Page 35 of Last Chance for Her Rancher Boss

“Yeah, so maybe try smiling or something. That usually conveys happiness.”

“Why don’t you stand in for the photos if you know so much about it?”

“Because you’re the pretty one.”

Meg sighed but smiled wide, feeling like she was back at school picture day. She tried to hide just how much Nash calling her pretty had thrown her off, and she had no idea if she was successful or not.

She must have been because Nash was happy to move on.

“Hopefully these do the trick,” he said, flicking through the images while Meg was still reeling. Being called pretty in a throwaway compliment shouldn’t knock her sideways like this. She was being silly again. Especially when it was all just joking around. The compliment didn’t actuallymeananything.

Nash looked around the barn, thoughtful.

“You really think this will work?” he asked. God, he sounded so hopeful.

“I think…” Meg said, choosing her words carefully. “That no matter what happens, you should be proud of yourself. You’ve done your best. That’s all anyone can ever do.”

He gave her a smile, and she hated how it made her knees weak to see him like that.

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” he said. Meg wished the jokes would come back because she didn’t know how to deal with all this sincerity. So she just shrugged.

“It was the least I could do.”

“You’re not going to accept the compliment, are you?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“We’ll see.”

“Whatever.”

She shrugged off the whole interaction as them being tired. Nash was potentially losing his home, and Meg had a part to play in it. They were rebuilding a friendship after a decade, and they had been working like crazy to get all of this done. Emotions were raw and close to the surface. There was no point reading into all of this.

Even so… that fizzy feeling between her ribs was still there, and it was getting harder to ignore it with every passing day.

CHAPTER 12

NASH

How do you thank someone for something huge? Something so big that it was life-changing? Because Nash was realizing that saying, “Hey, thanks for maybe saving my home,” wasn’t really going to cut it. Meg had blown in here and turned everything upside down, and it had been exactly what Nash had needed. And thanks wasn’t going to cut it when it wasn’t just the property that had a fighting chance now.

He had hope again. Not about anything specific, really, just a general feeling about the world. It wasn’t all doom and gloom. There was still goodness here.

The most unbelievable part of these past few weeks wasn’t even the revival of the farm or the revival of any sense of hope. It was that their friendship was alive again. He had long ago accepted that he was going to regret losing Meg until the day he died, but now here she was, putting on her boots on the porch steps to go check over all the animals. She’d smiled at him as she walked out the door. They’d laughed together. Nash couldn’t even remember the last time he’d laughed like that.

It was an insight into a different world, one where she had never left Fordswell, where they had never parted ways.

She needed to go, he scolded himself.She needed to spread her wings. You can’t regret all of that because it made you feel lonely.

It was hard to keep track of what he was feeling right now. There were too many emotions, and they were all too confusing. So Nash just tried to be happy that he was, well, happy. He tried to be happy that there was goodness back in the world again, and it was all thanks to Meg, even though she owed him nothing.

So the question remained… How do you thank someone for that sort of thing?

Buying her something wasn’t going to work. Meg had never, and still didn’t, care much about possessions. And going out somewhere in Fordswell wasn’t the most appealing thought when the options were limited to the diner and some fast-food places. But maybe he could take her out while not technically going anywhere? Picnics were nice, right? Women liked picnics kind of as a rule,right? He hoped that was right because otherwise, he was fresh out of ideas.

Nash launched his operation, hoping that his best was going to be good enough…

While Meg was off walking around the property, checking on the animals, he took the opportunity to throw a bunch of things in the truck. A blanket, because that was the most basic requirement for a picnic, right? He didn’t have one of those old-fashioned wicker baskets, so he put a bunch of plastic food containers inside a tote bag from the supermarket. It would have to do. The food wasn’t going to be five stars, but it was going tobegood; Nash could guarantee that, at least. There was potato salad in one tub, some packets of potato chips, bread and other fixings to make sandwiches. If he made them now, they’d just get soggy. He threw a handful of cutlery into the bag as well, and into the truck it went. Drinks… they would need drinks, so he grabbed some of those too.

---