A Gift for the Hopeful Cowboy: Love in Sweet Bloom

Chapter 19

Pippa staredat her phone with trepidation. Santa’s Village had been open for a couple nights and her whole family had planned on attending on the first weekend. But then Molly had gotten sick and insisted they needed to wait for her to get better.

Now they planned on going Christmas Eve. The town was going to be swamped, but in all the craziness, it would be magical. There was only one problem.

She’d wanted to go with Rob. The time she’d spent apart from him had only made her heart feel worse. She was a shadow of what she once was—she couldn’t even draw joy from working at her restaurant.

Everywhere she looked, she could see him and his awkward smiling face. That first night he’d come in his work clothes was her favorite memory. If she closed her eyes and focused right, she could re-live that first kiss they had shared since he’d been back.

Her whole body tingled with the memory, but all too soon the sensation would leave her and she’d return to the shallow, cold feeling she’d been dealing with since their fight.

Rob hadn’t reached out, but she didn’t expect him to. She’d been the one to overstep. She’d been the one to break the rules.

Pippa sighed as she sat on the porch of Luke’s house, staring out at the land she’d grown up on. The ranch was massive enough that it almost felt like her brothers lived in two separate places. If she’d stuck with ranching like her parents had wanted her to, she would have liked to think there would be a plot of land where her own home could have been built.

Rob’s presence had made that thought more of a reality, even though she couldn’t bring herself to voice it out loud. Her mother would have loved for all her children to be able to settle on the land owned by the Duncan family.

Right now, it made more sense for Pippa to be closer to the restaurant.

She heaved a sigh at the unending emptiness she currently felt. For years, the restaurant had been the one thing that made her feel whole. She hadn’t needed anything or anyone else. Perhaps that was why she had zero interest in dating. No one quite measured up to the friendship and chemistry she had with Rob.

Pippa groaned, putting her face in her hands as she rested her elbows on her knees. If she was more confident in herself, she might have reached out to Rob and told him she was sorry. She’d explain that she was only trying to keep him here because she didn’t want to lose him. But that sort of confession might be the one thing that scared him off for good.

A rock and a hard place. That was where she was stuck. There was no way out without sawing off her own arm. At least, that was how it felt.

“What are you doing here?” Allie wandered up to the front porch. The only evidence of where she’d been was the mud on her tennis shoes. Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. “If I had known you’d be stopping by, I would have cut my run short.” She headed up the steps and settled beside Pippa. “What’s going on?”

Pippa gave her friend a side-eyed stare.

“It’s about Rob, again, isn’t it? Have you called him?”

Pippa shook her head.

“Pippa! You have to call him if you want to work this thing out.”

“The problem is that I don’t know if he wants to work it out.”

Allie gave her a patronizing smile. “You’re never going to know if you don’t do something about it and ask.”

Pippa groaned again. “That’s the problem, though. I don’t want to lose what I still have. I might be able to salvage our friendship.”

“But is that what you really want?”

Her words echoed around them, weighing on Pippa with a heavy sort of finality.

She shrugged, but deep down, she knew the answer. She didn’t want this to be the end. She didn’t want to be stuck in a friendship with a guy she had unrequited feelings for. She wished she could go back in time and ask him what he needed from her before she jumped to conclusions.

Allie nudged her, bumping their shoulders together. “You know what you should do?”

“What’s that?” she asked miserably.

“I’ll say it again if I have to. You need to invite him to come with us to Santa’s Village.”

Pippa groaned, shaking her head sharply. “There’s no way I’m going to do that.” Especially not after what had happened.

Allie gave her a disbelieving look. “Why not? You guys are friends.”

Pippa stared at her flatly.

“Well, you were friends before you got close, and now you have a chance to talk to him under the pretense of going to a Christmas event. It’d be fun. Besides, with all the magic in town on Christmas Eve, there’s no way he’s gonna say no.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Why not?” Allie lifted a brow. “It’s as easy as you’re going to make it. You can’t work things out if you don’t even try. He’s not going to show up if you don’t ask him to come.”

Pippa shook her head. The truth was she was too scared to invite him after everything had shifted between them. If he did say no, that would feel more permanent. The worst part was she couldn’t exactly explain it all to her friend. Something told her Allie wouldn’t understand the situation. At times, the argument they’d had seemed silly.

She took a deep breath and blew it out through pursed lips. Before she could attempt to find the words to convince Allie to drop the whole thing, Pippa’s phone vibrated at her side. She reached for it but Allie ripped it out of her hand.

A gasp tore from Pippa’s throat as Allie jumped to her feet and moved a few steps away. The phone was unlocked and she was already tapping on the screen—presumably to see what the notification had been.

Pippa jolted toward her and reached for the phone. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but?—”

Allie handed her the phone without a fight. “There. Now you don’t have an excuse.”

“What do you mean?” Pippa stared down at the screen, realizing what Allie had been up to. “You texted him?” Her voice rose in a panic. “How could you do that?”

“I told you. He should meet up with you. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Pippa’s mouth hung open. Her heart felt like a mangled mess and her stomach hadn’t stopped churning. There were a lot of things that could go wrong, the first one being that he’d tell her he wasn’t interested. Her eyes dipped to the screen as the small word beneath her text appeared.

Read.

Great. This was just perfect. How could Allie have done this to her? They were supposed to be friends. They were family. They were supposed to support each other. Now, Allie might have single-handedly put an end to Pippa’s relationship with Rob.

“Anything,” she whispered.

“What?” Allie asked.

Pippa swallowed hard. The message had been read and those three little dots that indicated someone on the other end would respond hadn’t materialized yet. “Anything could happen.”

“That doesn’t mean it would be bad.”

She held up the phone. “He’s read the message. He’s not talking. What do you think that means?”

Allie’s eyes narrowed and she leaned forward. “He said he’d love to.”

Pippa gasped, turning the phone back to face her. Sure enough, Rob’s response was right there in front of her. He was going to meet her in town on Christmas Eve. She was going to get a chance to make things right. She couldn’t tell if she wanted to laugh or cry. In the end, she did both, her eyes lifting to Allie’s.

“He’s gonna come.”

Pippa lacedher fingers together and jammed the knitted gloves harder onto her hands, surrounded by hundreds of people and yet feeling more alone than she could remember. She fidgeted in her place and shifted back and forth as her eyes swept through the crowd. She’d told him to meet her at the sleigh that Brent had built several years ago as a set piece for photo-ops, one of the easiest things to spot. A few feet away, the rest of her family stood in line for hot chocolate.

Rob hadn’t shown up yet and a part of her worried that he wasn’t going to come. But she didn’t have any reason to believe he would lie to her. He’d be here. She just had to be patient.

“Pippa!” Allie called, drawing her attention. “Would you like one?”

She shook her head, waving her hand dismissively. She didn’t think she’d be able to keep it down even if she tried. There was a roaring in her ears that wouldn’t go away. That, coupled with the noise from those coming and going around her, made it difficult to focus on anything but the impending situation she’d put herself in with Rob.

“You look pretty tonight.”

Pippa gasped and jumped at the quiet, warm, and husky voice that came right behind her ear. Her heart leaped into her throat, and she couldn’t find her breath as she spun around and stared wide-eyed at Rob. They’d only been apart for a week and yet he still had the same effect on her that he’d had when he’d first shown up.

She slipped her fingers around her ear as if she were tucking strands there—even though all her hair was pulled into braids underneath a woven hat. She offered him a surprised smile.

“Thank you,” she whispered breathlessly.

He looked more handsome than ever in a pair of nice jeans, boots, and his sheepskin coat she adored so much. The cowboy hat on his head only added to the look. Rob touched the brim of the hat with his fingertips, but his eyes never left her face.

She lost track of how long they stood like that. The world could stop spinning and come to an end and she wouldn’t even notice. Heat flooded her face. Why was it that she couldn’t move or speak? How long had they known each other? How many secrets had they shared already? She needed to reach out and grab some courage, otherwise, this whole evening would be for nothing.

“You think we could go somewhere a little more… private?”

The lump in her throat prevented her from speaking. All she could do was nod. This was her moment. If she didn’t take it, Allie would be furious.

More than that, Pippa would be furious. Opportunities like this one only came around once.

When Rob reached for her hand, a thrill shot through her. She stifled a smile as he tugged her toward a darkened shop. Allie had been right. Pippa and Rob needed this.