Harvey rubbed his beard. What exactly are you doing? Rebecca looked toward Main Street, feeding people. The next morning, she bought flour, onions, dried beans, salt, pork, coffee, and a small sack of potatoes from Cooper's general merchandise. The clerk gave her a handwritten receipt.
She read every line before paying. By noon, the shed had a scrubbed table, two borrowed iron burners, three mismatched chairs, and a board nailed over the worst hole in the roof. Rebecca's first customer was Harvey. He paid. She tried to return the coin.
He put it back on the table. Business is business. The second customer was a freighter. By the end of the week, she was feeding 12 men a day. Some ate standing outside because there weren't enough chairs.
Others sat on overturned crates Harvey found behind the forge. Rebecca cooked what she could afford. Beans with salt pork, fried potatoes and onions, skillet bread, beef when she could get inexpensive cuts from the butcher. She measured flour with her hands because she had no proper cup. At night, she counted coins at the little table, wrote every purchase into a notebook, then hid her savings jar beneath a loose floorboard before locking the shed.
When the roof leaked again, she borrowed Harvey's ladder. You'll fall, he called. Then you can say you were right. I'd rather keep the ladder. She patched the roof herself.
Copper Ridge noticed her, not always kindly. One afternoon, two women stopped near the forge while Rebecca was turning bread in a skillet. One glanced toward her. Hot work. The other lowered her voice without lowering it enough, especially for a woman her size.
Rebecca heard her hand paused over the skillet, only for a second. Then she turned the bread. Harvey looked toward the women. Rebecca shook her head once. He returned to his anvil.
That mattered more to her than if he had shouted after them. By the second week, ranch hands had begun timing their supply trips around noon. Rebecca learned who wanted coffee before food, and who would complain about onions while eating everyone on the plate. She learned which frighterss were good for their tab, and which ones needed to pay before they sat down. The little jar beneath the floorboard grew heavier.
Not much. Enough. On a bright Tuesday, Rebecca had a line of nine men outside the shed. She was slicing skillet bread when the line went strangely quiet. Not silent, just altered.
A subtle shift, the way horses changed when something large entered the yard. Rebecca handed a plate to the man in front. Next, nobody moved. She looked up. At the end of the line stood a pair of mudmarked boots she remembered.
Her gaze traveled upward. Long legs, work trousers, a faded blue shirt stretched across shoulders that made the doorway behind him look narrow. Everett Hail stood beside Harvey's forge. For one moment, neither of them spoke. Then Everett removed his hat.
Miss Foster. Rebecca rested one flower dusted hand on the counter. Mr. Hail. His eyes moved briefly toward the skillet, then back to her.
And this time, when the corner of his mouth lifted, Rebecca saw the whole smile. It changed his face. Not enough to make Everett Hail look easygoing. Nothing about a man nearly 6'7 looked particularly easy inside Rebecca's little shed. But for a second, the hard lines around his mouth disappeared.
You found Copper Ridge, he said. I was beginning to think you doubted me. I saw the road after that storm. So did I. The man ahead of Everett cleared his throat.
Rebecca remembered she had customers. Next. Everett stepped aside and waited. That caught her attention. There were ranch hands behind him.