“I bet you say that to every sheriff you meet, provided they have staple scars under their hair and a hole in their skull.”

“Every single one,” Brynne replied.

He kissed her again, and this time, he lingered a little longer.

Finally, she laughed and shook her head. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said, laying her hands on his chest, feeling his heartbeat under her palm, strong and steady. “We are not going back to bed. Not yet, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because I want to show you a building I like. Get your opinion.”

“Here’s my opinion—as long as it’s not a cottage meant for one, I’m good.”

“It’s a barn, actually,” Brynne said. “Or it was.”

He frowned. “Don’t tell me you’re talking about the one on the McCall place,” he said, clearly worried. That, of course, was where he and Melba had found Freddie Lansing’s body.

“I won’t, because it isn’t. J.P. wouldn’t sell that monstrosity anyway, since it’s smack in the middle of his ranch.”

“He ought to burn it down,” Eli said.

Brynne pretended frustration. “Stop talking about J.P.’s barn. I’m trying to tell you that the property I have in mind is the Anderson farm.”

Eli looked nonplussed. “The barn on that place is probably going to collapse under the next heavy snow, if it hasn’t already.”

He wasn’t wrong. The farm had been abandoned for many years, and its owners, living on the East Coast, ignored it, keeping the taxes up but doing nothing in the way of maintenance.

“I know,” she admitted wistfully, “but it’s a beautiful old place with a romantic history.”

“It’s a teardown,” Eli insisted.

“Don’t be stubborn, Sheriff. Of course it’s a teardown.” She paused, remembering her sketchbook, and went to find her purse and retrieve the book.

Inside, she’d sketched the buildings she’d already erected in her imagination: a large, lodge-like space with many windows and long balconies, surrounded by several rustic cabins. The finishing touch was a gazebo made, like the cabins and the main building, of logs.

Eli studied the drawings carefully, let out a low whistle of exclamation. “I’d forgotten just how talented an artist you are, Bailey.”

“What do you think?” Brynne prompted, unable to contain her eagerness. “Of the idea, I mean. Not my art skills.”

“It’s not bad,” Eli mused aloud. “Not bad at all.”

Brynne pretended to whack him in the chest. His bare, muscular and extremely masculine chest.

“‘Not bad’? That’s all you have to say?”

He looked up from the sketchbook, met her gaze. Smiled. “The Creek could use something like this,” he said. “It’s great.”

“That’s better,” Brynne said.

Eli returned his attention to the sketchbook. “All right if I look through this?”

She hadn’t expected that. “I guess,” she answered tentatively.