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He and Luke had made a start, but the place still looked more like a forgotten storeroom than the apartment it was originally intended to be.

Luke grinned at him. “Do you think they’ll care? It might not look like much right now, but it has potential. We can all help you get it cleaned up. I bet Everly will enjoy furnishing it however you guys want it, and Ashton will be thrilled to be down here at the barn. No matter how it looks right now, it’s a place of your own. It means that you don’t have to leave the ranch, and you don’t have to share space with Ford. Nothing against him, he’s been great with them. But you guys are your own little family. You need your own space.”

Tanner grinned back at his friend. “You’re right. It’s not like I can present them with a show home that’s all ready to go. This is better anyway; it’s a mess, but we can work on it together – thethree of us. I like that – we can put the work in to make our home into what we want it to be while we work on solidifying our little family.”

He looked out through the window again and headed for the stairs when he saw that Everly and Ashton were almost here.

He wiped his hands on his jeans when he noticed how dirty they were, then gave them a little wave when they spotted him.

Ashton broke into a run and didn’t stop until he crashed into Tanner, wrapping his arms around his waist and hugging him tight.

“Hey! It’s good to see you, too.” Tanner wrapped his arms around the kid’s shoulders and gave Everly a puzzled look. He was thrilled that Ashton seemed so pleased to see him, but it also seemed that something was wrong.

She gave him a slight shake of her head. Okay, so there was something wrong, and they’d talk about it later.

“How was your day, bud?”

Ashton let go of him and looked kind of sullen as he stepped away. “It wasfine. What did you want to show us?”

There was definitely something going on with him, but Tanner felt like he needed to follow Everly’s lead.

“I had an idea…” He chuckled. “Well, to tell you the truth, Uncle Cash had an idea, and when he told me about it, I felt pretty dumb – I should have thought of it myself.”

“What idea?”

Tanner was relieved to see that whatever was going on with Ashton, it wasn’t bad enough to keep him down for long. He looked hopeful as he said, “Go on, tell us!”

Tanner cocked an eyebrow at Everly, and she laughed. “I think I want to know what it is, but…”

He went to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “I think you’ll like it.”

“So, tell us!” Ashton said with a laugh. “We can’t know if we like it until you tell us – or even better, show us.”

“Okay, follow me.” He led them into the tack room and through the door in the back corner.

“Oh wow! I thought this was just a storeroom; I didn’t know that there was an upstairs,” Ashton said when he saw the staircase.

Tanner walked backwards up the stairs so that he could watch their faces. “That’s the thing, I’ve always treated this place as a storeroom, but that’s not what it was built for.”

“What’s up there?” Everly asked. “Do I need to come? I haven’t changed out of my work clothes yet.”

Ashton laughed. “What you really mean is that you’re scared there might be spiders, right?”

Tanner had to laugh with him at the look on Everly’s face. She was far from the prissy city girl he’d once feared that she might be. She’d done well with pretty much everything she’d been faced with on the ranch, but she drew the line when it came to spiders – at least, when it came to big, hairy-ass spiders like the one that had cornered her in the bathroom the other morning.

She shuddered. “I’m always scared that there might be spiders. You know that.”

Tanner looked back over his shoulder when he reached the top of the stairs. “I can’t guarantee that there aren’t any spiders in here right now. But I promise that we’ll clear them all out before we move in – if you want to live here.”

“Is it an apartment?” Ashton asked excitedly as he reached the top of the stairs and ran past Tanner. “Come on, Mom. Come see. This is going to be awesome. Don’t say no – I’ll help clean it.”

Tanner wrapped his arm around her shoulders when she reached the top of the stairs. “It doesn’t look like much right now – like I said I’ve been using it as a storeroom. It was built as accommodation for a horse trainer my dad hired while I was in the Navy.” He shook his head. “The old bastard figured that if life here was comfortable enough, the guy would never leave – and by the time I came home there’d be no room for me. As it turned out, the trainer was a decent guy – he didn’t last more than a year around my dad.”

He realized his mistake when Everly reached for his hand and squeezed it; she was more concerned about him and how his father had treated him than she was about the apartment. That hadn’t been his intention.

“Come on, let me show you around. I know it doesn’t look like much right now, but we could make it nice – if you want to, it’s totally your call. It’s plenty big enough; there are three bedrooms and two bathrooms. We can furnish it and decorate it however you want. Most of all, it’ll be our own space.”

“Wow!” She looked around.