mean, he’s trying to get back into the dating pool too, and he loves it when I make mistakes.”
“Was that a mistake?”
“You literally couldn’t answer.” He turned into a dirt parking lot where only two other cars sat. “It’s fine. It’s a question I shouldn’t have asked on the first date.” He parked and smiled at her. “That’s why Cactus will love it when I tell him I stuck my cowboy boot so far down my throat before we even made it to the trailhead.”
He grinned, still so confident. So handsome. So charming and likable.
Montana focused on unbuckling her seatbelt as if such a task required extra attention. “Maybe you asked it because it’s important to you to know the answer.”
Bishop pulled in a breath. “Maybe I did.” He opened his door. “Let me come around and help you.”
Montana didn’t need his help getting out of the truck, but she let him jog around the hood and open her door. Bishop definitely possessed an energy she craved, and she smiled down at him. He took her hand, and she slipped to the ground, keeping her fingers laced through his after she’d found her balance.
“Thanks,” she said. He stayed right where he was, and she added, “Can I have a little more time to give you an answer to that particular question?”
“Sure,” he said, his voice too casual to actually be casual.
“I suspect you want children,” she said. “Just from being around your family. I have Aurora and she’ll be fifteen in a few months. It’s hard for me to think I’m going to go back to diapers and getting up in the middle of the night and first steps and all of that.”
“I understand,” he said, but Montana didn’t believe him. There was no way he could possibly understand. Not only did he not have children of his own, but he was the youngest. He’d never had to care for a baby in any capacity.
“Let me get dinner,” he said, practically jumping away from her and toward the tailgate. He collected a classic picnic basket, complete with the red-and-white checkered cloth peeking out the sides. “I hope you like slightly warm pizza.” He grinned at her, and Montana had a feeling she’d eat cardboard just to spend a little bit of time with him.
“There’s pizza in there? You didn’t cook?”
“It’s been a draining day,” he admitted, and she saw his exhaustion for the briefest of moments. “So I ordered and picked up only a few minutes before I stopped by your aunt’s.”
“Oh, so even you have off days,” she teased.
“So many,” Bishop said.
“We don’t have to hike to the falls,” she said. “I don’t even know how far it is.”
Bishop paused and turned back to her. “What? We just drive here and eat?”
“Sure,” she said. “You have a tailgate, right? Drop that thing, and we sit in the back of your truck. Legs dangling. The sun’s gonna go down here just like it will up there.” The more Montana spoke, the more she wanted to do what she said. “In fact, I’m kinda tired too.”
“Yeah? I didn’t think you got tired.”
She looked at him, surprised. “What? Of course I get tired.”
“You just seem to go and go,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons I really like you. It’s just that…it makes you more human.”
Montana had no idea what to say. “I’m one-hundred percent human,” she said, and that summed up everything. “But let’s stay here. It’s a great view already.”
“Deal,” he said, and Bishop led her back to his truck, where Montana ate room-temperature pizza and delicious cinnamon twists, laughed with Bishop, and leaned into his side while the sun said goodbye to Texas for another day.
“That’s the last of it,” Montana said, hefting another armful of debris into the Dumpster she and Bishop had filled several times over in the past couple of weeks. He currently looked at his phone, a frown between his eyes.
“Thanks,” he said, definitely distracted.
Montana needed a drink like she needed oxygen, and she made one last trek inside the cabin and retrieved her water bottle from the windowsill. She sucked at the cold liquid inside, her throat thanking her instantly.
She grabbed Bishop’s bottle too and glanced around this last cabin. The stripping had taken so long, because they had to deal with mold the whole time, and that required constant checks and paperwork with the health department.
A restoration company was scheduled to come tomorrow to treat whatever remained in the three cabins they’d