Chapter 12 #2
Whatever works for you, he said, because he had no plans for tomorrow besides entertaining Jet and Wade and figuring out how to tell them about his feelings for their younger sister.
“Well, we have to go, Grammy,” Lark said. “We still have to stop by Cash’s parents’ with dessert too.”
She met his eye, and he almost asked her if she was going to invite her grandmother to come stay at the house.
He decided to keep his mouth shut and let Lark lead, and it took another ten minutes for her to get out of the house after collecting everything for Sweetie and hugging her grandmother at least three times.
When he pulled the door closed behind them and he heard her grandmother twist the lock, all of the tension finally left his shoulders.
“That was really fun,” he said, though he’d contributed very little to the conversation and he wasn’t sure her grandmother would even remember his name.
“She liked you,” Lark said, throwing him a smile. She carried Sweetie under her coat, and the little dog looked at Cash with squinted eyes, almost as if she had fallen asleep.
“How could you possibly know that?” he asked. “You talked to her the whole time, and I sat on the couch.”
“Because she let you sit on the couch with her cats,” Lark said. “And didn’t pepper you with questions.”
Cash chuckled and darted ahead of Lark to open the door for her. With everyone situated in the truck, and Sweetie riding on Lark’s lap, he looked over to her. “You’re not going to be able to sit silently on the couch at my parents’ house. You know that, right?”
“It’ll be fine,” she said.
While Cash wasn’t so sure about that, he made the fifteen-minute drive across town and partway up the canyon to the gated community where he’d moved in with his father just before he’d turned thirteen.
“I started seventh grade here,” he said. “I lived with my mom in Utah for the first twelve years of my life.”
“Did you?” Lark asked. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Right down in the corner, in Saint George. It was only a couple of hours from Vegas. My daddy rode the rodeo and was based there, but I still only saw him a couple times a year.”
“And then you moved in with him up here. How’d that happen?”
“He retired from the rodeo,” Cash said simply, his memories flowing thick through his mind. “He said he wanted to be a father.”
He pulled into the driveway, his headlights reflecting brightly off the white garage door. “It was rough in the beginning. It was like living with a stranger. I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me. I was in a new place, and I was really angry.”
Lark reached over and threaded her fingers through his. “About what?”
“Everything,” Cash said honestly. “Sometimes I still feel like that.”
He looked out the window and watched the front door.
His parents had cameras on the house, and surely they knew he’d arrived.
Sitting out in the truck would only call attention to the fact that he’d brought Lark with him, and they’d want to know what had taken him so long to come in. Still, he didn’t move.
“I went to therapy for quite a few years,” he said. “I used to color these temperature pictures.”
“What’s a temperature picture?”
“It’s where you check the temperature outside every day, and each one has a range assigned to a color. So say sixty-five to seventy-four degrees is blue, and you color all of those numbers on your picture. And when you finish, you have a great design.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Lark said. “You liked that?”
“It gave me something to focus on,” Cash said. “I wasn’t good at school, and I hated homework. My counselor said it would help me form habits, and she was right.”
“What are your habits now?” she asked. “Besides the baking.”
“I sit in the hot tub every night.” He grinned over to her, feeling some of his earlier happiness seep back into him. “I work out every day. I try to cook at least one of my meals so I’m not eating out all the time.”
“And you really don’t have a job?” Lark asked.
“Not right now,” Cash said coolly. “I try to go over my plans for the cutting horse operation by watching a few things online. I go help Bryce, because he’s housing my horse. Well, both of them, actually.”
“You own two horses?”
He grinned over to her. “Every cowboy owns at least one.” His phone buzzed, and while he didn’t have the notifications on, he knew it would be Daddy.
“Let’s go,” he said. “I’m sure that’s my father.”
Dread settled in his stomach as Cash got out of the truck yet again, and this time he collected a much larger container of doughnuts while Lark rounded the hood of the truck to meet him.
Cash didn’t knock at the front door. He simply opened it, tamping his boots as a skiff of snow covered his father’s sidewalk.
“It’s me,” he called, and while the house had been silent, pure chaos started with those two words.
“Cash is here! Cash is here!” one of the girls called.
Grace came tearing down the hallway that led from the big family room and kitchen area at the back of the house.
“Grace! I was going to show him first,” Celeste said, hot on her heels.
“Cash, Cash, Cash, Cash, Cash,” Tyrone sang, and he ran toward them, too. “Look, I skip,” he said, and he started skipping toward Cash.
Cash quickly passed the doughnuts to Lark and dropped to his knees, opening up his arms to receive all three kids. “Hey, you guys.”
They barreled into him, Grace and Celeste still squabbling and Tyrone trying to yell over them all. Cash laughed and hugged them, and then opened his arms as the youngest of his family finally arrived.
“How are you, Harmony?” he asked, and he swept a kiss across the little girl’s face. She’d turned one in September, and she babbled something he had no way of understanding.
“You kids,” Daddy said from down the hall. “Let him come in all the way, at least.”
Cash had no idea what Grace and Celeste were fighting about. They walked away, chattering to themselves, and Cash picked up Harmony, got to his feet, and then swung Tyrone into his arms too.
“You guys are my favorites,” he whispered, and he looked over to Lark.
Her expression was unreadable, and he honestly thought he probably hadn’t prepared her properly for this.
In all honesty, he kind of wanted to throw her into the lion’s den, because he wasn’t sure one could be properly prepared to meet his father.
As he walked down the hall toward his daddy, he realized he’d never brought a woman home before, and he honestly wasn’t sure he was doing so now either.
He and Lark were so new, having just barely defined their relationship a couple of hours ago, and really only because he said he wanted to be her boyfriend.
She had never actually said he could be.
“Hey, Daddy,” he said, and he sat Tyrone down and hugged his daddy with one arm.
“I’ll take her,” Lark said, and she took Harmony from him.
“Daddy, this is Lark McClellan,” he said. “She’s home for the Thanksgiving holiday. She’s Jet and Wade’s little sister.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Daddy said. “We know you guys have had a busy day, so we don’t want to keep you too long.”
“Plus, the girls have to get to bed.” Faith joined them, her smile the sunshiney part of his parents’ relationship.
“This is my step-mom, Faith,” Cash said, and he moved over to give her a hug.
“I’ve got four quarts of that hamburger stew for you,” she said. “Right there next to the stove.”
Cash glanced over and saw the jars standing there. “That’s too much, Momma.”
“Well, there’s four of you there, aren’t there?” she said. “It’s two meals each.” And she spoke like it wouldn’t be nearly enough.
He didn’t argue with her, and instead took the container of doughnuts from Lark and moved over to the fifteen-foot island in his father’s house. “I managed to save you guys some of each kind,” he said.
“Can I have a Bismarck?” Celeste asked, climbing up onto a barstool.
“Look, Cash. Momma’s teaching me how to sew.
” She pushed a scrap of fabric toward him, and Cash picked it up, his mind working fast as he tried to figure out what it was.
It was a couple inches across and about three times that long, with a dark blue fabric with stars on one side and an autumnal floral pattern on the other.
It had been sewn together with a crisscross stitch.
“Wow,” he said. “This is great. What are you going to do with it?”
“It’s a bookmark,” she said. “I’m going to put it in my books.”
“Cash, look at this picture I drew,” Grace said.
“Grace, be kind,” Faith said.
“I am being kind,” she shot back. “I just want to show him what I drew.”
“You don’t need to show up your sister,” Daddy said.
“I’m not showing her up,” Grace said.
“Yeah, you are.” Daddy put his hand on her back and gently nudged her toward the living room. “You spent twenty minutes in your bedroom trying to find something to show him after Celeste said she wanted to show him what she and Momma had been working on this week.”
Grace started to complain, and Cash let his parents deal with her while he got doughnuts for Celeste and Tyrone.
“What about Harmony?” Lark asked. “Can she have one?”
“She can share with me,” Faith said from the living room. “I’ll be right over.”
Grace sniffled on the couch while Momma spoke quietly to her, and Daddy joined Cash in the kitchen. “So, Lark, what are you doing?”
“I go to school in Pocatello,” she said. “I’m studying animal science at Idaho State University.”
“You’ve got to almost be done for the semester,” he said.
“Yes,” Lark said. “Only one more week and then finals, and then I’ll be back in town.”
Daddy’s eyes flew to Cash’s. “Back in the house where Cash lives?”
“Daddy,” Cash warned.
Lark looked between the two of them. “Yes,” she said slowly. “I work for the Agricultural Department, and they’re not open over the break…and I don’t really have anywhere else to go.”
“It’s her parents’ house,” Cash said. “I’m fine if she’s there.”
“Oh, I’m sure you are,” Daddy said.