Chapter 17 #2
She did an about-face and started walking away. “I’ve got the sign in the back of my truck.”
Tarr wasn’t sure if he could follow her or not, but the Southern gentleman inside him got him to move. Briar had parked at the opposite corner of the barn, and he caught up to her easily due to his height and longer legs.
“How you been?” he said. “I haven’t seen you much this summer.”
“I see you every day, Tarr,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe. I guess I meant we hadn’t talked.”
She’d already lowered the tailgate on her truck, and he jogged ahead a couple of steps so he could reach the sign first. He pulled it out, creating a grating sound against the bed of her truck.
She hissed out a small sound while he watched her shoulders box up before she released them.
She pressed her eyes closed and exhaled.
“Sorry,” he said. “But look how pretty this is.” He lifted it as if she hadn’t seen the lettering and golden wood grain.
This sign had also been done completely out of wood. The word Goatel had been done in a scripty font and arranged in an arch along the top of the sign, which also belled up. A wooden goat had been cut out and painted white with brown spots and placed beneath the words.
Tarr grinned at it, so much appreciation moving through him. “You’re really talented, Briar.”
She blinked at him and then looked at the sign. “Thank you?”
“Why’d you phrase that like a question?” he asked, throwing her a minor glare. “How’d you do this? You got a machine?”
“A little jigsaw,” she said. “And templates for the letters. I can make almost anything if I sketch out a template first.”
Tarr gazed at the sign, still amazed by it. “And you sell these online?”
“I have a little online shop, yes,” she said. “I don’t get tons of orders, though. It’s a very specific clientele.”
“My momma would love something like this.” He turned. “Let’s go see how it looks on the actual Goatel.”
Talking to Briar was easy, and Tarr wished he could kick down the walls she kept firmly erected between the two of them. Everything about her still made his skin sizzle, sent his heart leaping, and coaxed the feelings he kept carefully repressed pressing against the box where he’d put them.
Could she seriously not feel any of that?
What are you going to do about it anyway? he asked himself.
She never came back to his side, but Tarr continued to the peaked roof he’d already put on the enclosure. She walked a few paces behind him and stopped as he moved onto the stepladder in front of the enclosure and held up the sign.
“Yeah, I think it’s gonna look real nice here,” he said. “Do you want to help me get it even, and we’ll attach it?” He looked over his shoulder and found her with her arms folded and a glare on her face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “It fits great.” So great, in fact, it was like he’d been given the exact measurements for this sign and told to make room for it on the front of the enclosure. Perhaps Bobbie Jo had come out and measured while he’d been working with the cattle and horses.
“Could you put a shirt on?” she asked.
Tarr turned to face the sign only a couple of inches away from him—his nose almost meeting the painted wooden goat.
Oh, she feels it, he told himself as he started to chuckle.
“Yeah, okay. It’s on the nail there on the side of the barn. Will you grab it for me?”
She muttered something he couldn’t quite catch, but he heard her marching through the gravel.
He got down off the stepladder and carefully leaned the sign against one of the fence pillars. He stayed right where he was and made Briar come all the way to him with that shirt. She thrust it at him from a couple of feet away.
“Am I too distracting for you, sweetheart?” he asked.
“And too arrogant,” she shot back.
Tarr only chuckled, because he knew he wasn’t arrogant. “You know, we could go out again,” he said. “I didn’t think our first date was that bad.”
Briar looked away instead of saying no, and Tarr was actually surprised the invitation had come out of his mouth. He’d thought about asking Briar out again, of course, but he’d never done it.
“I don’t know, Tarr,” she said. “We just feel so different.”
“That’s because you don’t know me very well,” he said. “You’ve made all kinds of assumptions about me that may or may not be true.”
She didn’t argue with him. so Tarr knew he was right.
“I did want to ask you something,” Briar said. Her voice was hesitant, like every word had to be pulled out of her mouth by the wind.
“Go on then,” he said. “And Bobbie Jo really does want pictures of this sign.”
“I know,” Briar said. “Can you just let me ask this?”
“Go ahead and ask it.”
She remained silent.
Tarr swore their entire conversation on their first and only date had been recorded in his mind so it could torture him whenever possible. She’d literally told him she didn’t like the rodeo or any of the athletes in it. She found it too dangerous.
And yet, she’d been at the ranch working with Tuck and Tarr as they trained rodeo athletes and animals.
She’d only been here a few years, and he couldn’t understand why she didn’t just go find another job. She had the veterinary degree. Surely, there were dozens of places that would take her knowledge and experience.
She’d flat-out told him she only wanted to be friends and neighbors with him. But then, why did she want him to put on his shirt?
“I have to go out of town,” she finally said, swallowing. “It’s not until next week, but I need someone to take care of Wiggins.”
“Yes,” Tarr said automatically. “I’ll do it.”
He wasn’t sure if jumping straight to the acceptance made him a fool or pathetic. Probably both, but right now, he didn’t care.
“Do you want to bring him over to the house, or do you want me to stay at your place?”
Her eyes finally landed on his, pure horror filling them. “You can’t stay at my place.”
“Okay,” he said easily despite the bite in her voice. “I mean, you’re not going to be there. I just wasn’t sure if that would be easier….” He trailed off as her hazel-eyed gaze continued to sharpen.
“I’ll bring you everything you need for him,” she said.
“How long are you going to be gone?” Tarr asked, though it didn’t really matter.
“I’m leaving on Thursday afternoon,” she said. “I’ll be home around the same time on Monday.”
“So just a quick weekend thing,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, but her tone came out haunted. “Just a quick weekend thing.” She looked down at their feet, something very vulnerable streaming from her.
Tarr knew she had a past—everyone had one, after all.
He knew hers had the rodeo in it, whether she liked it or not.
The very male, very protective side of him wanted to take her hand in his and whisper things about how he would never, ever hurt her, and that he would protect her from whatever ghosts in the past still plagued her.
Instead, he backed up a step, knowing that space—for Briar—was like oxygen. And that moving on when things got uncomfortable was her love language.
“So…do you want to help me with the sign?” he asked.
She looked up and nodded.
“Great.” He pointed to a spot a couple of feet over. “Stand right in front of it and tell me if I need to lift it higher or lower on whichever side.”
He pulled the shirt over his head, then walked back over to the sign and picked it up. He bent down, grabbed his nail gun, and climbed back onto the stepladder.
As Briar bossed him around— lift it a titch higher on the left, now a bit lower on the right —Tarr thanked the good Lord above for softening her heart enough to ask him to dog-sit Wiggins.
If this is a door being opened, he thought. Help me to walk through it the right way.