Chapter 9
nine
Tarr woke when a blast of cold air slapped him across the face, there one moment and then gone with the snick of the front door closing. The warmth from the fire absorbed the chill quickly, and it caused a small smile to permeate his soul.
He’d gotten up twice in the night to rebuild and stoke the fire, and each time he’d eased back into bed and taken Briar right back into his arms without waking her. She wasn’t there now, though, and he suspected she’d gotten up and gone to sit on the front porch.
She was definitely more of an early bird than he was. He liked to stay up late and sleep in, but he’d been here enough over the last few months to know that Briar got up early and took her coffee on the front porch while Wiggins ran around the yard.
Then she started her day over at the farm, usually helping Bobbie Jo with the goats and lambs and doing her rounds with the animals to check on their health and well-being.
She’d chat with Tucker about the veterinary needs of the animals, and she usually disappeared into a tiny office in the rodeo barn just after lunch.
Tarr’s Texas bones still felt chilled, and he tucked the blankets in all around him and stayed in bed for a little longer. He dozed, sleeping on and off, finally getting up when his need to use the bathroom and his desire for hot coffee couldn’t be ignored any longer.
He set coffee to brew, surprised Briar hadn’t done it yet, and then padded down the hall to the bathroom and then the guest room, where he got dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt his momma had sent him last week for Thanksgiving.
It was dark brown and said GOBBLE on the front in all capital letters, done in a burnt-orange, cream, and tan plaid.
She’d made it, just as she had many other sweatshirts, and he had one for every season, holiday, birthday, and occasion.
He even had a couple of old sweatshirts with his horses’ names on them that he used to ride in the rodeo, and a couple that said JUST FOR FUN on the front, as that was the name of the bull that Tarr had ridden and conquered in the NPR finals to become the bull-riding world champion a few years ago.
Though the bedroom wasn’t exactly warm and the call of coffee strong, he quickly tapped out a text to his mother: Missing you today, Momma, but I had a real first date with Briar yesterday, and I survived my first snowstorm of the season. Of course I couldn’t stay in the RV.
He chuckled and shook his head. You were right. It’s not going to work for this winter, but Briar let me stay at her house, and I’m going to figure out something else.
I was just about to call you, his momma said. I saw the weather up there was really bad, and I wanted to make sure you were okay.
Doing just fine, Tarr said.
A DATE WITH brIAR???? came in next, and Tarr once again shook his head.
Don’t make a big deal of it, Momma. It’s Briar, remember?
From down the hall, she called, “Tarr?”
He looked away from his phone. “Just getting dressed,” he called back. I’ll tell you more about it when I’m alone, okay? We’re gonna eat breakfast and go work on the farm. Don’t make a big deal out of this.
I’m not the one making a big deal out of it, his momma said. You’re the one who told me in your first breath.
Tarr grinned, shoved his phone away, though it buzzed in his back pocket, and went to greet Briar. “I was just coming to check on you,” he said when he arrived in the front of the house. “Where’s Wiggy?”
“I came in to get some treats for him.” She opened the front cupboard on the island and pulled out a bag of dog treats. “He loves the snow so much, and I can’t get him out of it.”
She didn’t sound super happy about it, but she did give Tarr a smile as she went by him and back out the front door. He followed her and found the dog romping through the snow, diving down into it and chomping at it as if he’d never seen the stuff before.
“He loves the snow,” Tarr said, laughing. “I don’t get it. This stuff is insane.”
“We’re from Canada,” Briar said. “Snow is in our blood.” She smiled as he came to her side. “I smelled coffee in there, and I was hoping you would have breakfast ready too.”
“Oh, you were, huh?” He grinned down at her. “I suppose you want those breakfast sandwiches, because you requested the English muffins and all that.”
“I mean, if you don’t mind.” She turned back to the front yard and whistled through her teeth. “Come on, Wiggins. It’s time to come in.”
“I guess we have time,” Tarr said.
“Yeah, you slept late.”
“It’s barely eight o’clock.”
Briar grinned at him. “I like your sweatshirt.”
He looked down at it, though he knew exactly what he wore. “Thanks. My momma makes them.”
Briar’s eyebrows went up. “She does?”
“Sure does. My daddy owns a T-shirt printing and design company in Texas, and Momma makes these and sells them at craft fairs and booths and stuff like that.”
“Wow,” Briar said, and she reached out and traced one fingertip along the G on his chest. “It’s very festive.”
She sighed as she turned back to Wiggins, who seemed no closer to coming in from his snowy romp. “This dog is going to be the death of me.”
“Hey, better him than me,” Tarr said, and he laughed as he brushed his fingers along hers and then turned to go back into the house to make breakfast.
He had just reached the doorknob when Briar said, “Tarr.”
“Yeah?”
“My truth for today is that talking is good for me.”
“That’s a good one,” Tarr said.
“What’s yours?” she asked.
He turned back to her and found Briar watching him with interest and a hint of open vulnerability right there on her face. “I don’t know,” he said. “Can I think about it?”
“Yeah, sure,” she said.
Tarr nodded and went back into the cabin. Before going to make breakfast, he opened all the blinds in the cabin, because the snowstorm had blown itself out, leaving the bright winter sunshine to reflect off all that snow and up into the house. He knew Briar loved the natural light, and he did too.
He thought about what his truth could be as he scrambled eggs and put them in the microwave to cook for her.
She’d eat them if they were extremely dry and basically not egg-like at all.
Tarr had come to appreciate microwaved scrambled eggs from his time on the road, when he didn’t always have access to a stove and frying pan.
He made sausage patties and laid them in a pan, thinking about his truth for the day.
The real truth was, Tarr would do anything to make Briar happy, but he didn’t want to tell her that, and he also didn’t want his own happiness to be sacrificed in favor of hers.
He also wasn’t as good at her game as she was, and he knew he was thinking too big-picture.
She was talking about what she could do that day to move past some of the barriers in her life.
Tarr wasn’t sure what barriers he had that he needed to hurdle, and his mind ran through his relationship with his momma and daddy, with Tuck and Bobbie Jo, with Briar, and finally with his older brother, Wayne. That relationship needed a lot of repair, and Tarr had no idea where to start.
“Perhaps with talking,” he murmured to himself, as it probably wouldn’t kill him to send his brother a text and ask him how he was doing.
Did it matter that Wayne would never do that for him, that Wayne had not called once after Tarr had been knocked unconscious, hospitalized, and brutally injured in a rodeo accident?
Did the slights and wrongs he felt had been committed against him mean that he could withhold his forgiveness from his brother forever?
Tarr didn’t know, and he frowned, thinking about Briar and her parents and how she hadn’t spoken to them in over four years. He’d believed the two of them complete opposites, but the more he learned about her, the more he realized they were more alike than he’d thought.
“Go on,” Briar said from behind him. “He’ll give you some sausage.”
Tarr turned at the clickety-clack of dog claws on the hardwood floor, and he pinched off a piece of cooked sausage from one of the patties he’d browned up. “You’re finally coming in, huh?”
He fed the sausage to Wiggins and then grabbed a kitchen towel and scrubbed the dog’s face and ears and down his back to get him a little bit drier. “You’re soaking wet, bud.”
“It’s a heavy, wet snow,” Briar said. “It’s going to be a beast to dig ourselves out and get over to the barn.”
Tarr looked at her and her unhappy expression, and then pulled his phone out of his back pocket. “I’ll text Ashton, and he’ll bring the tractor.”
For once, Briar didn’t argue, and she sat at the bar as he slid a plate with her hard-scrambled eggs, sausage, and cheese on a perfectly toasted English muffin in front of her.
“Thank you, Tarr,” she said. “This looks amazing.”
He tapped out a quick message to Ashton about coming to get them out at Briar’s cabin, got a confirmation, and then looked back at the woman who had consumed his every thought for months now.
“I think my truth for today is that I don’t need to be so stubborn,” he said.
Briar blinked at him. “You? Stubborn? I don’t think those two words go together.” She grinned at him, and Tarr simply rolled his eyes.
He joined her at the bar and looked over to her. “Let’s do favorites over breakfast.”
“What does that mean?
“You know, like, I’ll say something like ‘animal,’ and you tell me your favorite one.”
Briar blinked at him. “Is this how dating works now?”
Tarr’s eyebrows practically shot off his face. “Are we dating?”
Briar’s expression settled into that familiar glare he knew so well. “Come on, Tarr. Don’t act like that.”
“Act like what?” he asked.
“Like…don’t you want to go out with me?”
“Yeah, of course I do,” he said. “I just didn’t know that one date and one night in a snowstorm equaled dating. That usually takes a few dates and a conversation like this.”
“Well, then let’s have the conversation,” Briar said. “I hate playing games.”
Tarr laughed. “Yeah, honey, I know you do. Do you think I’m playing a game?”
“No,” she said with plenty of saltiness in her tone.
“Does that mean if I ask you to dinner for tonight, you’ll go?”
She searched his face. For what, Tarr had no idea.
And then, in Briar’s usual hot-cold fashion, her blue eyes became like pools of warm, inviting water as everything around her softened.
“Yeah, I’d go to dinner with you tonight, especially if a certain cowboy wanted to take me to that place where they have the cheddar-cheese biscuits. ”
Tarr laughed again as he lifted his breakfast sandwich to his mouth. “I don’t know much about you, Briar, but I’ve definitely learned that if I want to get you on my side, I have to feed you well.”
She giggled with him, and after Tarr finished his first bite of breakfast, he asked, “Okay, favorite food?”
“Potatoes,” Briar said, without missing a beat.
“Potatoes?” Tarr shook his head. “That’s barely a food at all.”
“Are you joking right now?” Briar pinned him with a sharp look and shook her head.
“You can make potatoes into anything, cowboy. Hash browns, French fries, mashed potatoes and gravy. They’re so versatile, and they’re delicious with salt and pepper, and ketchup, or gravy and cheese.
Poutine! Have you ever had poutine? Because it’s delicious. ”
Tarr blinked at her and then burst out laughing. “No, but you’re definitely gonna make me some of that this week for our third date.”