“What do you mean?” Brody asked.
“Your marriage is getting annulled. You have no other purpose on the show but to bother Avery.” Elizabeth ticked off her points on her fingers.
“I have a purpose,” Brody sputtered. “I play guitar. I entertain you guys.”
“You can’t mean to stay.”
“What about you?” he returned. “What’s your purpose? I’m not marrying Avery, which means Walker is going to.”
Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open, but she couldn’t seem to think of an answer. “No one wants you here,” she finally spit out and strode away.
“I want you here,” Jess said from behind the camera.
“Thanks, darling.” Brody blew her a kiss.
“Why is Elizabeth still here?” Avery asked Walker as they fell behind and let the others get ahead of them. “Besides waiting for your confrontation with Sue. She’s got to know what’s coming next. Why doesn’t she give up and leave?”
“She’s stubborn,” Walker told her, but Avery made a good point. Elizabeth was too smart to fight a lost cause. Which meant she still thought she could win. Unease prickled down his spine. “Don’t worry, Sue will be here before the end of the day.” He wasn’t clear if he was reassuring Avery or himself.
“Can’t wait.”
Would this day ever end? After a night of too little sleep, all the endless May sunshine and heat were getting to Avery. When a bead of sweat rolled down her collarbone and between her breasts, she stood up from where she’d been mucking out the chickens’ pen and wiped a sleeve of her gown over her face.
She was thankful when the bell rang out signalling lunchtime, and she hurried back to the bunkhouse with the others in her work group, dying for a tall glass of water. She found Curtis and Hope standing near the kitchen door talking to Kai and Addison, who looked like they’d stepped out of the hot kitchen to get a breath of fresh air before starting to serve the meal. Daisy nosed around the edge of the bunkhouse nearby.
“What’s going on?” Avery asked.
“Star News. What else?” Hope said angrily.
“Who have they got in their sights this time?”
“Me. Curtis. Apparently, Curtis’s woodworking is second rate. Can you believe that? He does beautiful work!”
“I’m no master,” Curtis started, but Hope wasn’t having it.
“Yes, you are. Stop being modest, and don’t let those idiots plant thoughts in your head. Your work is fabulous. I’m honored to live in a house you built.” She turned back to Avery. “Meanwhile, my bison research is really a front for my crusade against the cattle industry, paid for by radical leftist vegans, if you want to know the truth. Never mind the fact bison aren’t vegetables!”
“They’re just trying to make you mad,” Avery told her.
“It’s working!”
“Shh!” Addison hissed, bent close to the little screen. “Now they’re after Kai and me!”
They listened to the show playing on Curtis’s phone.
“Have you seen his so-called ‘cooking show’?” the female announcer asked. “There’s no cooking, Paul! It’s just playing around with solar ovens and a lot of talk about using windmills to make your dinner.”
“What the hell is she talking about?” Kai sputtered. “I’ve never talked about windmills.”
“You know that’s what they call wind turbines,” Avery said. They’d been through this all before. The announcers loved to play dumb, to get the terminology wrong—to pretend they were living in the 1950s. Avery wondered how their audience could stand it.
“She’s skipped about ten steps between the wind turbines helping to power our energy grid and the recipes I make on the show, which do involve cooking by the way, most of the time in regular ovens.”
“We know,” Addison said soothingly.
“As for his wife, Addison?” Paul said. “What kind of a name is Addison, anyway? Sounds foreign to me.”
“Sounds like a woman trying to be a man,” Marla said.
“She always said ‘yes,’ remember? No matter what you asked her, she always said yes. You think she still does that? Must make her husband awfully happy!”
“Eww,” Addison said. “That gross man is talking about us having sex!”
“And how you say yes to me no matter what.” Kai leered at her, and she smacked him away.
“Stop it! I’ll never be able to be with you again if you keep that up!”
“Kai! Curtis! Come on—there’s someone down at the creek!” Harris yelled, racing past them.
“Get inside,” Curtis barked at Avery and the other women. “Lock the doors!” He and Kai pounded after Harris, Daisy loping alongside them, all the men disappearing with them around a bend in the track that led to Pittance Creek.
“Inside,” Renata snapped from the bunkhouse door. “Everyone inside—doors locked!”
Avery hated the feeling of being herded inside like a bunch of useless cattle, but Renata was right; they were sitting ducks out here. They peered out the windows, talking quietly among themselves. Avery wondered what they’d do if a stranger appeared outside, with the men all gone.
In the end, it didn’t come to that. Soon the men trooped back again, Montague walking sheepishly among them.
“I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss!” he cried when they reached the bunkhouse. “I was just doing recon. Getting to know my property.”
“Someone’s been skulking around our ranch at all hours—someone we think is armed. We’re patrolling night and day,” Jericho told him.
“And we’re armed, too,” Curtis growled. “Want to get killed?” Daisy sat alertly beside him.
Montague paled. “You wouldn’t shoot someone, would you?”
Curtis just looked at him. Daisy did, too.
Avery lost her temper. She was sick of being afraid all the time. “Ten Navy SEALs,” she spelled out for Montague. “That’s the whole basis for the show, remember?”
“I… was just checking things out,” he repeated feebly.
“Down at Pittance Creek? Why? Are you planning to build creekside mansions now?” Nora snapped at him.
“Creekside mansions.” Montague straightened and smiled, rolling the phrase around his tongue. “Now that’s a good idea. Has a real ring to it, don’t you think?”
“Get. Out. Of. Here,” Curtis said.
“My car’s that
