen area, with a U-shaped counter, a standard refrigerator he never used because he didn’t want to start the generator, and a sink. The biggest perk of the cabin was the running water, and Dylan liked the shower out here more than the one at his place on the ranch.

He unpacked his food and left it on the counter for later, wishing for at least the twentieth time that he had a dog of his own. Shane had gotten an Australian shepherd several months ago, and Cinna loved all the Royal brothers. Shane best, so she followed him all over the ranch. Dylan needed a companion like that, and he determined to get into the shelter again and see if they had any German shepherds. He’d looked several times, to no avail.

Life out in the cabin would almost be perfect if he had a dog to share it with. Once he’d gotten settled in the cabin, he headed out on the ATV to check the fences he’d just fixed. The brighter, newer wood seemed intact, as did the chicken wire he’d used to prevent even the smallest of foxes and coyotes from coming through.

He stood on the ATV while he drove, constantly moving his attention from left to right and back. The last thing he needed was to be caught unaware out here by a wild animal. Or a big rock he rammed his vehicle into. Or any number of other dangers that came when a man let his guard down out in the middle of nowhere.

The Texas sun beat down relentlessly, but Dylan actually enjoyed it. The heat, the sweat trickling from under the brim of his cowboy hat, the scent of dust in the air. There was nowhere he’d rather be than out here, doing this job.

“Okay,” he said aloud to himself. “There could be something better.” He gazed into the clear sky, not a cloud to be found. “Maybe if I was out here, doing this job, with Hazel….”

Four days passed before Dylan got another call. This time it wasn’t from the owner of the ranch, but an unknown Texas number. He’d spent two nights out at the cabin and hadn’t found any evidence of more creatures coming in and disturbing their herd.

Which was great, really. But he needed to get back out there in the next day or two and make sure things were still going well.

“Hello?” he answered, walking through his cabin toward the back door, hoping and praying with everything he had that it wasn’t his father, fresh out of the relationship he’d broken their family with, using a burner cell phone.

He was the only one home, but he’d always gravitated toward open space when talking on the phone. In general, he’d rather text than talk, but when a woman drawled, “Is this Dylan Royal?” with that edge of something non-Texan in the words, he was grateful for the modern invention of the telephone.

“Maybe,” he said. “If this is someone who’s never seen me dance with a baby.”

Hazel laughed, and he imagined the bright, free sound coming from her throat as she tipped her chin toward the heavens. He wanted to be there with her next time she laughed like this, and he couldn’t help the chuckles that came from his mouth too.

“I have some good news,” she said. “I’ve been assigned to your case.”

A smile burst onto Dylan’s face. He didn’t want to give away too much of the complete euphoria flowing through him so he grinned at the fields beyond the Cabin Community like a lunatic.

“I’m so glad our case got approved.” Very neutral, he thought. Nothing about her. “So what’s the next step?”

“I get to come out to the ranch and start the study,” she said. “It’s Friday today, so I’m wondering what your week next week looked like.”

Dylan thought he could maybe skip going out to the far zone tomorrow. “How about Monday?” he asked. “We can go out and get you all set up. How long do you need to be out there, making…notes or whatever?”

“Several days.”

Several days alone with her sounded fantastic, and Dylan worked to keep his thrumming pulse in check. “So maybe Monday through Friday?” he suggested. “I’ll just want to plan food and activities.”

“Activities?”

“Well, once you’re out there, there’s not a whole lot to do,” he admitted. It was why he’d worked on the doors, the curtains, the windows, the floor. “The herd is safe during the day. It’s at dusk and dawn that the observations need to happen.” A flash of pride stole through Dylan that he could even remember what she’d said she’d do during the case study.

“Right, dusk and dawn,” Hazel said. “What time should I be out at the ranch?”

He suggested ten, and she said she’d be there, and the call ended. As Dylan held his phone against his thigh, several questions ran through his mind. How had she gotten his personal cell phone number? Did she know what to bring out to the cabin? Did she have any nut allergies?

He didn’t want to spend five days out in the cabin without a hot meal, and he resolved that he would indeed need to make a trip out to the far zones so he could take out a hot plate, some simple cookware, and enough gas to keep the generator going for five days.

After all, he could eat protein bars and day-old muffins for a day or two. But Hazel certainly shouldn’t have to.