“I do enjoy it,” she argued. “I love what I do.”

“Well, you better, because it’s going to take you six years to finish this place.”

“Three months,” she insisted. Then caught his skeptical look. “Fine. Four tops.”

“You pay me to be practical,” he reminded her as he carefully removed a briar that had attached itself to his sleeve. “It’s impractical that your only days off are the ones you take driving between houses. You can’t keep this up forever.”

“Practical concerns noted. In the meantime, you trust me to have vision,” she said, blazing a trail through underbrush toward the one thing that would shut him up.

“Vision. Not hallucinations.”

She said nothing and pointed to the rocky edge of the bluff.

His brown eyes widened. “Oh. Shit.”

“Yeah. Oh, shit.”

They stood shoulder to shoulder and looked across the rolling foothills and canyons spread out before them. The Payette River zigged and zagged below, green and fast with snowmelt. The town, compact and cozy, was tucked into a hard bend to the north. The lake beyond fed the river and the tourism that coaxed travelers off the beaten path, away from the jagged mountain peaks and ski resorts and into Western Idaho.

“Figured we’d open up the view a little bit,” she said, still looking out over miles and miles of rugged country. “Thin out the vegetation. Maybe take down a couple of the trees.”

“The budget isn’t big enough,” Dean said, recovering himself quickly. He wasn’t a romantic who could be charmed with breathtaking views and historical charm. But at least she knew he was willing to flirt with the value of a multimillion-dollar view.

“We could double our money here,” she said, tempting him with his language of love.

“Double? Ha. First of all, you have to decide what’s the absolute minimum to get this beautiful and market-worthy. Then you being you, you have to decide how much over that you’re going to run amok. Then we’ll have to pull a buyer who wants a seven-figure mausoleum in Where the Fuck Are We, Idaho, out of our asses.”

She clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit. Oh, and Kinship.”

“Kinship what?”

“Kinship, Idaho. That’s where the fuck we are. Now, if I promise to buy you two huge coffees when we go into town, will you be a good boy and get your fancy drone out?”

Grumbling, he left her there and picked his way through nature. “I hate thorns!” he called over his shoulder. “Son of a—”

She snickered when his dark head disappeared into a wet bed of tall ferns.

“Watch your step,” she sang out too late, following him to the front.

“I’m not too fond of you right now!”