Ainsley

The sprawling ranch nestled into the mountain range of western Wyoming was impressive as we flew over it.

When we landed, I expected him to get us into a car and drive us to one of the cabins up the mountain.

That was typically how it went. Momma and Daddy had a cabin in Colorado, but they had to drive about an hour or so from the airport to the house. It was a mountainous area and there was no place to park a plane.

This, on the other hand, was a flat valley area between two mountain ranges.

From the air, I’d seen one big house and several smaller cabins around it, nestled in the trees.

Again, not anything out of the ordinary.

But when we took off walking down a pebbled walkway toward the main house, suddenly nothing was ordinary about this.

So maybe he owned the plane, as he said he did, and he was using someone else’s…

But he’d called this home.

If this was Wyatt’s home, he was most definitely not what I expected.

A wealthy Wyoming rancher?

A little bubble of laughter escaped my lips and I quickly put a hand over my mouth to cover it.

“What?” Wyatt asked. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing,” I said, wiping the smile off my face. “So where are we? Exactly?”

“Home,” he said, sweeping a hand around. “Welcome to Beaufort Valley Ranch.”

“This is where you live?” I asked.

He grinned at me with a crooked little smile.

“Yeah. What do you think?”
I looked around. At the mountaintops hidden in the clouds.

There was a river nearby. Not only had I seen it from the plane, I could hear the rush of water.

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Big.”

He nodded. “Agreed.”

Though Beaufort Valley Ranch was quite impressive, I was a city girl, through and through.

The thought of living in a small town was a nightmare for me.

But a ranch? I didn’t even know what that would be like?
I didn’t even know what kind of person would fly an airplane like that live on a ranch like this?

The whole notion was outside of my experience.

But if the cold wind blowing down from the mountains was any indication, I was about to get some sense about it.

I’d made a quick check of the weather while Wyatt had been in the back gathering up his things.

And he’d been right. There was one heck of a storm headed this way.

And no one was going to be going or coming for a while.

According to the weather report, the storm was much worse than anyone had predicted.

As we reached the front porch of the big house, Wyatt adjusted the duffle bag on his shoulder.

“I want you to feel welcome in my home,” he said. “So if there’s anything that you need, you have to let me know.”

“Ok,” I said. “I hope you have a good supply of coffee.”

Wyatt

I held the door as Ainsley stepped inside my house. The house I’d lived in for two years now. It had taken me a year before that to have it built.

I’d like to say I designed it, but truth was I’d worked closely with an architect who’d seemed to understand exactly what I wanted from the get go.

The cabin—a term I used loosely for what some called a two-story mansion—had wall-to-wall windows on every side.

It was a little bit more like a glass house than a cabin.

But no matter what time of day it was, there was some place in the house that had a perfect view.

In the summer, there were shady spots—and automatic shades—to block the sun. In winter, there were comfy chairs to sit in and soak up the warmth of the sun.

When it snowed, it was absolutely a winter wonderland outside every room.

Since I was the only person who lived around here, I didn’t have to worry about privacy, but if I did want privacy, all I had to do was open an app on my phone and pick which windows to black out.

I’d always loved this house. I thought of it as a penthouse in the valley.

Instead of looking down on street caverns, I looked up at majestic mountain peaks.

But I’d never seen the house come alive as it did when Ainsley walked through it.

It was like she brought sunshine and magic with her, but she didn’t even know it.

She certainly didn’t make an effort to brighten any room.

She was one of the most serious women I’d met. She was quiet and obviously a deep thinker.

She rarely smiled, but when she did, it was worth the wait. Like waiting for hours to see an eagle leave its nest or waiting all year until the leaves on the aspen trees turned red and gold.

“Is Beau an inside dog or an outside dog?” I asked. But the dog was already following us around the house. So I took that as an answer. Still. I wanted to engage her in conversation, no matter how trivial.

“I don’t know,” she said.

That answered a lot of questions for me.

First of all, Beau wasn’t her dog. Or at least hadn’t been for long.

And probably didn’t belong to her boyfriend.

At any rate, Beau had imprinted himself on her.

I imagined that the dog was drawn to her much like I was.

She stood in my kitchen and looked around.

I didn’t cook a whole lot, but when I did, I liked a lot of space.

Space was very important to me. Without it, I couldn’t think like I needed to.

I tried to see it through her eyes.

It looked more like a staged house than somebody’s home.

I didn’t like clutter. Hard to be creative when things were piled up and lying around. Things that had no use or purpose.

So I kept it that way.

About once a week, I gave it a good cleaning myself.

I’d hired a girl to come in and clean one time, but she’d talked so much, I couldn’t stand to be in my home office while she was there.

Besides, I enjoyed it. I wasn’t a messy person and I didn’t have any pets, so it stayed clean.

I used the time it took to clean to think.

It usually took me two days to get the whole house cleaned because I’d come up with some brilliant inspiration and have to dash off to my computer.

“This is beautiful,” Ainsley said, turning away from the kitchen island and looking at me with a glimmer of a smile on her face.

“I like it,” I said.

“You actually live here?” she asked.

I smiled. “Yes, but I’m away a lot.”

She turned toward one of the windows looking westward and nodded as though that explained everything.

Then she turned back. “I don’t see why you’d ever want to leave.”
My God. She was a woman after my own heart.

“It looks like a penthouse,” she said, but it’s on the ground.”

I grinned. “That’s exactly what I was going for.”

She went over to the back door and looked out over my little garden area.

I still had some work to do there, but I didn’t say anything.

Even with the work left to do, I was proud of it. I’d had the rocks delivered, but I’d arranged everything myself.

“It’s starting to snow,” she said with wonder in her voice.

I went over to stand next to her.

“You’ve seen snow, right?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said, with a cross glance.

“I didn’t know. Since you live in Houston and all.”
Her features softened as she watched the fat flakes fall and splatter on the rocks.

“I’ve seen snow, but I still think it’s wonderful.”

I nodded. For me, snow never got old.

That’s why I’d picked here to live.

It snowed just enough and was accessible enough that I could commute by plane. If I wanted to I could drive into the little town that was growing by leaps and bounds as more and more young professionals discovered it and made it their home.

I was standing close enough that I could smell her scent of vanilla and honeysuckle. So fresh and clean. It made me think about other things.

“Do you want to see your room?” I asked.

I needed to get my mind on something other than the way she smelled and the way her smile lit up the world around her.

And I had to remind myself that she wasn’t here as my date or my girlfriend. She was my guest.

A guest I knew absolutely nothing about.

Other than her being from Houston, knowing a lot about airplanes, and having a dog named Beau.