Chapter 10
ten
M ission didn’t normally mind working from sunup to sundown. It made for long hours in the summer, to be certain, but he enjoyed being outside, spending his time with animals, breathing in the fresh air, and enjoying all of God’s creations.
He’d been at the Hammond family farm so long that he had plenty of friends, and thankfully, none of them had started treating him differently now that he was the foreman.
Of course, it had only been a week, and nothing major had happened on the farm yet.
He hadn’t had to reprimand anyone, do any interviews, try to settle any disagreements, or otherwise be the boss.
In fact, in many ways, Mission acted the exact same way he had when he hadn’t been foreman. He normally had no problem staying after the horseback riding lessons to help put all the equines away, answer questions, and wait with kids whose parents were late coming to get them.
Today, he walked with a couple of ten-year-olds down the side of the red barn toward the parking lot, his eye on the clock on his phone. Kristie would be at his house in only ten more minutes, and it would take Mission that long to walk home if he left right now.
He hadn’t ordered pizza yet, because he wanted to ask her for her favorite kind, and they had plenty of time before the sun would go behind the Rocky Mountains in the west.
Part of him worried that there was too much time—how could he possibly find anything for the two of them to talk about for hours?
He told himself that Kristie knew at least a little bit about him, and if she hadn’t worked out that he wasn’t the most talkative cowboy in the state yet, that said more about her than him.
“My momma said she just pulled up,” Trevor, one of the boys, said.
“Oh, great.” Mission smiled over to the child. “You got your certificate from Molly?”
The boy lifted it up, pride beaming from his face. “I can’t believe I’m moving up to the next level so fast.”
Trevor had been riding at Pony Power for a few years now, so Mission wasn’t that surprised. The other boy, Zach, had not moved up to the next class, but he’d only been at Pony Power for a year.
They reached the corner of the barn, and Trevor ran off to climb into his mother’s minivan.
Zach paused and looked around. “I don’t see my dad.”
To Mission’s relief, he spotted Cosette Whettstein standing several feet down near the front doors of the administration building.
She ran the behind-the-scenes at Pony Power with utmost precision.
As Mission had been drawing paychecks from both the farm and the equine therapy unit for years—two separate entities housed on the same land—Cosette kept everything straight, proper, and running according to tax laws.
“I’m gonna have you go wait with Cosette,” Mission said to Zach. “Is that all right?”
He nodded down toward the front doors, and Zach started moving that way. “Yeah, it’s fine.”
“See you next week,” he called to the boy, who turned around and walked backward for a couple of steps as he waved good-bye.
Mission smiled and waved back, and the moment he could, he spun on his heel and headed for his cabin.
He usually only drove to town for groceries or church, and he’d never minded the walk to and from work.
Today, though, it felt like a constant thorn in his side as he hurried down the lane, past the farmhouse, and through the Hammond’s backyard.
Even then, he still had to walk the long road to the very back of Cowboy Row, where the foreman’s cabin stood two stories tall while all the other cabins were only one.
And Kristie’s car already sat in his driveway.
“Great,” he muttered.
He wiped the sweat from his face and told himself everything would be fine. It was pizza and a sunset, and she wouldn’t care if he took ten minutes to shower. They’d have to wait for the pizza anyway.
As he drew closer to the cabin, he realized Kristie sat on his front steps. She wore a pair of cutoff jean shorts and a sleeveless blouse in lavender. She seemed haloed above with light from heaven—or maybe that was just how Mission perceived her.
Her focus stayed down on her phone, but Mission couldn’t look anywhere but at her.
She glanced up, finally, and Mission raised his hand in a wave, though he still had half the distance to go to reach her.
She got to her feet and pushed her phone into her back pocket as she came down the steps. From several yards away, she called, “Your truck was here, so I thought you’d be home.”
“Just finishing up the horseback riding lessons,” he said, his stride long and eating up the distance between them quickly.
When he reached her, he slid one hand along her waist to her back and leaned in as if he might kiss her on the mouth, right there for anyone to see.
Mission had kissed plenty of women, and the movement felt natural to him. But his brain screamed at him that he had not kissed this woman yet—and he certainly didn’t want the first time to happen in broad daylight where any number of cowboys could see and then tease him about it.
“Hey, kitten,” he said, slowing his forward motion. He lifted his chin too, and that got his lips closer to her temple. He swept a kiss there and then stepped back easily, curling her fingers between his.
“How was your day?” It felt like such a mundane question to ask, but Kristie smiled and tilted her head back so that she faced the sky.
“It was a great day,” she said. “I helped a cocker spaniel deliver some puppies, and then I did some cattle immunizations out at Southby’s.”
“The puppies sound nice,” he said.
“They are the cutest things ever .” Kristie smiled over at him. “What about you? You seem busy around here.”
“No busier than any other day.”
They went back up his front steps to the porch.
When Matt had lived here, Gloria always had something welcoming anyone who came to the house—a seasonal sign in red, white, and blue for the Fourth of July, pumpkins at Halloween, and scarecrows and Santa Clauses at appropriate times throughout the year.
“I just had to finish up with the kids,” he said. “And I figured it would be okay if I grabbed a shower while you figured out what kind of pizza you want.”
“Yeah, sure,” Kristie said. “Where are you going to order from?”
“I was thinking San Diego’s,” Mission said. “They have a pan-style pizza that’s been calling my name for a couple of days.”
She laughed, the sound glorious and wonderful. “Ah, now I know why you suggested pizza.”
“If you’d rather we got something else?—”
“No,” Kristie said. “I love pizza, though I can’t say that I’ve ever had the pan pizza from San Diego’s.”
“Have you been to San Diego’s before?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “But my girlfriends and I got the thin crust. And you would die, but Lennie likes veggie pizza.” She tacked a giggle onto the end, and Mission grinned at her.
He opened his front door and stepped back to let Kristie go in first. Blessed air conditioning came out to greet them, and she took three steps into his cabin and stopped.
He entered after her, squeezing in close so that he could swing the door closed behind him.
“It’s not much,” he said, moving to her side.
“The foreman’s cabin is the biggest, though, and Matt lived here with his family for quite a while.
Then they wanted more land, and he moved to town, and he and Gloria just came out here to work. ”
“Gloria is still around, right?” Kristie asked.
“Yep.” Mission moved past her. “Feel free to snoop around.” He grinned and turned back toward her as he reached the corner. “And look at the menu at San Diego’s. We can get more than one pizza, so if you want a thin crust, it’s no problem.”
Her eyes roamed through his living room, the dining room with a table and four chairs, and the kitchen before they settled on him.
“I’ll look at the menu,” she said. “I’m not going to snoop through your stuff.”
He grinned and reached up to tip his hat at her, then took it off and hung it on the hook on the other side of the corner as he headed down the hall toward the master suite.
The foreman’s cabin had a second bedroom, two bathrooms, and a loft. Mission knew Matt had once put Keith in the loft—only because he and his sister weren’t the same gender and were too old to share the bedroom. Mission wouldn’t have that problem for a while…if he ever did.
“Hey, don’t think like that,” he muttered to himself.
Things were going great with Kristie—and they were.
But as he quickly stepped into the shower to scrub the day’s dirt, horses, and sweat off his skin, he also reminded himself that this was only their third date.
They wouldn’t be getting married and starting a family anytime soon.
As he toweled his hair dry, he realized how long it had gotten. He grabbed his phone and headed back down the hall to the living room.
Kristie sat at the bar—not at the table or on the couch—and she looked up as he entered.
“I actually think your place is bigger than mine,” she said.
He chuckled and shook his head. “I doubt that.”
“My place is only two bedrooms, and you have a loft,” she said.
“You have a basement.”
“It’s not finished, so your living space might be more than mine.”
“Okay,” he said, because he saw no point in arguing about it; he didn’t really care anyway.
“I’m just gonna text Molly real quick,” he said.
“Oh, yeah? About what?”
He glanced at her as he tapped on Molly’s name. “Just gonna ask her to cut my hair,” he said. “I realized it’s getting a little too long.”
Kristie got to her feet. “I can cut your hair.”
Their eyes met, and time slowed into small, thin strands connecting the two of them.
“You can?” The words came out of his mouth, though his lips didn’t move.
“Sure.” Kristie reached up and swept her fingers through it, pushing the long fringe to the side. She swallowed and dropped her hand as her eyes widened—like she’d just realized what she’d done.