“Hey,” she said, cutting up the last few pieces of her chicken, “we’ve spent all of this time talking about me. I want to hear about you. Tell me about your ranch.”
He leaned back against the padded chair. “Well, we’ve mostly got cattle, and some sheep. Most everyone in the family helps out, though a couple of people have jobs in town, and the kids have school, of course. Half of the time it seems like complete chaos, but we get by.”
“I figured you had cows, but sheep too? Do you raise them for meat? Wool?”
“Right now, it’s just wool, though I’d like to build up the flock enough that we can sell some sheep’s milk too. There are some dairies up in Idaho that are producing sheep’s milk cheese, so the market’s growing.”
“Interesting,” Hope said, and she meant it. It was something that had served her well in her career—it was easier to write about a subject if you could get genuinely interested in it. “How long has your family owned your ranch?”
“It’s almost a hundred years now.”
“Wow!” she exclaimed.
“My great-grandfather came back from fighting in World War I and decided he wanted to own some land. The area was moving away from ranching and more into oil production, and he got a good deal on the land. The rest is family history.” He laid his utensils on the plate and pushed it slightly away from him. Somewhat to her surprise, Hope noticed that she’d also cleaned her plate.
“You keep saying your family’s big, but how big is it?” she asked.
He laughed. “My dad was the oldest of nine kids, and six of my aunts and uncles live on the ranch, along with their husbands, wives, and kids. I’ve got about twenty first cousins. I could count them all up, but we’d be here a while.”
“That is a lot,” Hope said. “To be honest, a family like that is as unfamiliar to me as you being a shifter.”
“If you come to the ranch, I can show you both of them first-hand.”
“Maybe,” she agreed.
***
“Were you interested in dessert?” The waiter proffered two small menus, and they each took one. Josh scanned the list: creme brulee, cheesecake, lemon meringue pie, a trio of gelatos...
“Everything looks amazing,” he commented to Hope.
“It does,” she agreed. That same frown—the one she’d had when deciding what to order—crinkled her forehead. He never wanted to see that expression on her face again.
“Hey,” he said, aware of the waiter’s presence. “Do you want to split the chocolate cake?” He tried to project his caring and support through the words, so that she remembered he would never judge her. And maybe it worked, because her frown smoothed out, and she smiled at him.
“Sure, that would be great.”
When the waiter had gathered the menus and left, Hope said, “I told you about my favorite article, but do you want to hear about my least favorite?”
“Of course!”
“One time, I got an assignment to fly to Detroit and interview this up-and-coming musician. Very avant garde. Think Ozzy Osbourne meets Nine Inch Nails meets Marvin Gaye.”
“I didn’t see that last part coming.”
“No one ever did. His career didn’t last very long. Anyway, my flight to Detroit was a disaster, one of those ones where everything goes wrong, and it was super-late. If I’d known, I would have just driven, but I kept hoping it would work out. Also, it was January, and of course it was snowing.
“By the time I finally got to Detroit, I’d already pushed the interview time back twice. I grabbed a cab and made it to the café about fifteen minutes late, but there was no sign of the guy. I texted him, nothing. I texted his manager, nothing. I texted him again. By this point, I was starving. The café didn’t have much of a menu, but I ordered a burger and fries and decided that if he wasn’t there by the time I’d finished eating, I’d give up and try to catch my flight home.”
“I’m trying to figure out where this is going,” Josh said, “but I’m not having much luck. It can’t just be that he ditched you and you didn’t get the interview.”
“Oh, just wait,” she said, waving a teasing finger at him. “I made it about halfway through my burger, and the guy walked in. Remember that it was a Michigan winter. He had on ripped jeans, a mesh shirt, a hot pink women’s blazer, and army boots. Nothing else.”
Josh tried to picture that, but the resulting mental image was almost too ridiculous to believe.
“He stomped over to my table, grabbed a handful of my fries—without asking—and said ‘There’s an emergency outside. I need your help.’ But he didn’t sound panicked or worried, just spoke in a flat monotone as he ate my french fries. I thought maybe there was a car accident, or someone having a heart attack outside. The barista had disappeared into the back somewhere, so I grabbed my phone and followed him outside. And when I got outside—”
“Yeah?” Josh found himself leaning forward in anticipation, one hand clenching the chair arm. “The suspense is killing me.”