The Delivery of Decor (Shiloh Ridge Ranch in Three Rivers #7) - Liz Isaacson Page 0,79
cowboy hat. He normally liked this morning winter sun, but that was when he sat on the back porch and plucked chords while sipping his coffee.
Today, he felt like he could dive off this cliff just to get off the ranch. Thirty feet down, two Three Rivers city trucks came to a stop, and men started piling out of them.
“Ho there!” one of them yelled, donning his bright yellow hardhat. “I’m Huey Howard.”
“Welcome to Shiloh Ridge Ranch,” Bear called, and a glance to his left showed Ward that Bear actually wore a smile on his face. Shocking for this time of morning, and in the state they still found themselves in.
Stuck.
Stranded.
Isolated.
“Looks like y’all have a problem,” someone else yelled, and Ward wanted to start throwing rocks. Of course they had a problem. The ranch leadership had met again last night, and Ranger had talked of driving out past the Edge, out past the Cornish Plantation, and up into Amarillo to get groceries. They had plenty of food for now, but if the roads would take a while to fix…all solutions had been outlined on the white board in the conference room in Ranger’s suite.
One of those solutions had three little letters that had made Bear’s eyebrows fold down.
ATVs.
Ranger owned two of them, and he’d fired them up this morning to see if they were still running. When they sat for a while, the batteries could go dead and the tires could get misshapen. But he’d revved the engines and zipped from Bull House to the Ranch House and back just fine.
They didn’t need a very wide road to get off the ranch on an ATV. Ward had suggested the all-terrain vehicles, and he’d said if they could put a couple of trucks where the city ones now sat, anyone could get off the ranch, leave the ATV and take the truck to town, do what they needed to do, and come on back.
It might take three or four trips to get the groceries from the trucks back up to the ranch using the ATV, but they wouldn’t be stranded. They could get Aunt Lois and Uncle Donald back to their own house. They could return Mother to the assisted living facility where she normally lived.
Dot could go home and get back to her regular life.
Ward’s frown deepened at the very thought of that. He didn’t want the gorgeous woman to leave him alone up at Shiloh Ridge, and he’d laid awake last night for at least an hour, despite his exhaustion.
She’d told Ida she was falling in love with him. He’d been present as she said it. Dot didn’t remember saying it, and Ward wondered if the truth had come out when her guard was down.
He knew he was falling in love with her, and his blood sugar wasn’t currently off the charts. Ward had always known how he felt about the woman he was seeing, and Dot ticked all his boxes. She lit him on fire, and he almost hoped it would be weeks before the road could be fixed.
It will be, he thought. But they needed a solution to get on and off the ranch sooner than that. He didn’t want to cold call her brother in the middle of the night again, that was for dang sure.
Bear and Huey had been talking, and Ward noted that the conversation was about getting a couple of trucks down now, and then using the ATVs, as Ward had outlined the previous evening. Ranger’s chest had puffed to twice its size during last night’s meeting, and Ward glanced at him to find him nodding.
He’d wanted to use the ATVs around the ranch, but Bear had steadfastly refused. Ward had vetoed the idea a couple of times himself, but he could admit having a smaller method of transportation was going to be dead useful in this case.
“Okay,” Bear yelled down. “So you guys will assess the debris and start to move it? We’ll hang tight and see how it goes.”
“Yep,” Huey called. His men had been poking around the gravel, dirt, and rocks during the conversation. “We’ve got an excavator coming up too. Louis just called for it.”
“Could be a while,” another man said. “But we should be able to clear a lane for y’all today.”
“Have you guys spoken to a landscape architect?” Huey asked. “They’ll help you design a plan to get the roads back in permanently.”
“Not yet,” Bear said. “I don’t even know who to call for that.”