“You have to show them your artwork too,” Rosalie said.

  “Yeah, that will be on the tour.” Eric smiled.

  “Who all are you going to invite?” Kolby asked, grabbing another pickle.

  “All the kids at the horseback riding lessons. I guess Jasper could come. He’s close to our age, or he might think we’re too young for him,” Eric said.

  “Jasper’s eighteen,” Kolby explained to Rosalie. “He’s a good kid. He’d be a good choice to come to the party. When you come to the ranch, he’ll help teach you some of the ropes.”

  “All right. Then that’s who I’ll invite,” Eric said.

  After they ate, Kolby showed Rosalie the different options for appliances for her kitchen and for the new washer and dryer. She chose the ones she wanted and called to order them.

  “We’ll pick them up for you so you don’t have to wait for a delivery date,” Kolby said. “They can take forever to deliver out here, which is why we always go pick up stuff.”

  “Oh, wonderful.”

  “We’ve got people who can install everything, including the dishwasher.”

  “Okay, even better.”

  Then Kolby coordinated with Ted to have the appliances picked up. “They’ll be here this evening, and someone can install them first thing in the morning,” he told Rosalie.

  “All right. That sounds good.”

  “A dishwasher, yes!” Eric said. “We need to eat on paper plates until then.”

  Rosalie chuckled.

  “I need to get back to the ranch, unless you think you need me here,” Kolby said.

  “No, tonight is fine. Thanks,” Rosalie said.

  “Sure thing.” Kolby knew Ted and Hal would be fine if he took off the day to be with Rosalie and Eric because of the scare they had last night. But if they didn’t need him during the day, he wanted to be back at work so he could take off a few nights, if he needed to, to stay with Rosalie and her brother. “Don’t clean up too much. I’ll be back to help you take care of things.”

  Rosalie laughed. “As if we could clean this whole place up in the next few hours. I’m sure there will be plenty to do. But thank you in any event. You really don’t have to help with that.”

  “I’d be happy to.” Now that the kitchen appliances were taken care of, well, almost, but at least ordered and would be picked up today, he wanted to make sure that they did something special for Rosalie for her birthday at the Halloween party. But also, Sheriff Dan Steinacker’s birthday was on Halloween, so they could celebrate both. This was going to be so much fun.

  He needed to get in touch with Dan’s wife, Addie, and coordinate with her too.

  Rosalie pulled him into her arms and kissed him. “Thanks for everything. I can’t wait to get the appliances in.”

  Kolby wrapped his arms around her and gave her a heartfelt hug. “I’ll be back for dinner, but the appliances will be here before then. If you need anything, and I mean anything, even just to talk, call or text me.”

  “I will.”

  Then he kissed her, forgetting that Eric was nearby. He released her, saw Eric quickly look at his phone, smiled, and then Kolby said to Eric, “Let me know your schedule and we can work you in on ranch duties.”

  “All right, will do.”

  Then Kolby headed outside, hoping Rosalie and Eric would be okay while he was gone. Before the door shut and locked behind him, he heard Eric ask, “Where’s the wood cleaner?”

  Eric sure had perked up from when Kolby first had seen him. Kolby was glad Eric had met a bunch of kids about his age who could come to his birthday party. They’d be glad to come.

  Then Kolby called Addie to talk to her about Dan. “Hey, I know you were thinking about having Dan’s birthday celebration before the Halloween party since we’re having it at the mansion this year, but Rosalie’s birthday is October 31st also.”

  “Oh, really.”

  “Yeah, her brother wants to do something for her birthday at the party and I thought we could do something for Dan then too.”

  “Okay, sure, that would be fun. How spooky is the place?” Addie asked.

  “It’s fine. We’re cleaning it up, except for leaving the spiderwebs on the chandelier and keeping the grungy windows probably, but otherwise, new appliances are replacing the old ones in the kitchen tomorrow, and it’s going to be great.”

  “That sounds like fun. Some of us are coordinating food for the party. Ted did such a great job with scarecrows last year, he and Stella are in charge of those. We’ll have to figure out a maze and a haunted house.”

  “Maybe the guest bedrooms could be used for that. Or there’s a big Victorian glassed-in greenhouse that we could decorate for the haunted house.”

  “All right. I think hanging orange lights up around the mansion, maybe battery-operated candles in the windows would be good. We’re making lists.”

  “Okay, good.”

  “One of these days, once Rosalie is settled in a bit more, we’ll come out and talk to her about it,” Addie said.

  “She’d appreciate it.”

  “Dan said you were staying with her for the night.”

  Word sure got out fast. “Uh, yeah, in case anything else happens at the mansion tonight.”

  “Good. I was going to send Dan to stay there the night otherwise.”

  “We’ve got it covered.” Kolby figured between three big cats, they’d be able to tackle anything that might be “haunting” the mansion.

  Then they finally ended the call and Kolby arrived at the ranch. The first order of business? He was packing a bag for a few nights’ stay. If Rosalie and her brother felt they didn’t need him for that long, that was fine, but he wanted to be prepared in case they did.

  Ted caught up with him first thing though. Kolby sighed. Ranch business first. Then packing up things to stay with Rosalie and her brother was his next priority.

  9

  Rosalie was so proud of Eric for finally stepping up to help her clean up the place. She knew the teens probably wouldn’t have cared how the mansion looked, but she had to live here, and she wanted it clean.

  “I think we should leave the windows all grimy,” Eric said.

  “Yes! Perfect for the Halloween party.” She could live with that as long as their seating areas, kitchen, dining rooms, bathrooms, and their own bedrooms were clean.

  “I thought the wood might need refinishing. Maybe the floors, but once we polished up the furniture, it looks great,” she said.

  Eric agreed.

  After about two hours of cleaning and playing with the kittens, they both needed a break and had some deviled eggs, chips, and sodas. “Hey, after we take our break, why don’t you go and work on your sketches for the library. If you have time, you could also work on the ones for Tracey’s kids.”

  “Yeah, I was going to ask if it was all right with you if I did that.”

  “Sure. It’s commissioned art, right? So it’s a job and you need to get them done.”

  “Right. I got a request for a painting for the town center also.”

  “Oh, wow, great!”

  “Bobby wants me to do one of wizards, owl familiars, and dragons for his room also, but he has to ask his mom if she can buy it.”

  Rosalie smiled. “That’s wonderful. Kolby wants one for the bunkhouse too.”

  “Yeah. Here I thought I’d just be painting for my bedroom and the art studio—”

  “And me.” Rosalie finished her third deviled egg.

  “Sure.”

  “I’m just really happy for you, Eric.”

  “I shouldn’t have ever doubted you about moving to this place.”

  “We had no idea cougars ran the nearby town.”

  “Even after we learned that, I didn’t realize they’d accept me like they do.” Then Eric helped take the dishes into the kitchen. “The dishwasher will be installed tomorrow. Woohoo!”

  She laughed. “I’ll get these. Go be creative.”

  “I will. Thanks, sis.” Then he took off for his art studio, taking the kittens with him so he could watch them too, and she washed the dishes.

  She needed to begin working on some of her current work-in-progress before she forgot what she was writing. But then she heard a big delivery truck pull up and she ran to the front window and peered outside. Three men got out of the truck—ranch hands she remembered seeing at Hal and Tracey’s ranch. They opened the back doors of the delivery truck, then hauled out her new stainless-steel fridge. Yes! Her appliances were here. Once they set all of them out of the way in the kitchen and another room and placed the new washer and dryer in the basement, the guy she’d heard was called Curly said, “We’ll have a couple of guys install them tomorrow and they’ll take the old appliances away to either sell them or give them away for scrap metal. Though we’ll change out the fridges now. We could use an extra one in the barn for cold drinks.”

  “Wonderful. How much do I owe you?” Rosalie asked.

  “It’s part of your welcome to Yuma Town,” Curly said, giving her a wink.

  She blushed. As a redhead, she blushed more than she wanted to, that’s for sure. “Okay, thanks.”

  They hauled off the old fridge, hooked up the new one, and then the guys tipped their cowboy hats to her, which she thought was cute, and then they climbed into the delivery truck and headed off for the main road back to the ranch. She put all the groceries from the old fridge into the new one when Eric came to check all the new appliances out.

  “Oh, these are so great. Couldn’t they have installed the rest of them?” He helped her finish putting the groceries in the fridge.

  “Someone else is going to do that tomorrow. We’re just lucky they delivered them to us today so we can have everything set up for tomorrow. I have to work on my current book.”

  “Good luck with that. I’m grabbing a bottle of water, but I had to see our new appliances also.”

  She thought he should have helped the men, but Eric was wearing splotches of paint on his cheek and hands and so she figured he’d been in the middle of painting a scene and couldn’t easily break away from it.

  She retreated to her office with a thermos of ice water and another of lavender tea. She sat down at her desk and began working on the story, typing away scene after scene. It suddenly seemed darker in the office, and she hadn’t realized how dark it was getting outside.

  She got up from her workstation and peered out through the dirty windows. She needed to at least clean her windows! The others were fine for a Halloween party. But she wanted her windows to be crystal clear. It was getting late and stormy out on top of that. She needed to fix dinner. Now she wondered what time Kolby would arrive here.

  She decided she would make spaghetti and garlic toast. It wouldn’t take long, but she texted him to make sure he liked spaghetti and could eat mushrooms, bell peppers, and onions. She was used to making meals for her and Eric, so she needed to remember if she was going to fix food for others, that they liked how she made things!

  Kolby called her right back. “Hey, I’m running late. I love everything but peanut butter.”

  She chuckled. “I won’t be putting any peanut butter in the spaghetti.”

  “Good. I will love it then.”

  “All right.” She smiled. “What time do you think you’ll be here? It’ll take about half an hour to make the spaghetti.”

  “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes. I’m just packing a couple of bags. I planned to earlier, but Ted put me to work on a project. I finally finished it and will be over there shortly.”

  “Okay, no rush. Once it’s done, it can sit and—”

  “Yeah, there’s a rush,” Eric said, coming into the kitchen to help her cut up the onions and bell peppers. “I’m hungry.”

  Kolby chuckled. “I’m on my way. I don’t want Eric to eat all of it before I get there.” Not long after that, Kolby arrived at the mansion and Eric hurried to answer the door.

  “It’s about time,” Eric said.

  “I was ten minutes early.”

  “I know, but I’ve been starving for a whole hour,” Eric said.

  Kolby laughed. “I know the feeling. My stomach has been grumbling all the way here.”

  She figured Kolby got a really good workout at the ranch, unlike what Eric and she got at their sit-down jobs.

  Then they took seats in the smaller dining room to eat Rosalie’s spaghetti and garlic toast.

  “I love your Jeep, by the way,” Eric said, glancing under the table. “Leia is tackling my shoelaces. Now Vader is.”

  “Yeah, I love the Jeep too,” Kolby said. “It’s a good thing I’m wearing cowboy boots, though I felt some gnawing on one of my boots a moment ago.”

  Rosalie chuckled.

  Eric cleared his throat. “Rosalie made the garlic toast in case we have vampires. We’ll be protected.” He grabbed a couple of slices of the buttery, garlic seasoned toast.

  Kolby smiled. “Vampires, eh?” He took a bite of his spaghetti and nodded. “Now this is good.” Then he ate some of the garlic toast. “This is great too.”

  “I’m so glad you’re enjoying them. On another subject, I was thinking if we could replace the broken glass panels in the greenhouse, we could grow vegetables in there,” Rosalie said.

  “Yeah, that would be a great idea. I was thinking we could use it for a haunted house for the party.” Kolby took another bite of his toast.

  “Oh, that would be so awesome,” Eric said. “We could have spooky music, evil laughter, swinging rats’ tails at people when they passed by the garden potting tables, blowing wind, all kinds of neat stuff.”

  “Okay, we can do that. We’ll just need to clean up the glass,” Rosalie said.

  “We gotta have a skeleton, a skull, smoking potions,” Eric said. “Bats.”

  Rosalie laughed. “Sure, those too.”

  “Hey, since it’s a spell caster’s theme, we could have old books and colorful lights coming out of objects, and a black cat,” Kolby offered.

  “We’ve never been in charge of a haunted house before. This should be fun.” Rosalie ate some more of her spaghetti.

  Rain started hitting the windows and she was glad Kolby had made it to the mansion before it started raining so hard.

  Lightning speared the ground off in the distance and the flashes of light filled the dining room.

  “Now that’s what we need for our Halloween party,” Eric said. “A good storm like this.”

  “Hey, that makes me think that we could have lights flashing, and the sound of rain and thunder playing,” Kolby said.

  “Yeah, that would be great,” Eric said.

  They hadn’t hosted a Halloween party ever and she hadn’t taken Eric trick-or-treating since he was a kid of about eleven. He was so excited about all of this, and she was thrilled he was. Not to mention she was delighted about the whole prospect also.

  She and Eric usually just watched scary movies, passed out candy to trick-or-treaters, and she made spider deviled eggs and mummy dogs for a meal. Then they ate their favorite Halloween candy for dessert. Hers was chocolate. His was candy corn. This would be so much more fun. The same with Eric’s birthday celebration.

  “Oh, and if I didn’t mention it, I told everyone to bring their fur coats for a run on the wild side after my birthday party. Everyone thought that was funny because we always have our fur coats with us,” Eric said.

  “I bet they got a kick out of it,” Rosalie said.

  “We can do that after the Halloween party too,” Eric said.

  “Yeah. We always do that for all the celebrations.” Kolby polished off his third slice of garlic toast.

  “Hey, do you want to see the illustrations I did for the library and for the Havertons’ kids?” Eric asked Kolby. “After we eat, of course.”

  “Yeah, I sure do.”

  Rosalie thought Eric’s illustrations were great, but she could never visualize the final painting that would result once he finished them.

  “I sent a picture of them in a text to Dottie for the library and to Tracey for her kids’ rooms and they loved them. So once I finish the ones in the library first, since there’s a quick deadline, I’ll do the ones for the Havertons.”

  “That sounds great,” Rosalie said.

  They finished up their meals and both Eric and Kolby came in to help her clean up and put the remaining spaghetti away in the fridge.

  “That was really delicious,” Kolby said.

  “Yeah, it was,” Eric agreed. “Her spaghetti is really great as leftovers too.”

  Once everything was cleaned up, Eric led Kolby back to his art studio and Rosalie joined them, wanting to see Kolby’s reaction. “Man, these are so good.” Kolby was looking over every detail.

  “Thanks,” Eric said.

  Thunder clapped so loud all of a sudden, everyone jumped, and the lights flickered.

  “Do you have lanterns somewhere that we can grab if we need them for tonight?” Kolby asked.

  Though the big cats had exceptional night vision, it was nice to have extra light if they needed it.

  “Yeah, in that box of camping stuff we haven’t unpacked yet,” Rosalie said, pointing to the box sitting with several others.

  Kolby unpacked them. “Do you want to unpack any other boxes? I can help.”

  “Yeah, sure. A box of linens and towels are over there. We need to grab all the kitchen towels out of them for down here, and the rest go upstairs to the linen closet for the bedrooms.”

  Kolby sorted through them and pulled out the kitchen towels and set them on the dining table. Then he carried the box of linens upstairs.

  “Do you want me to unpack any particular boxes next?” Eric asked her.

  “I think we got all our clothes, the rest of the linens, kitchen stuff, your art studio, and my office stuff unpacked. I think the rest of this stuff includes mostly things we don’t need right away.”

  “Okay, then if you don’t mind, I’m going to work on painting something.”

  “Yeah, go ahead.” She found another box of cleaning supplies. She thought she’d already unpacked them all. She unloaded a few items for downstairs and then she put the box next to the stairs.