Chapter 8 #2
Winnie wasn’t sure if she should be hurt or not. “No one’s perfect,” she finally said.
“No,” he murmured. “No one is.”
“I’ve missed this.” Winnie squeezed his hand. “I left my family in Oklahoma. I left all my friends, and I miss this…this human touch. No one ever hugs me. The closest I get to this is petting my cat.”
“I’m better than the cat is what you’re saying.” He kicked her that flirty grin again, and this time, Winnie returned it.
“So far,” she said.
Ty tipped his head back and laughed, and oh, Winnie had never heard such a glorious sound. She let it drip through her ears and paint her soul with the golden light it possessed. She even giggled for a few seconds near the end, and when he quieted, Ty looked over to her again.
He seemed completely transformed from the angry, hurting cowboy who she’d first met at the physical therapy clinic.
He hadn’t barked at her once tonight the way he had when he’d called on New Year’s Day.
None of the frustration over having to reschedule this date had accompanied him on it, and Winnie let herself sink further into the seat of his truck, a sense of comfort sweeping through her she hadn’t anticipated she’d feel on tonight’s first real date with Ty.
“Do you dance, ma’am?”
Winnie barely caught the movement of his throat as he swallowed. “I can,” she said cautiously. “Why?”
“Squared Away is a bistro,” he said. “With a dance hall attached, and I thought you might like that.”
“You thought I might like dancing,” she said. “So you’re taking me to a place where we dine and dance, when it’s the thing you dislike most.”
He shifted in his seat. “We don’t have to do it.”
“Ty,” she said, and she heard her physical therapist voice come into play. “I would like you to look at me.”
“I’m driving,” he said, and oh, the stubborn cowboy actually looked out his side window instead of over to her.
“I want this date to be fun for both of us,” she said. “So no, I don’t want to dance with you tonight.”
“Well—that’s rude.”
She heard the teasing undercurrent in his tone, and she turned her head away from him as a soft smile came to her face too.
“I’ve had a busy day,” she said. “And I just endured a panic attack when I didn’t know I got those.
I want something delicious to eat, and I want to linger over coffee and dessert, and I want you to tell me something hard you’ve been through, so I don’t feel so alone. ”
“You already know all the hard things I’ve been through,” he said. “Although, there was this one time on the circuit when I lost by a half of a point to this cowboy named Wuth, and boy, I was so angry.”
“Wuth?” Winnie repeated. “That is not a name.”
“You’ll find a lot of not-names on the rodeo circuit,” Ty said. “And Wuth was a real tool, and losing to him put me in a lower bracket for Nationals. I was so mad, I punched a wall in the arena, and that was a huge mistake too.”
He flexed his hand on the steering wheel.
“That was not a good year for me. My manager ended up calling it a rebuilding year.” He glanced over to her then.
“I hate that word, by the way. No one wants to be rebuilding, and yet, here I am rebuilding my entire life from the ground up. So I’m not having a picnic or anything. ”
“I like picnics,” Winnie said with a smile. “Maybe our next date can be a lunchtime picnic, with a basket and a red-checkered blanket and everything.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” Ty said. “It would save me from having to eat Sabbath Day dinner with my family.” He pulled into a side parking lot at the end of Main Street, swung into a parking space with precision Winnie did not possess, and put the truck in park. “Do you go to church, ma’am?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Do you?”
His eyes held hers for a few long moments, each one filling the truck with a delicious tightness that bound Winnie to Ty again, and then again, and then again. “Sometimes,” he said. “If I could sit by you and hold your hand, I’d go more often.”
She grinned at him and pulled her hand away. “You’ll behave at church.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he murmured just before he unbuckled his seatbelt and opened his door. “Stay there, sweetheart. I’ll come get your door.”
His door closed, and Winnie breathed out, feeling flushed and semi-whiplashed about. She’d always felt like that after being with Ty, and she actually liked it. He opened her door and crowded into her, his chest about the same height as hers now.
He reached up and tucked her curls behind her ear, and wow, Winnie hadn’t been touched that intimately in a long, long time. A yawning need for it opened in her heart and soul, and all of the flirtatiousness between her and Ty evaporated.
This was real, and this was good, and Winnie didn’t want to sugarcoat it. “Ty.” She fiddled with that top button again. “I don’t care if you go to church or not, but you should go because you want to, not because you’ll get to hold my hand.”
She met his eyes and found a storm in his before he blinked it into submission.
“You’re right,” he said as he backed up, took her hand in his, and gave her space to use the runner to get out of the truck. “I could check the weather for tomorrow, though, and we could definitely have a picnic after the sermon.”
He led her down the street, which had a great small-town vibe, with Saturday evening shoppers, couples heading to their restaurant of choice, and that bubbling fountain in the middle of the roundabout.
“I don’t know if I can get a basket and a red-checkered blanket in less than twenty-four hours, but I’m pretty sure my momma said the weather would hold for another week or so.”
“I believe you can do anything you set your mind to.” She grinned over to him, but he scoffed.
“Well, you’d be wrong about that,” he said. “Because I can set my mind to hear again out of my left ear, but that ain’t gonna happen.” He nodded toward a door, and Winnie stepped that way.
He reached past her to open it, and she entered Squared Away first, her pulse stampeding through her veins.
She quickly turned into Ty in the tight space, as others had arrived ahead of them and currently milled about in the front waiting area.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” she said.
“I just meant I think you’re amazing, and if I wanted a basket and a red-checkered blanket in less than twenty-four hours, I know you’d get it for me. That’s all.”
He wore a tightness in his jaw that relaxed as he nodded. He opened his mouth to say something, but a deafening country music song began to play, and Winnie blinked as she turned to see what in the world was happening here.
Ty’s hand in hers tightened, and the next thing she knew, he’d pulled her back out onto the sidewalk. “I don’t want to eat here,” he said. “It’s too loud.”
Flustered, Winnie looked down the block. “Where are we going to go, then?” She certainly didn’t know all the options, and it was a Saturday night at peak dinnertime. In that moment, her stomach growled, just to remind her she hadn’t fed it in hours.
“Come on.” He dropped her hand and started back down the street toward where they’d parked, drawing his phone out of his back pocket as he moved. “I know the perfect place, and I just have to make a phone call real quick….”
Winnie scampered after him, because he was her ride and she needed to eat. Oh, and wherever Ty was, she wanted to be too.