Page 27 of Disciplining Dana

“Patience.”

“Kurt,” she snapped in a voice as tight as the bitten-off rumble, “in the seven years you’ve known me, has that ever been my strong suit?”

He chuckled. “Point taken, but this time, you need to be, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” she agreed, though she doubted Kurt bought it any more than she did.

They both turned to gaze back out the window, staring at the early autumn sun beginning to slip behind the crest of the Sapphire Mountains. Shadow was already beginning to creep across the valley floor where Rawhide Ranch sat, but despite the beauty of the country around them and the opulence of the building in which they stood, Dana’s thoughts were only on a dirty, broken-down, hundred-year plus old mine tunnel less than fifteen minutes away.

“So,” Kurt broke in, “what would you like to do now?”

Dana turned to him with a resigned sigh. “Honestly, I’m gonna go back to my room and… I dunno. Take a nap, punch my pillows… something.”

Kurt started to reply, then stopped himself, clearly reconsidering whatever it was he was about to say. “Okay. Meet you for dinner later?”

“Yeah, that’d be nice.” She started to turn away, but he gripped her arm, pulling her back.

“We’ll get in there, Dana. We just need to give it a little time,” he said earnestly.

“I know.”

He smiled down at her, and when he let go, she slipped from his grasp without another word, heading to her room.

Oh, I’ll get in there, alright. One way or another.

When Kurt asked what she wanted for dinner, she chose Italian, and as they headed to the restaurant, Kurt explained something he’d discovered.

“No check?”

“Nope. Everything here is either already paid for, or you’re billed separately for it at checkout. I tried to pay for a drink at the café, and I got a lecture on how that isn’t the way things are done.”

“Did we miss that during the little orientation speech we got?”

“I dunno.” Kurt shrugged. “But it’s definitely… different.”

“Yeah, I know. Pretty much everything we’ve discovered about Rawhide Ranch is different than what we’d expected.”

Which was true. They’d both anticipated a dude ranch with a bit of kink on the side, but it was becoming abundantly clear Rawhide was far more than that.

The restaurant was small but well appointed, and once she and Kurt had ordered, she took up where they’d left off that afternoon.

“I need to get into that mine. I have to get back beyond that gate and see what I can find.”

“‘I?’ Or ‘we’?”

She swallowed. “‘We,’ of course.”

“Uh huh,” was all he replied, but Dana could see the look of guarded wariness that ever-so-slightly narrowed his eyes.

“Well,” he continued, “we’ll just have to wait until we get word back from Mr. Hawkins. Hopefully, those lawyers of his aren’t risk-averse, and we’ll get permission.”

“Kurt.” Dana glanced at the restaurant around them. “All my kidding aside about your reasons for wanting to be here, I was serious. If I can’t get into that mine, this is a completely wasted trip. And that doesn’t mean three days from now; I need to get in there tomorrow if I’m going to have the time I need to do a thorough search.”

Kurt sighed. “I get it, Dana, but there’s not a lot we can do except be patient. Our hands are tied.”

She licked her lips. “When we were back there, I took a look at that security gate.”

“Dana.”

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