Author's Note: Another one! Woohoo! My goal is to not be more than a week behind the word. I think I'm doing ok so far. As promised, this one is a little longer. I don't know anything about farms or ranches, which will certainly be clear here, so I hope I don't offend anyone. I wrote most of this last night before I went to bed and rushed the edits today. Let me know if there are any glaring errors. Thanks for reading and I hope you like it! It's for the August 3rd word.

hacienda: a large estate, especially one used for farming or ranching

Maxie gazed at the landscape before her, still surprised that she was actually here. On a ranch. An honest to God ranch with cows, horses, and, heaven help her, pigs. Why was she here?

"I could get used to this," Matt shared, eyes closed with a relaxed look on his face.

Oh, wait. She remembered. Because her boyfriend, a hotshot brain surgeon, brought her here as a surprise. They were sitting on the back of a hay truck with hay still on it, parked behind a red barn (was this place for real?) watching the sunset. She turned to her right to look at him. Matt Hunter, one of the top doctors at General Hospital, was wearing a cowboy hat and had a piece of straw hanging from his lips. She would have laughed if she was anywhere else. You know, like not on a ranch. What the hell was she doing here?

Mere hours into their long weekend and she was already losing it. She met his look of contentment with an incredulous one of her own. "Used to what? The dirt? The mud? The constant smell of shit?" Maxie shook her head in disbelief. "When you told me you had a surprise for me, this wasn't exactly what I was expecting."

He had the nerve to grin. "I know. Isn't it great?"

"Um, that's not the word I was thinking of, no," she responded, picking off hay from her shirt.

Matt looped an arm around her shoulders, fitting her next to his body. "Come on, Maxie. It's not that bad. You just have to let go and enjoy yourself." He inhaled deeply. "Enjoy nature."

She turned to face him, smiling brightly, sliding an arm around his waist. "You know what I'd really enjoy? A hotel suite with room service, a four star restaurant, boutiques, and an indoor pool."

"Been there, done that. But this? This is new. That is the purpose of a surprise, you know. For it to be surprising." When she rolled her eyes, he continued. "Seriously, you've done that plenty of times before and you'll do it again. I wanted us to try something new together - the great outdoors."

That's why she was here. Because this crazy man said things like that to her. "Right, because nothing says Maxie like the great outdoors."

Another deep inhale, this one much less appreciative, and a lot more annoyed. "You're right. This was a bad idea. Don't know what I was thinking." His happy expression gone, Matt pulled his arm back to his side and hopped off the truck, tossing the straw from his mouth to the grass. He extended his hand to help her down, too. "If we pack now, we can get out of here before it gets too dark."

Maxie's immediate reaction was elation. No more hay! No more roosters waking her up at the crack of dawn! No more - shit. She took moment from her own excitement to truly look at him. Ever since arriving, Matt was calmer, more laid back. He genuinely liked it here and she spent the whole day complaining, and not so secretly missing their no longer in existence trip to France.

She placed her fingers in his. Instead of using his hand to get down from the truck, she held it in her grip and steered him in front of her, wrapping her legs around his waist. "No, we're not leaving."

He regarded her curiously for several moments. "But you don't want to be here."

"Well, not particularly. But I want to be with you and, for some reason I can't begin to understand, you want to be here." Maxie clasped her hands around his neck, fingers playing with the hair at the nape. Bringing her face closer to his, she placed a lingering kiss on his lips. "So we stay."

"With no more whining about the animals, the weather, the accommodations?"

Eyebrow raised, she replied, "I'll try my best. That's all I can promise."

"I can work with that." He pushed her farther back onto the bed of the truck, climbing back up to join her, and set her in front of him. She sighed as Matt's fingers idly stroked the exposed skin where her shirt ended and her jeans began. "The bonfire's starting soon."

Her mouth opened and snapped back closed. She wasn't going to complain. That was the new deal. "That sounds… nice."

Her efforts did not go unnoticed. "But I was thinking we'd take advantage of this relative privacy and find out what it's like to make love in a hay truck."

While she managed to swallow her earlier retort about the bonfire, Maxie couldn't stop the burst of laughter that spilled out this time. "That sounds a whole lot better," she commented, turning in his arms to face him. "But, Matt?"

"Yeah, babe?"

"I'm picking the next trip."