Chapter 5
five
M ission blew out his breath and somehow got his lungs to inflate again. He picked up his cowboy hat and positioned it just-so on his head. He certainly looked ready for a date, the don’t-meet-me-down-a-dark-alley frown on his face notwithstanding.
He tried on a smile, but it didn’t feel natural, and he let his mouth settle back to normal. Turning away from his reflection, he left the bigger second bedroom at the end of the hall in the foreman’s cabin.
He could admit he enjoyed living on his own, as quietness had never bothered him. He liked that everything in his cabin sat where he’d left it, and that he didn’t have to worry about having a roommate who ate all of his peanut butter granola bars.
Cleaning didn’t bother him, and he swiped his wallet and keys from the corner of the countertop, his stomach growling at him for something to eat. Mission ate every couple of hours while working the farm, but he hadn’t had anything since lunchtime.
Kristie had sent him her address a few days ago, and Mission had enjoyed texting her more personal things this week while he waited for this in-person date.
At this point, he could only hope she’d smiled when he’d sent her veterinary memes, pictures of a couple of horses here, and general texts about himself.
“She’s been responding,” he muttered to himself as he left the air conditioning in the cabin and got hit with a wall of early summer heat. He started to sweat instantly, and he jogged down the steps to the front sidewalk.
He barely felt like he belonged at the foreman’s cabin, what with its emerald-green grass, pristine front porch, and an actual carport.
Matt had lived here for a long time, through many winters, and Mission liked that he could pull up to the side of the house instead of out front, and that he wouldn’t have to scrape his truck before he went somewhere when it got cold.
That reality sat several months in the future, and Mission seriously needed to focus on the here-and-now. He couldn’t afford to have his mind wandering into the past or down darker roads filled with self-doubt.
Not tonight.
Kristie possessed some serious intelligence, and Mission would need all of his wits about him to keep up with her. How did he tell her he’d never gone to college? She was a doctor of veterinary medicine.
Oh, yes, he was way out of his league.
Still, he continued on, and it only took him about twenty minutes to drive from the farm to Kristie’s front door.
She lived in a house that screamed her personality, with blooming rose bushes lining the front of the house, and he smiled at how she’d told him she’d planted them there as an intruder deterrent.
A single-car garage sat attached to the house, and she had three big trees in her front yard, all on the west side of the grass and providing shade for the house in the evenings.
The front sidewalk curved from the small front porch to where he’d parked in the driveway, and Mission turned off the truck to force himself out of the vehicle.
His gait felt good and normal, but Mission wondered if an outdoor date was a good idea.
The Summer Stroll took place in the downtown park every first couple weeks of June, and it included a quarter-mile of shops on the first leg of the stroll, and a quarter-mile of food booths, all culminating in a huge stage where bands and other musical artists performed throughout the fourteen-day event.
Tonight’s concert was Foxtrot, a great bluegrass band that Mission had heard before.
Kristie had told him she liked classical music best, as it helped her focus on something complex, and she’d claimed to have used it to calm and relax her mind during vet school, when she had something she needed to riddle through and couldn’t find the way.
Mission leaned in to ring the doorbell, then fell back a step. He cleared his throat as he waited, and mentally coached himself that he’d been out with a lot of women in his lifetime. He’d had probably twelve or fifteen girlfriends over the years, and Kristie Higgins wasn’t special.
Then she opened the door.
Every personal coaching statement Mission had just told himself flew out the window.
Because Kristie Higgins was absolutely special.
She wore a pair of white shorts that landed halfway down her thigh, showing her bare leg all the way down to a light blue pair of shoes with flowers punched out all over them. Not just shoes—Crocs.
Mission lifted his eyes back to hers, his smile absolutely genuine as he looked at her. The matching-blue blouse bore white stripes and every cell in his body tingled. “Hey, there,” he drawled out. “My, don’t you look amazing?”
Without thinking—and all of the advice the Hammond men had given him at last weekend’s party completely gone—he stepped forward and slid his hand along her hip as he leaned in.
His lips brushed along her cheek, and then he pulled back as quickly as he’d moved in. “You ready?”
“Mm hm,” she said, a glorious pink shining in her cheeks now. At her feet, a cat yowled, and Mission looked down at the orange tabby.
He dropped into a crouch and held his hand out to the feline, expecting to be rebuffed with the swish of a tail. Instead, the cat meowed forlornly again and moved into his palm, rubbing his whole body all the way up to Mission’s elbow.
He chuckled and glanced up to Kristie. “What’s his name?”
“Bob,” she said.
His laugh took a deeper form as he straightened. “You named your cat Bob?”
“He’s a rescue,” Kristie said, moving her Croc-ed foot out of the way. “They all are. I got Bob at a farm where the owner found a box of abandoned kittens in his barn.”
“That’s not a rescue,” Mission said, reaching out as she came down the one step from the house to the porch. She’d looped a white purse over her forearm, and she gently toed Bob back toward the house.
“Go on, Bobby. I’ll be back later.” She reached back to pull the door closed, waiting until Bob hopped back inside. Mission caught sight of two other cats on the rug just inside the door, and Kristie had told him about her felines via text this week.
Mission followed her down the steps to the sidewalk, his need to hold her hand making him feel a little crazy. “I thought we’d go to Meltology,” he said. “Have you been there?”
Kristie’s blonde curls bobbed as she looked over to him and kept walking. Light shone in her eyes. “Yeah, it’s great.”
Relief rushed through Mission. “Yeah, Hunter’s kids love the grilled cheese sandwiches, and they have a fondue pot I really like.”
She beamed at him. “Really, Mission? You like fondue?”
He couldn’t help smiling back at her. “Love it. And on the weekends, they have a dinner-date option, which is three courses. Cheese, main dish, and dessert.” He reached the passenger door and opened it. “Do you like fondue?”
She paused close to him. “Yes,” she said. “I do.” She gave him an interested, almost appraising look, and it only set every piece of Mission’s life on fire. “I’m just surprised you like it.”
He lost his mind for a moment, just as he had at her front door, and he kneaded her closer. “Well, I was hoping you would, because I want tonight to be all things I like.”
Including her.
She blushed again, ducked her head, and inched past him to get in the truck. Mission watched her, completely mesmerized for a reason he couldn’t name. He snapped to attention just as she looked over to him, and he quickly moved to close the door behind her.
As he walked around the front of the truck to get behind the wheel, he glanced up to Kristie’s front windows. All three cats perched in the windowsill watching him, and he tipped his hat to the felines with a smile.
He got behind the wheel, and had just turned the key in the ignition when Kristie asked, “Did you just salute my cats?”
He glanced over to her. “Uh, of course not.” He grinned at her. “Who would do that?”
She laughed, and oh, Mission needed to hear that sound every day for the rest of his life. He backed out of her driveway and aimed the truck in the direction of the fondue restaurant.
“I was thinking we’d have dessert at the Summer Stroll,” he said, glancing over to her again. “Do you have something in mind you want?”
“If the Greek mini doughnuts are there, I’ll lose my mind.”
Mission reached for the magazine that had come in last week’s mail. “This lists all the booths. You could check.”
She took it from him and started to leaf through it. Mission wondered what Kristie “losing her mind” would look like, and he secretly hoped the Greek mini doughnut booth would be there.
Seemed like a strange thing for a festival, as doughnuts had to be fried at a certain temperature, and while Mission had never worked on a food truck, he knew that not all foods translated well to going mobile.
Doughnuts definitely fell into that category. But hey, he’d try them if Kristie vouched for them.
“Ooh,” she said. “They’ll have fried ice cream.”
“I’m sensing a type of dessert with you,” he said.
“I love all desserts,” Kristie said, closing the magazine. “The reason we couldn’t go out last night was because I had dessert night at my house.”
Mission expected her to look over to him, but she didn’t. She also didn’t go on. “You have dessert nights at your house?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who’s invited to those?”
That got her to look over to him. He met her eye, his smile kicking up on one side. “I’m taking it not me.”
“I saved you some of my cheesecakes from last night.”
“Did you now?”
She nodded and looked back out the windshield. “They’re passionfruit with a coconut macaroon crust.”
“I didn’t know you baked,” he said.
“I took a cooking class a few years ago,” she said. “Now I do the dessert nights on the first Friday of every month with a few women from the class.”
“That’s fun,” he said, and he genuinely meant it.
“Lennie left you some ice cream, and Harper made me keep half the pan of cowboy brownies.”
“Lennie and Harper,” he said. “They sound like my kind of people.”
“Jocelyn made a princess cake, but she took the other half of it to her niece today.”
“I suppose I’ll allow it,” Mission teased. Talking to Kristie came easier than he’d anticipated, and he waited for her to name another friend. She didn’t, and he put on his blinker to turn onto Main Street.
“Just the four of you?” he asked. “Or were some people missing?”
“Just the four of us,” she said.
He nodded, continued down the block a bit, and then pulled into the parking lot at Meltology. “Doesn’t look too busy,” he said, wondering if he’d start commenting on the weather next.
Dear Lord , he prayed. I hope not. Surely we have more to talk about than dessert.
He found a parking spot and pulled in, still praying with all he had. Thankfully, Kristie waited for him to drop to the ground and hurry through the heat to open her door for her.
Did he dare hold her hand on the way into the restaurant? In the end, he simply put his hand on the small of her back as he guided her around the tailgate. He moved to her side, but a large group approached them, and he fell back behind Kristie as they flowed by.
She reached the door and opened it, and she moved through the foyer to the second set of doors. Someone else opened them, and Kristie ducked inside. Mission followed just as another man said, “Kristie?”
Both she and Mission turned toward him, and oh, Mission did not like the way he smiled so suggestively at Kristie.
“Bradford.” She edged back into him as well, and Mission rested his hand on her waist in a show of solidarity.
“You never did text me back,” Bradford said, and Mission knew him. Most cowboys around Ivory Peaks at least knew of one another, and Mission had been in town for years now.
But Bradford didn’t even look at Mission, and he’d never felt so invisible. He took a micro-step in front of Kristie, gently guiding her to the left. “Hey, Bradford.” He turned his shoulder toward the man, effectively boxing him out.
“Let’s go, kitten,” he said in a softer voice, the term of endearment sending a shockwave through him. “We have a reservation we don’t want to miss.”
His message conveyed, he kept Kristie pressed against his side as they moved away from Bradford and toward the hostess station. “Mission Redbay,” he said. “I had a reservation at seven-fifteen.”
“Howdy, Mission,” the woman there said. She looked over to Kristie and back to him, and while Mission hadn’t gone out with her, he had dated a friend of hers.
“Hey there, Heidi.” He crowded in closer. “Is Bradford coming or going?”
She looked past him, but Mission didn’t do the same. “I think he just got here.” She met Mission’s eyes and then flicked her gaze over to Kristie. “I’ll make sure you’re not near him.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Mission said, the whole right side of his body surely smoking for how hot it was, touching Kristie’s the way he did.
He settled back and did what all serious, protective boyfriends would do when their girlfriend encountered another man they clearly weren’t interested in—he leaned over and pressed his lips to her forehead.
“You’re really playing this up,” she murmured.
“Am I?” He pulled back and looked at her, the brim of his cowboy hat creating a private bubble for just the two of them. “I don’t even want him looking at you, and if he does, I want him to know you’re not available.”
“Mish, this way.”
He looked up at Heidi, then guided Kristie in front of him, keeping himself as a barrier between her and Bradford. He didn’t care if he’d acted a little overprotective, especially since he got to touch Kristie, and whisper with Kristie, and show Kristie a little bit of how he felt about her.
You’re really playing this up.
Hopefully, he hadn’t pressed his luck too far, too early. Then he remembered what he’d said, and Mission cursed his runaway tongue as he sat down opposite of Kristie and waited for Heidi to give them their menus and walk away.