“And yet you’re going to marry me in thirty-nine days.”
He swallowed the first words that came to mind: hell no. He couldn’t say them until he knew what was going on. Not if she would hurt Sue in retaliation.
When she understood he wasn’t going to answer her, she laughed derisively. “You were going to marry Avery, which is even worse. She believes in love and family, Walker. She wants children. Wants a future.”
He wanted that, too, now.
“So what changed?” she demanded again.
He’d met Avery. He didn’t want to say that to Elizabeth, though. She’d find a way to cheapen it. He didn’t want to hear Avery’s name in her mouth ever again.
When the bunkhouse door burst open, he was relieved.
Jericho rushed in.
“Get out here,” he called to Walker, already backpedaling. “Intruder. Someone’s on the ranch.”
Immediately on alert, he snapped, “Lock the door behind me,” and hurried after Jericho. Outside, men had gathered and Boone was issuing orders.
“Clay, Angus, check around the tiny houses. Tell all the women to lock their doors. Greg, Kai, is anyone up at the manor? Check it out.”
“What happened?” Walker asked. “Where’s Avery?”
“I saw someone near the barn but lost them,” Harris said. “He was armed. Heading this way, but he might have already made it past us—lit out for the creek or something.”
“Avery’s with Savannah,” Jericho added. “She was going to spend the night there since I’m on guard duty.”
“Jericho and Walker, you check out Pittance Creek.”
It was over an hour before they reassembled, and by then Walker thought half of them were wondering if Harris had been seeing things. Walker doubted that. Harris was ever-vigilant and had the best eyesight of anyone he knew. If he said a stranger was on the ranch, then one definitely was.
They collected the women, gathered in the bunkhouse, where Elizabeth waited stoically for them. “Was someone there?” she demanded as soon as Walker appeared.
He shook his head.
“Someone was there,” Harris asserted. “I saw him skulking in the shadows near the barn. Would have missed him entirely if the chickens hadn’t been making a racket.”
“You think it’s about Hansen Oil again?” Hope asked Anders.
“We already handled that,” Anders said.
“I’m going to make a stink about this to Fulsom,” Boone said quietly. “If he has anything to do with it, it’s crossing a line. Meanwhile, we need to operate as if this threat is going to remain imminent and unrelenting. No one goes anywhere alone. Anyone not on patrol sleeps in the bunkhouse. We get our chores done in groups. Everyone armed. Got it?”
They all nodded.
“Right, everyone move in here for the rest of the night.”
There was a lot of grumbling, but they all got to work, the couples tramping out into the night to their tiny houses to collect their things.
“You know anything about this?” Walker said to Elizabeth when they were alone again.
“Why would I know anything about it?” she shot back.
“Because first you came and then he did.”
She held his gaze defiantly. “Seems to me your lot attracts trouble well enough on your own without having to accuse me.” She got back to making up her bed, and by the time the others began to trail in with their gear, she was already under the covers, pretending to be asleep.
“You can’t keep wearing clothes like that,” Leslie said the following morning when Elizabeth emerged from the bathroom dressed in jeans and a blue cotton shirt. “All the women of Base Camp wear Regency gowns. You’ll have to get some from Alice at Two Willows.” She lifted her skirts and turned in a circle so Elizabeth could see what she meant.
“I don’t think so,” Elizabeth said scathingly, and Avery winced, but Leslie wasn’t fazed.
“It’s tradition. You wouldn’t want to break tradition. That’s one of the things that makes Base Camp special—” She broke off when Elizabeth walked right past her out the door.
Walker heaved a sigh and followed her.
Leslie turned to Avery. “I guess some people think they’re better than the rest of us. The joke’s on her, though. It’s always more fun to join in than keep on the outside of things. Don’t you think?”
Avery didn’t think anything was going to be much fun while Elizabeth was around. She finished getting ready for the day and went outside, too.
“Ugh, Star News is at it again,” Hope was saying as Avery joined the others grouped around the empty fire pit on logs. The day had dawned clear and hot, and she thought everyone was out of sorts. She’d barely slept the night before, all their bodies crammed into the bunkhouse close together. She’d been so grateful to Savannah for inviting her to spend the night in her tiny house—and so frustrated to be forced back into the bunkhouse with Walker, Elizabeth and everyone else.
Hope held up her phone so everyone could hear the Star News announcer.
“Tell me who on earth would voluntarily live in one of those tiny houses Clay Pickett and his father build?” a blonde was saying on screen. “They’re not tiny, they’re infinitesimal. Can you imagine how you’d feel about your spouse after a week in there? I bet those couples fight morning, noon and night, but you never see that on the show, do you? Face it, the whole thing is fake.”
“I agree, Marla,” a man said. “And that’s the problem with television today. You can’t believe anything. That settlement isn’t run on green energy; it couldn’t be. Everyone knows how inefficient solar and wind power is. Do they want us to believe the sun shines twenty-four hours a day in Montana—even in the winter?”
“What is he talking about?” Jericho sputtered. “Hasn’t he ever heard of batteries?”
“It’s all fake,” the man went on. “Every last bit of
