Chapter Two
February 1
Dair thinned her lips as she drove into Wind River Valley. It was a hundred miles in length, snow covered, flat, and prosperous looking from an agricultural standpoint. She’d done her homework, thanks to the employment team within the Pentagon. Because she’d been part of a special top-secret project of testing women in combat conditions, they were there to support her once she got released from the Army.
Her heart ached as she slowly drove down the wet asphalt road that had two feet of snow plowed onto either side of it. It was Saturday morning, February first, and the Wyoming sky was turbulent looking because of a weather front having passed through late yesterday. There wasn’t much traffic and she was glad. Her hands gripped the steering wheel. She tapped her left foot, her prosthesis encased in a big, ugly-looking pink and white tennis shoe. Dair knew she shouldn’t think of it like that. She was grateful to have it, as a matter of fact. A year and a half after that horrible, nightmarish IED explosion that killed her dog Zeus and left her without a foot and ankle, felt like one more battle she had to fight. Only this time, it was going through another operation, getting fitted with a prosthesis, and then learning how to walk with it again.
She missed her mother, Ruby, and her grandmother, Rainbow. Her mother lived just outside Laramie, Wyoming, and still had her ever popular day school for pre-kindergarten children. Her grandmother, now in her mid-eighties, no longer trained as many mustang horses, but she kept at it, only at a slower pace.
Dair had always wanted to be just like her grandmother, who was small, tough, and a full-blood Comanche. Her face was deeply lined, but her dark brown eyes glittered with fierce life within them. Dair frowned, pushing a few black strands off her brow. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw her light brown, cinnamon-colored eyes were flat looking. Inwardly, she felt hopeless. She’d had so many failures learning to use her wooden leg, as she referred to it. And maybe she shouldn’t think of it in that light. As Rainbow had pointed out, at least she no longer needed a wheelchair and had to use crutches only occasionally, now. Things were looking up for her. Didn’t Dair see that?
No, she didn’t. Every time she tried to get a job near a VA hospital, she was never hired. It wasn’t that she was stupid or uneducated. Her skills lay in training horses and dealing in combat with a WMD dog. Not much call for either of those out in the civilian world. How badly she wanted to stay with Rainbow and help her out. But Dair had no money to give her grandmother, who relied on social security, which was stretched to the max in order to feed the three horses she had in training. Her grandmother had always lived at the edge of poverty. To stay with her now would make one more mouth for her to feed, and Dair knew she couldn’t afford it, so she’d left.
Luckily, Ruby gave Rainbow money every month from her preschool business. Without it, her grandmother would have died of starvation a long time ago. There was such poverty among the indigenous people. It was everywhere.
Her mother had made something more of herself, however. She put herself through college, held three jobs to pay for the tuition, never qualifying for a scholarship; and yet, Ruby graduated with a degree in social work. Coming home, Ruby took the money from her jobs to build a second house, which would eventually become her preschool center. Dair admired her mother greatly. She had Ruby’s genes, that gut desire to succeed.
Blowing out a puff of air, Dair felt lost. Losing half her lower leg had totaled her in a way she could never have imagined. She simply wasn’t mentally prepared for it. Would she get this job? She’d been turned down so many times in the past that she felt like she’d already lost this one. What was the use of trying one more time?
Now, Dair understood the depression that vets got after being wounded. The sheer sense of black hopelessness. On top of that, she had PTSD and nights were a special terror for her. She was terribly sleep-deprived. The job the Pentagon team had told her about, an assistant horse trainer at the Bar C, was a perfect fit for her. But what would the owner think of her not having two legs? She wiped a film of sweat off her upper lip, her stomach already knotting over the thought of the coming interview. There were twenty miles to go before she arrived at the ranch.
The Wind River Valley was coated in deep snow. Because Dair had been born in Laramie, Wyoming, she knew winters here were long and harsh. Growing season on the western side of Wyoming, around the Tetons, was only eighty days; not even long enough to allow a plant to mature to produce fruit or vegetables. Heaving another sigh, she pushed the dark glasses up on her nose, her gaze always roving from one side of the highway to the other. That came from being a combat dog handler. Even now, she could feel that nasty cortisol, part of the fight-or-flight hormones spewed out by the adrenal glands, leaking into her bloodstream. She felt like she was going into combat again. That is what job interviews were like for her since leaving the cocoon of the VA hospital. There, she’d been fed, clothed, and had a roof over her head.
The Pentagon team reassured her that this job interview would be different from the others they had sent her out on. Shay Crawford-Lockhart, owner of the Bar C, had been a military vet herself, seen combat, and had PTSD as a result. She’d come home to the ranch when her father, Ray Crawford, at age forty-nine, suffered a debilitating stroke that left him incapacitated and no longer able to take care of the huge, sprawling ranch.
Shay had been granted an Honorable Hardship Discharge upon her release from the service, and returned to take over the daily running of the big ranch. All that sounded hopeful to Dair, who had pretty much given up hope of ever getting a job. People looked at her lost leg and turned her down. Maybe Shay Lockhart would understand and be open to giving her the job. Maybe.
Her mind wandered as she drove. Dair never kept her cell phone on. She didn’t want the distraction. At times like this, when she felt tension rising in her muscles, she turned to things that made her happy. She pictured her mother, Ruby, who was half-Comanche and half white, a woman who had come from desperate poverty. Dair was born the year she graduated from college at twenty-two, but never let it slow her down.
Her grandmother Rainbow cackled and said that she looked just like she had looked as a child: black, shining straight hair, golden-brown eyes that changed color when the sun struck them, and she grew to be tall and medium-boned. Her genes clearly favored her Comanche side of the family.
How she missed her family! Yet, as much as Dair tried, she’d never been able to get a job in Laramie. She’d had to widen her search, not wanting to leave Wyoming because she loved its wildness, its nature, and sparse human population. She’d never been in Wind River Valley before, nor the Tetons.
Picturing Zeus, his intelligent black face, those large brown eyes of his, pink tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth, she smiled. Her heart blossomed with such love for him. Even now, she grieved for him.
Rainbow had urged her to get a puppy, train it, and then have it as a companion, because she needed something in her life to love. Dair had resisted, her heart still given to Zeus. She understood the wisdom of her grandmother’s words, but she still couldn’t bring herself to do it. Like a good luck charm, she wore Zeus’s twisted metal ID tag on a long silver chain that fell between her breasts beneath her bright red long-sleeved tee. She wore his tags today for good luck.
Her mind canted back to another episode. She met a man called Noah Mabry. Nine months earlier, she was on an outing to a horse farm fifty miles from Bethesda Medical Center. Dair remembered it with humiliation. She was still learning how to walk with her metal leg and that big, ugly-looking tennis shoe on her prosthetic foot.
Ten amputee vets had been invited to come for a two-day outing at the Danbury Horse Farm, a thoroughbred breeding facility tucked away in the rolling green hills of Maryland. She was the only woman in the group. The men’s injuries ranged from the loss of one or both hands or arms to the loss of all or part of one or both legs. She felt lucky compared to her companions in that roomy hospital van that took them to the horse farm. The owner, Henry Danbury, had been in the Marine Corps, from what she understood. He was rich beyond imagination, and in the summer months, recovering military vets were invited, ten at a time, out to the facility. There, they’d get to rest, relax, experience farm life, and stay overnight in a specially built home just for them.
Dair was very excited for the opportunity, but she was far more inexperienced over rough, uneven ground with her prosthetic foot. She worried about making a fool of herself by tripping and falling. God knew, she’d done enough of that already. They’d been warned beforehand that the ground was uneven, especially around the huge, airy barns.
She had wandered off from the group because she spotted a huge oval corral behind one of the barns. In it were two men and an incredibly beautiful black thoroughbred stallion on a longe line, trotting around in a circle. Dair knew that the stallion was being trained on the thirty-foot nylon training rope. The silver-haired man who held the line in his gloved hand knew what he was doing. He was Henry Danbury, the owner of the farm.
As breathtaking as the stallion was, his ebony mane flying and tail up like a banner as he leaped, kicked out with his hind legs, working off all that pent-up energy, her gaze was drawn to the man standing next to Danbury.
Leaning against the pipe-rail fence, her arms resting across it, Dair relaxed more than she had in a long time. Maybe just being out of the suffocating hospital, where there was no sunlight, no wind on her face, no way to move like she used to, made her feel a little bit more normal.
The stallion listened to verbal commands being spoken quietly but firmly by Danbury, but her gaze kept drifting back to the other man.
She didn’t know the stranger, but he was easy on her eyes, from what Dair could see of his face. She almost laughed at the absurdity of the thought. Since being wounded, her sex drive had disappeared. Right now, she was interested in this good-looking younger cowboy who wore a straw hat, a blue plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows, and a threadbare pair of faded dungarees.
Glancing downward, Dair saw his cowboy boots were deeply scarred and scuffed, telling her this man worked hard every day. He was no armchair cowboy; he was the real deal. When he turned to the trainer, she saw his neatly cut, short hair was black, but she picked up red strands among them because the June summer sunlight was strong, highlighting them.
He took his straw hat off, and she smiled to herself when she heard his rich, deep laughter drifting her way. There was something strong and yet gentle about him, and she couldn’t put her finger on why she felt that way about him. Memories of her father, Butch Wilson, nagged at her. When she was ten years old, he had jerked her from a kneeling position on the ground and broken one of the bones in her lower right arm. She didn’t remember much about that day except that her mother had come flying out of the kitchen, shrieking and charging her abusive husband.
Shaking her head, Dair wanted to forget those painful, upsetting years. Life got much more peaceful and comforting after her mother divorced Butch. So why did this cowboy intrigue her just now? Dair didn’t know and wished she could get closer to him and look into his eyes. From this distance, she couldn’t tell the color of them. He was deeply tanned and his long legs were slightly bowed, telling her he’d probably been born in a saddle and rode a horse daily. She wondered what his name was. Was the man next to him his father? A relative? They seemed like good friends, always laughing, talking, and joking with one another. A good feeling slowly entwined her heart, the sensation so unexpected, yet warmed her soul. She leaned against the corral, content to watch them.
Near noon, lunch was served, and the vets all gathered at a one-story building that they called the dining room. Dair walked into it, still not truly steady on her prosthesis, so she used her cane to help maintain a sense of balance. She’d gotten rid of the hated wheelchair, progressed to crutches, and finally the walking bars, where she could practice how to walk with her new leg attached to her body. Now, the cane was the last tool in her arsenal to get well, and she was bound and determined to be rid of it sooner, not later. Today though, she absolutely needed it because they were walking around on mostly uneven lawn or graveled areas around the barns, corrals, and buildings.
The people from Danbury Farm had gone all out for them. A long table was covered with a white plastic tablecloth, real china, neatly laid flatware, and sparkling lead crystal glasses filled with ice water. One of the women who had brought them out to the farm showed them to their respective places; each one marked with a name on a placard. Vets in wheelchairs needed more room than others. A few sat opposite, leaning their crutches against the wooden wall behind them. Dair found herself at the end of the table, her back to the wall, able to look through the bank of large windows, out over the rolling green pastures and horses munching contentedly. It was a perfect day.
That memory flowed strongly through her, filling her heart, lifting her depression for a moment.
To her surprise, the handsome cowboy who had been in the arena was seated opposite her. Henry Danbury sat at the head of the table. A partial smile tugged at her mouth. She’d found out the eye-candy cowboy was called Noah Mabry. He said he was visiting his friend Henry. Dair had found herself suddenly choked up, nervous, and her mind went blank as she drowned in his warm gray gaze. Noah wasn’t like other ego-busting wranglers she saw at the Laramie rodeo every year. No, this man was quiet, attentive, and sensitive to the vets around the table. She found out he’d been in the military, too.
That was nine months ago. And so much had happened to her while at the farm. Meeting Noah had made her feel more alive than she ever had in her entire life. There was no simple explanation as to why.
But he’d kissed her that evening, alone in the barn, and she’d melted in his arms. It had scared her for two reasons. Just before she boarded the bus to go back to the hospital the next afternoon, they’d traded email addresses and they promised to email one another. Dair chickened out and never sent Noah an email, too unsure of herself because she was handicapped; and secondly, she couldn’t conceive of someone as handsome as he was, being interested in someone like her. She wasn’t whole any longer. Dair never heard from him again. He was a good memory; one that reminded her she was a young woman of twenty-seven, who had a sex drive and who hadn’t been kissed in nearly two years. He made her feel feminine when all she’d ever had was a man’s job in the male-dominated military. She would never forget that afternoon.
Her brows fell as she realized twenty miles had gone by in a hurry. To the left were two huge twenty-foot-tall pine tree trunks, dug deep in the ground, that became the entrance to the ranch. The crossover log on top of them had black wrought-iron words across it: BAR C. This was the place. She braked, watching for traffic, and then made her turn down the muddy, rutted road. There was still snow on the road, but it was obvious trucks had been in and out of the ranch. The soil was slippery and she was glad she knew how to drive a three-quarter-ton truck in thawing conditions. Mud splattered the fenders and even smacked up against the windshield.
Craning her neck as she drove around the corner, she saw a huge three-story cedar ranch house. The logs glowed silver in the sunlight, telling her it was a very old structure weathered by brutal Wyoming winters. The white plaster was thick and even between each of those long cedar logs.
Her heart began to beat harder in her chest as she saw the oval parking area partially plowed, bits of dark, wet gravel peeking out here and there. There was a row of four houses off to the right and down below the mild slope. She saw a number of pipe corrals. Her eyes widened as she saw a green aluminum-roofed riding arena behind the main home. It was huge! She saw a number of pickup trucks parked down in the parking area and spotted a woman riding a bay quarter horse out of the open doors of the mammoth indoor arena. Next to it were two huge red barns, three stories high. The place was filled with activity for a Saturday, and she saw a number of wranglers here and there, all busy, all focused on their duties.
The training corrals, made of pipe, were painted bright red and caught her interest. She saw no horses in them and no one tending them. She wondered who the trainer was. The team at the Pentagon didn’t know either, because she’d asked them. The only name they gave her was Shay Crawford-Lockhart, the owner.
Glancing at her watch, she noticed she was fifteen minutes early for the eleven a.m. interview. Mouth dry, heart thumping, Dair swung into the area where other trucks were at in front of the main home. She parked, turned off the engine, and sat there for a moment, absorbing the beautiful cedar wrap-around porch that curved around three of the four sides of the home. There was a cedar swing at one corner. She loved swings.
Dair had a keen, knowing eye. She grew up learning how to put a roof on a house, how to clean the siding, when to replace it, or when it needed to be painted once again. This cedar-log ranch house was lovingly cared for. She loved the bright red aluminum roof that was steep enough to shed the heavy snow load so it wouldn’t collapse. The logs were clean and cared for. She could see the white plaster used between them, keeping the cold out, had been recently replaced.
It was a good sign these owners knew the benefits of upkeep on their property. A tiny trickle of hope spread through her. Dair tried to tell herself that once Shay Crawford-Lockhart saw that she had a prosthesis, she would doubt her ability to either train a horse or ride one. Climbing out of the truck, she pulled the bottom of her frayed Army jacket down into place. Her mother had knitted her a new muffler for the winter and it was bright red to match the long-sleeved tee she wore beneath it. It was the only thing she’d kept when her duffel had finally caught up with her. She’d sewn on the Army patches depicting her unit, an American flag on the upper left arm, and her name across the left breast pocket, stenciled in black, along with her enlisted rating.
Dair debated whether to keep her long hair in braids or allow it to fall freely. She decided to keep it in braids, knowing it would bring out her Indian looks. She knew some people held prejudice against Native Americans. And it could skew this interview, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t going to pretend to be someone that she wasn’t. Shay would either accept her as is, or not at all.
Staring darkly at her cane sitting against the front seat, she decided at the last minute that she wasn’t going to use it. She’d come a long way in the past nine months since meeting Noah Mabry. Still, as she moved carefully through the mud and snow to the white picket fence that surrounded the ranch house, Dair found herself already humming in synchronicity with the Bar C. It was full of life. It was clean. Updated. The people who lived here cared for their property. If they cared for the ranch house, she figured as she climbed the wooden stairs to the porch, then they would care about their animals and employees, too.
* * *
When Shay Crawford pulled open the huge cedar door, Dair saw her warm, welcoming smile. Instantly, some of her trepidation melted.
“Hi, I’m Dair Wilson.”
“Shay Lockhart,” she said, her smile widening. “Come on in, Dair. Nice to meet you!”
Dair was stunned by the woman’s friendliness. She appeared to be around thirty years old, her face oval, bright blue eyes, and about two inches shorter than herself. Dair managed a slight, nervous smile as she crossed into the mudroom. “It’s nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Lockhart.”
“Oh, pooh,” she called, shutting the door. “Call me Shay. No one stands on formality around here, Dair.” She turned. “Just stomp your feet on the rug and hang your jacket on one of those pegs. I’ve made fresh coffee for us. Would you like some?”
Pulling off the jacket, Dair tried to keep her hopes tamped down. Shay was acting like a long lost friend. “Well . . . sure, I’d love some coffee. Thank you.” She stomped her right foot a couple of times, not wanting to track snow or mud across that shining gold and red cedar floor that led into the huge main room of the log home. She was more gentle with her left foot. Hanging her jacket up, she double-checked the bottom of each of her tennis shoes.
“Oh, they’re clean enough,” Shay said. “Come on in and welcome to the Bar C.”
Dair appreciated the owner’s warmth. They moved into the open concept living room and kitchen. Already, she could smell bread baking, a hint of cinnamon in the air, as she followed Shay into the even larger kitchen. There was a twelve-foot-long heavy wooden trestle table located to one side of the area.
Shay gestured toward it. “Make yourself at home. I’ll pour us coffee. What do you like in it?”
Angling off toward the table, Dair said, “Black, please.” She decided to choose the chair at one end. The table was set with two small plates and a fork, knife, and napkin beside each one. “This is a beautiful kitchen, Shay,” she said, sitting down. Deciding that Shay probably set the dinner ware for them, the owner had her sitting at the head of the table.
“Isn’t it though? My family ranch is over a hundred years old.” She quickly poured coffee, bringing it over. “Back in a minute. I baked us some homemade cinnamon rolls.” And then she grinned. “And if I don’t grab some for us, real quick when they come out of the oven? The rest of the vets will smell them and come running. You just have to get out of the way and let them feast. They’re like a starving wolf pack. You’d think they had never had a cinnamon roll before.” She chuckled.
Dair wrapped her hands around the bright pink mug. The coffee smelled good. “You bake these for them every day?”
Shay hurried to the kitchen, donned a pair of mitts, and opened the oven door. “Oh, no! I baked these for you and me. But the guys will smell them in the air and come snooping. They miss nothing.” She pulled the huge pan of cinnamon rolls out of the oven, placing it on two metal trivets sitting next to the double sinks. “My husband, Reese, will be out of his office any second now. He knows the smell of cinnamon rolls when they are done.” She laughed. “He also knows the guys will be coming in shortly, so he’s going to make sure he gets his two rolls, or there won’t be any left for him after they arrive en masse!”
Shay had no sooner brought over two cinnamon rolls, oozing with melted brown sugar, when Dair saw a tall man emerge from a nearby hallway. He had to be Shay’s husband, Reese. Because of her father’s abuse, Dair always, to this day, went on internal guard over any male stranger. He was well over six feet tall, lean like a wrangler, with a square face, green eyes, and short black hair. The lines in his face told her he was a man who thought a lot, and that his gaze missed nothing. They settled on her for a moment. And then he smiled.
It was what Dair needed in order not to become even more guarded.
“You must be Dair Wilson,” he said, halting for a moment at the entrance to the kitchen.
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“I’m Reese Lockhart.” He gestured to Shay, who was using a spatula to scoop two more bubbling, steaming cinnamon rolls onto a nearby plate. “And this is my lovely wife and partner who takes care of all of us. And call me Reese.” He walked over to his wife, slid his hand across her waist, leaned down and kissed the top of her curly brown hair. When he released her, Shay smiled up at him.
“Okay, you get two for that kiss. Now shoo!” She handed him the plate of cinnamon rolls along with a fork, plus a paper napkin.
Dair smiled, liking the warmth between the couple. She felt a rock-solidness coming from Reese Lockhart. In comparison, Shay seemed like a busy bee, flitting here and there.
Reese walked over, extending his hand across the table to her. “How was your trip out here, Dair?”
She shook his roughened hand. “It was okay. No snow drifts to dodge.”
He grinned and released her hand. “Well, you’re a Wyoming native, from what Shay told me earlier. You know how to drive in the wintertime in this state.”
“Yes, my family lives in Laramie, and I do know how to drive in a Wyoming winter,” she said, feeling his penetrating perusal, but few red flags were rising in her. Lockhart might be tall as hell, super confident, but he didn’t threaten her. Most men did. He felt very calm, centered, and friendly.
“Well, we’re glad you made it. I’ll leave you two alone to talk.” He looked toward the foyer and mudroom. “But you’re probably going to get a lot of interruptions. I’m sure Garret and Harper will be in here any second now, to land like a pack of hungry wolves on what’s left of those rolls.” He chuckled, turning away, heading out of the kitchen and down the hallway once more.
“I’ll be with you in just a sec,” Shay called over her shoulder. “If I don’t parcel these rolls out, Noah won’t get any. He’s in Jackson Hole, and he’ll be really bummed out to hear the other vets got rolls and he lost out.” She laughed.
Ears perking up at “Noah,” Dair wondered about that. Could there be a wrangler here named Noah? She’d never found out where Noah Mabry had come from, except that he was with a ranch on the western side of Wyoming. What were the chances it was the same man? No. Impossible, Dair decided, sipping her coffee and appreciating it.
Just as Shay rushed over to sit down with her, Dair heard the front door swing open. There was a lot of stomping of boots.
“Uh-oh,” Shay warned, giving her a merry look, “here comes the wolf pack . . .”
Interested, Dair watched two wranglers in sheepskin coats, Stetsons, and Levi’s, enter the kitchen. Their gazes were locked on the dessert sitting on the counter.
“Hey,” Shay called to them as they both descended on the plates, “come and meet Dair Wilson.”
Barely able not to smile, Dair saw the wranglers scoop up the plates with the rolls on them. They turned in unison, staring across the kitchen at her. Dair felt the same kind of energy from them as she did from Reese Lockhart, so relaxed and nonthreatening.
“Come over here,” Shay said, gesturing. “Meet Dair Wilson. She’s here to apply for the assistant horse training position. Dair? Meet Garret Fleming.”
Garret was a huge, muscular man, an inch or two shorter than Reese. She saw his hazel eyes narrow slightly, taking her in. His sandy-colored hair was short and neat beneath that dark brown Stetson he wore.
“Nice to meet you, Dair. I’m Garret.”
Garret’s hand was huge and her hand was swallowed up within it. But he didn’t break her bones or cause her pain when they shook hands.
“Hi, Garret, nice to meet you.”
“I’m Harper Sutton,” the other cowboy said, leaning over, smiling and shaking her hand heartily.
“Hi,” Dair said, liking his wide smile and sparkling dark gray eyes. He too was lean, but below six feet tall, more in keeping with most wranglers she’d seen, around five-foot-ten inches tall.
Garret looked around. “Hey, you only gave me two rolls, Shay. I need one for Kira, my wife, who will kill me if I don’t bring her one.”
Shay snorted. “Then share, Fleming.” She jabbed at the two rolls on the plate he held. “One for each of you.”
Garret’s face fell as he regarded the rolls. “Come on,” he pleaded, “I know you got more squirreled away,
Shay. I’d like to eat these two. You know how good your rolls are when they’re warm. Give me a third one for Kira?” and he gave her a wriggling eyebrows look.
Dair tucked her smile away, watching the drama. Shay was a tiny thing compared to her husband and this vet, but she held her own.
“No way, Fleming. I’ve got two saved for when Noah gets back sometime this afternoon from Jackson Hole.”
Garret grimaced. “That pan holds fourteen rolls, and you’ve only accounted for ten of them. So there’s gotta be more left over, Shay. Come on? One more for Kira?”
“Share, Fleming.”
Harper snickered and hit Garret in the upper arm of his thick fleece jacket. “She’s got your number, big guy.”
A slow grin pulled at Garret’s mouth. “Yeah, Shay’s little but mighty.”
“If you want a pan of cinnamon rolls,” Shay said pertly, “why don’t you make them for dessert tomorrow?” Shay turned to Dair. “Everyone on the ranch comes to our home for Sunday afternoon dinner with us. Garret is a real chef and he makes the meal for all of us. It’s the best food in the world, not to mention his mouthwatering desserts.”
“Sounds wonderful, Shay,” she said, missing her own family, missing their Sunday dinner get-togethers.
Rubbing his chin, Garret rumbled, “I just might make all of us some more of those rolls.”
“Oh, great!” Shay said, dropping her hands. “Maybe make two pans, hmmmmm?”
Garret gave her a fond look. “For you? I’d do it, Shay. Okay, dessert tomorrow afternoon is two pans of cinnamon rolls with my special white icing that everyone drools over.”
“Yes!” Harper yipped, pumping his fist into the air.
Dair took the paper napkin and wrapped up one of the rolls and stood up, handing it toward Garret. “Tell you what. You’re a big, strapping guy. How about I share one of mine with your wife, Kira?”