Page 21 of Undone

I made myself a sandwich and sat down to look at the files Amy had given me. She was right. Some were blurry but with a bit of work, I was able to clean them up. I chose two that I thought would work best for Lost Valley, and then zipped up all the cleaned-up ones into a file and sent them to Amy with a quick note thanking her again for the drone use.

As I was finishing my sandwich, my computer pinged with an email—the link to the videos.

“Oh! These are amazing.”

“What’s amazing?”

I squealed in fright and looked up to see Josh standing in the doorway, his hat in his hand. “You startled me,” I chastised him, and he grinned before grabbing a soda out of the fridge.

“So?” At my blank look, he added, “What’s amazing?”

“Amy just sent over the link for the drone footage we took. Come see.”

Josh came up behind me and leaned on the back of my chair as we both looked at the videos I took. “This is going to look fantastic on the website. Look, there you are.” I pointed to the three of them racing on horseback. “If that doesn’t bring in interested clients, I don’t know what will.”

“Wow, this does look good. And you can get pics from it, too?”

“Definitely. See?” I zoomed in on Josh riding Indigo and paused the video. Then, inching forward a microsecond at a time, I got the framing that I was aiming for and took a still of Josh. He was smiling as if he was exactly where he wanted to be. This was the Josh Cafferty I had fallen for all those years ago. “I think we found your profile photo for the website.”

Before he could reply, Shannon was back, stomping down the hall in a way that sounded ominous. She was early and frustrated. She pushed into the kitchen and frowned when she saw us. “Remind me again why I shouldn’t smack sense into some of these damn ranchers?”

“Because they’ll probably call the sheriff and then you’d have to deal with another lecture from Brian?” Josh said, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.

Shannon raised her hand and wiggled her finger side to side. “Oh no, he’s a reasonable man—I’m sure he’d say it was justified. I swear, if one more man refers to me as ‘little lady’ when I’m trying to conduct business, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

Josh tensed as she complained and I knew he was going into big-brother mode. For my part, I found it charming, but I knew Shannon wouldn’t appreciate it. “Who was it? I’ll go have a talk with him,” he said.

“Because that doesn’t scream ‘a woman needing a man’s help.’” Shannon sagged into a chair next to me. “I appreciate the offer and the sentiment, but I just want to drown my sorrows in ice cream.”

“Shouldn’t you eat first?” Josh said and then held up his hands in surrender when she shot him a look that should have incinerated him. “Never mind. I can see that nothing I suggest will be useful right now. I’ll just get out of your way and see you both later.”

Before he walked away, he squeezed my shoulder. “Great job with the drone. I can’t wait to see what you do with it all.” Then he stepped farther back and gave Shannon a wide berth as he headed to his office.

I got up and went to the freezer, pulling out the different pints I saw stacked in the door. Bringing them back to the table, I grabbed two spoons, sat down next to my friend, and took the lids off all the containers. Handing her a spoon, I pushed chocolate with brownie chunks in front of her and grabbed the strawberry for me.

“Eat up and then tell me what happened, I’m all ears.”

FIFTEEN

JOSH

“We ready to launch yet?” I asked Zoe, rubbing my hands together excitedly as I burst into the kitchen, catching her off guard. “C’mon, let’s do it!”

“Ugh, please stop rushing me,” Zoe said, scowling at her laptop. “We’re getting closer, but we’re not quite there yet. The maps and drone footage are finally both working, and I’ve got most of the photos placed, I just need to take a few more.”

She was such a perfectionist that I was sure she was stalling for no good reason. Zoe could barely tear her eyes away from her laptop to look at me.

“You probably don’t want to hear this, but in order to get things rolling in time for the season, I think we need to go live with the trail portion of the site by next week.”

Zoe finally managed to look away from the screen. She crossed her arms and stared at me as I sat down across from her. “Seriously? Like, live with sign-ups and everything? I thought I had more time.” Shelooked back at the screen mumbling something about test runs and making sure the reservation system was working.

“You’ve got time to tinker with the rest of the site, but the trail stuff needs to launch ASAP, Zo. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just functional. We need to get a read on how viable this program will be.”

A lot was riding on the success of the trail riding program. I needed money to keep the ranch running, the animals fed, and the bills paid, and I didn’t want to use the bank’s loan to do all that.

“Nuh-uh, there is no such thing as perfectorfunctional,” she replied, shaking her head and frowning. “Those two things have to go together.”

“Okay, well, what can I do to help you get there? Want me to read the copy? Play around on the mobile version and look for bugs?”

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