Chapter 6 #2
She chewed, very aware of Cash’s eyes on her, and somehow, the frozen veggies weren’t mushy, and the chicken was tender and perfectly done. The sauce had the exact right viscosity, and he hadn’t over-salted or under-salted anything.
The pie crust on the bottom flaked in her mouth, and the puff pastry on top added that extra texture the pot pie needed.
“Well?” Cash asked as she forked off another bite.
“It’s a ten,” she said, immediately putting more food in her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Cash said, a chuckle following. “I thought you said it was a ten.”
Lark nodded. “I did,” she said around her mouthful of food.
“Is the top number a ten?”
She nodded again.
“So it beats your grammy’s?” Cash shook his head. “I don’t believe you’d give me that.”
Lark’s chest constricted, and she realized how much she’d affected Cash by withholding her approval, though they barely knew one another.
She swallowed and reached out to him again. With her fingers wrapped around his wrist, and their eyes hooked together by some unseen power, she nodded. “Really, Cash. This is incredible. It’s the best chicken pot pie I’ve ever had. Yes, it’s better than Grammy’s.”
She smiled and pulled her hand back. “Thank you for making it for me. No wonder Jet and Wade make food requests when it comes to you.”
He grinned, pure happiness settling in those dark eyes. “Thank you, Songbird.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but he didn’t. He nodded once, then twice, and looked at his own food.
“So tell me,” he said. He shifted in his seat, which Lark found so endearing. “I mean, I know about your family, and now a little bit about your school, and maybe a little bit about what you like.”
“Mm-hm.”
“So tell me something I don’t know,” he said.
Lark reached up to brush her hair off her face, something she did to buy herself a few seconds of time. Unfortunately, she’d braided her hair back, and her hand fell back to the table lamely. “I, uh, I don’t know.”
“I don’t know hardly anything about you,” he said. “This shouldn’t be too hard.”
“I’m not that interesting.”
“I beg to differ.” Cash took another bite of his pot pie, almost casually.
Flustered, Lark tried to find something to tell him that wouldn’t make her sound negative or like she was unhappy. The problem was, Lark usually saw life with a glass-half-empty view, and she wasn’t exactly unhappy, but she knew she had room to improve in the happiness department.
“I don’t know what to do with my life,” she said, the words just flowing out of her. “Have you ever felt like that? Or have you always just known what to do?” For some reason, she really needed him to understand how she felt.
Cash chuckled as he shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m doing to this day,” he said. “I went into the rodeo, because it was the easy path. I’m not smart enough for college, and—”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Lark said.
He simply raised one eyebrow. “I never excelled in school. It was a chore for me, so I knew I wouldn’t be going that route. I was good at riding, and I didn’t have any fear. In a lot of ways, I was angry too, and the rodeo, particularly bull riding, allowed me to rage out some of those feelings.”
Lark blinked at him, as she hadn’t expected him to answer quite so honestly. “You were angry? About what?”
“My mother. My father. Moving here. My daddy getting remarried, though Faith was the best thing that ever came into my life.” He shrugged. “Lots of things.”
“Are you still angry?”
Cash thought about it for a moment, which answered the question for Lark. Instead of making him answer, she jumped in with, “I was an island. My brothers are so much older than me, and I swear my parents let me raise myself from about the age of eleven. That’s when Jet moved out.”
She swallowed, because she hadn’t anticipated this conversation, nor her own contributions to it. “I haven’t dated much, because I’m a little salty and men don’t know how to handle me.”
“Their loss,” he said.
“I’m used to looking out for myself and keeping everyone else at arm’s length.” She flaked off another bite but didn’t put it in her mouth. “I maybe build walls that aren’t warranted, and I make quick judgments, and I have to backtrack and apologize all the time.”
“But you do apologize,” he said.
She nodded as she slid the pot pie into her mouth. “Sometimes.”
“We all have to do that sometimes. Ain’t no thing.”
She waved her fork toward him. “Your turn to spill your guts.”
“I know what feeling like an island feels like,” he said. “A lot of my cousins do too.” He finished his pot pie and reached to serve himself some more. “We have cousin night once a month, but only with those of us from our fathers’ first marriage, because we don’t fit.”
Lark marveled that this man had waltzed into her life, and she had no idea what to say.
“Hey, where’s Sweetie?” he asked, and he actually looked around for her little dog.
Lark hummed and reached for her glass of ice water. “I took her to Grammy’s before I came out here. She’s familiar to her, and I think she helps Grammy remember things she’s forgotten.”
Lark did miss her little Yorkie when she left her with her grandmother, and everything seemed to collapse in on her at once. Her mother being gone. Her grammy’s health. Sweetie’s absence.
Tears filled her eyes, and Lark blinked quickly to contain them. “Okay, enough of the heavy stuff. Tell me why you like to sit in the hot tub so much.”
Cash brightened then, and Lark sure liked the sight of that. She wanted to wake up to him humming in the kitchen, and go to church with him just so they could talk about the sermon afterward. She’d like to go see his ranch, and listen to him talk about his dreams of a cutting horse operation.
And apparently, his love of hot tubs.
Yes, this was their first date—yes, Lark was counting it as such—and perhaps she was letting too much shininess infect her.
But she actually leaned in as he said, “There’s just something so relaxing about them.
The hot water and vibrations from the jets calm the central nervous system.
I think the absolute best while soaking in the hot tub. ”
“Mm, fascinating,” she said, and Lark ducked her head again. She wasn’t sure if she was bold enough to ask the question running through her mind. Then, she remembered that Cash had asked her to dinner, and she wanted to be as brave as him.
“So, cowboy, what time do you usually get in, and is there room in that thing for both of us?”
Cash only blinked once before he leaned in closer. Lark sucked in a breath, her pulse practically booming in her ears and against the back of her tongue.
“About ten,” he said, his lips barely moving. “And there’s room for two—but only if one of them comes up with a better name than cowboy for the man she’s expecting to share said hot tub with.”