Flipping the note around, I scribbled down my question because it was my turn:

My turn. Are you seeing someone? And before you get all vague on me, you know what I mean. A special girl, boy, or cow in your life?

After inhaling the dinner roll, I slipped the piece of paper underneath my door. I knew he’d come back to check for it. Then I finally crawled into bed.

I’d finally fallen asleep before I heard those boots make their return journey.

I ignored the first knock on my door. It was still dark, and I was so sleep confused, maybe I’d imagined the knock. I’d almost convinced myself of that when another knock sounded; it was a bit louder.

“Rowen?” came a soft, girl’s voice. One of the older sisters, though I couldn’t make out who.

“Yeah?”

“Mom told me to come and wake you up.”

I didn’t know what time it was, but I didn’t need to. It was dark outside. It wasn’t time to get up unless there was an emergency.

“Why?” I asked, sitting up on my elbows in bed.

“It’s breakfast time,” she said. “If you need to use the bathroom, it’s free. We’re all done using it.”

Before I could reply, assuming I could work up a reply in the midst of my shock, whichever sister had roused me in the middle of the night for breakfast started heading back down the hall.

Reaching in the general vicinity of the nightstand, I fumbled around until I found my cell phone. My eyes bulged when I saw the time. Four fifteen a.m. I usually went to bed at that hour; I’d never once gotten up so early.

Was it some kind of sick prank? In my world, it might have been, but in the Walkers’ world, I knew it wasn’t. From the breakfast smells creeping into my bedroom, I guessed breakfast was just minutes away.

I groaned as I sat up. After crawling into bed, I hadn’t fallen asleep as fast as I thought I would. I don’t know when I fell asleep exactly, but the last time I’d checked my phone, it was a little past midnight. My mind couldn’t stop over and under-analyzing Jesse’s question. Did he ask if I was with someone because he was curious? Did he ask because he wanted to ask me out? Did he ask because he wanted me to think he wanted to ask me out? Or did he ask just because he knew I’d be up half the night over-thinking the hell out of it?

From what I knew of Jesse, the last option was the most likely.

On top of the overanalyzing, the scent I found waiting for me when I crawled under the blankets kept me up too. That Jesse smell that clung to the air inside the room was about a hundred times more potent when I crawled into bed. It was like he’d laid down on my bed after dropping my bag off and rolled around on the sheets, quilt, and pillows. Trying to fall asleep while every inhalation seemed as if my nose was pressed into his neck, while trying to figure out some cryptic question, was not easy.

As evidenced by how difficult it was for me to crawl out of bed. I took about a minute to throw the covers off, then another minute before I could swing my legs over the side. By then, there was just enough of a sliver of sunrise to cast a gentle glow throughout the room so I didn’t need to turn on the bedside light.

Putting one foot in front of the other, I made it to the dresser. I pulled out the first couple of things my hands fell on. A few minutes later, I opened the door and immediately inspected the ground where I’d slid my reply to Jesse. It was gone. Either he’d come back for it, one of his sisters wound up with it, or a little mouse ran off with it. I decided to do something out-of-character and think positively. The right person had wound up with it. Whoever that was . . .

While I lumbered down the hall, I plaited my mass of hair into a side braid. I made a quick stop over in the bathroom to apply a couple coats of mascara, slick on some dark lipstick, and pop in my dark contacts. Normally, I didn’t leave my bedroom without a full face of makeup, but I didn’t want to press my luck. It had been a while since my wake-up call, and I didn’t want Rose to have to come looking for me.

As I clomped down the stairs in my staple combat boots, I already smelled breakfast, and not the poured-into-a-bowl-with-a-little-milk kind. It was the kind of breakfast that sizzled in skillets.

Even though I hadn’t had the whole tour of the Walkers’ place, the kitchen was easy enough to find. If my nose couldn’t have found its way there, my ears could have. Voices that were way too perky for so early in the morning jabbered about something.

I paused inside the doorway of the kitchen and waited. Rose and the three girls scurried around the large kitchen like someone was cracking a whip behind them. One dug around in the fridge, another scrambled a ginormous skillet of eggs, Rose filled a pitcher with orange juice, and Clementine set the longest table I’d ever seen. I did a quick count of the place settings. Twenty. They must be, literally, feeding the entire village.

Everyone was so busy with their tasks no one noticed me right away. Toeing the linoleum, I cleared my throat.

“Good morning,” I said, even though that time was generally more good night for me.

“Rowen!” Rose called out as she handed the pitcher of juice off to Lily. “How did you sleep last night?”

If I went with the truth, her next question might have to do with what had kept me up. Since admitting to Rose her son was responsible for keeping my mind reeling last night, I decided to answer with a simple, “Good.”

“You got the dinner plate I sent Jesse up with?” she asked, making her way to me. Today she was wearing a sleeveless, button-down blouse, jeans, boots, and some ornate silver and turquoise jewelry.

“Oh, I got it.” Along with a vexing little note with a vexing little question. “Looks like you’re about to feed an army. What can I do to help?” I was there to work, Rose and I both knew that, but maybe if I made it seem like I was offering, working would seem less like indentured servitude.

“What, this little breakfast?” she replied, lifting a shoulder. “Around here, this is an everyday, three times a day, sort of thing. When it gets real interesting is when we host a meal with the hands and their families or significant others. Now that, that’s feeding an army. This is just a simple breakfast.”

My mouth fell open a bit. “You do this every day?”

“Six months out of the year, three meals a day,” Rose replied. “The other six months we only cook for our family and maybe a couple others.”

Insane.

“Every day as in Monday to Friday, right?” Fifteen meals for twenty people a week? There had to be some sort of international award for that.

Rose laughed. “Honey, the day cattle only need tending to Monday to Friday is the day I’m booking a vacation to Hawaii.”

Oh my God. They did it seven days a week. Every single day. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. My mouth dropped a bit further.

“Do you have a magic wand or something?” I asked because, really. How could four women, well, one woman and three girls, prepare three hot meals a day, seven days a week, for twenty people if some kind of magic wasn’t involved?

“I wish. I live by a philosophy that’s served me well for over two decades of ranch life—organized chaos,” she said with a wink. “That’s our marching theme around here.”

Emphasis on the chaos part.

“Got it,” I said, practically wincing as Hyacinth diced up a potato like she had mad ninja skills. I kept waiting for the bloody top of a finger to roll onto the floor. “I’m not the best cook in the world, and it’s better I don’t handle anything sharp, but I’m pretty sure I can set a table without breaking anything or pour drinks without spilling. Better not give me anything hot in case I spill it on somebody”—super, I was rambling on like an idiot—“but just point me where you want me, and I’ll do my best not to turn your breakfast into disorganized chaos.”