23. Penny
TWENTY-THREE
PENNY
“Good morning, Miss Pesco!”
Like always, Josie was bouncing on the balls of her feet. Her hair wasn’t in braids, but two low pigtails tied back behind her ears and sticking out from beneath her knitted hat that had a ball of purple fuzz on top. Every bounce made the ball and her pigtails thrash in the air.
I doubted there was a more perfect way to be greeted on a Sunday morning.
I lifted my arms out to my side. “Am I dressed okay?”
Given she was insisting on teaching me how to ride a horse, I’d dressed in jeans and knee-high leather boots that probably wouldn’t protect my toes from the cold but would hopefully help with a horse. I had on a long sweater that covered my butt and had a high, cowl-neck collar. It was light pink and warm. The sun was shining, but it was only going to be in the forties by mid-day, so I had on my coat, but it was unzipped and open.
“You look great ,” she exclaimed. “Come on. Daddy’s waiting for us!”
She skipped to me, took my hand, dragged me off my porch, and bolted into a sprint once we reached the driveway. I jogged along with her, her laughter and excitement a heady thing that could lift the darkest clouds from someone’s soul.
Josie was a gift, that was for sure, and I was almost as excited to spend the day with her as I was Gavin.
Who was standing at the driver’s side door to his truck, one booted foot kicked over the other, smiling at us as I chased Josie directly to him.
He wore jeans that fell over the boots and a thick, flannel shirt that looked to be more coat than shirt with a gray Henley beneath. He’d shaven, jaw perfectly smooth, and as we jogged up the driveway, he lifted his gorgeous, sexy smile and aimed it right at me.
“Happy birthday,” he said, and a shiver of excitement trailed down my spine.
This was the best birthday ever, and it’d barely begun.
“Thank you,” I breathed, breathless from both him and the quick jaunt I’d taken to get to him.
He opened Josie’s door, and she climbed on in.
“I can’t wait for this. This is going to be the best day ever ,” she declared and started buckling into her booster seat.
Gavin shut the door and seared me with a heated look. “I agree.”
I trembled in my boots as I faced him. “It already is, I think.”
“Come on.” He walked around the front of his truck and opened my door, held it there while I climbed in, and didn’t shut it until I was buckled.
He leaned in, and I caught a whiff of spice and masculine scent that made me lick my lips and my breath turn erratic. “You good back there, munchkin?”
“Ready to roll,” Josie chirped.
He leaned back, and with his hand not holding the door, brushed it over the top of my thigh, barely grazing my skin and my hands in my lap.
“You good?”
I swallowed thickly. “Yup.”
He smirked like he’d won something, and maybe he had. It’d been a week of late-night kisses and laughter and phone calls. We texted throughout the day, and he always called at night. I didn’t go over to his house every night, but most of them, but I didn’t see him last night. He said he had to help Dalton at the ranch.
The wait was worth last night’s missed kisses because he looked more handsome, more relaxed and excited this morning than I’d seen him yet.
Like he had a secret. I suppose we did.
He pulled out of the driveway, throwing his arm over the back of my headrest in that sexy, manly way only men could somehow pull off, and when he put the truck in park, his hand brushed along my hair before returning to the steering wheel.
I turned to him, arched brows in question.
“Seeing what I can get away with,” he whispered, looking at the road, but it was like he’d felt my question.
“You’re a tease,” I whispered back and turned to Josie in the back seat. “Did you have fun last night?”
“I always have fun at Grandma’s. And I get to play with Goldie now, which makes it funner.”
“Was Landon there, too?”
She was a constant source of entertainment and information, so I knew when Cameron got hurt, his wife Emily and son Landon had been at the house. Grandpa Kelley bought Goldie for Landon but wasn’t going to let the puppy go stay with them until he was sure the dog was well trained, so it didn’t add work to Emily, who was expecting her second child. What she didn’t know was that at night, Gavin told me all about his family. I’d gotten the crash course in the Kelley family from Faye and Dolly, but Gavin was an open book.
“Yep. He’s there all the time and will be there today. Uncle Caleb has home games this week. They have to go home tonight because Aunt Emily works, but you’ll get to meet them.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t be nervous,” Gavin said. “They live on the land part-time, but they’re always there if they don’t have to be in Denver. And Emily’s as sweet as they come.”
“Grandma says she’s sweet as strawberry pie.”
I chuckled. God, I loved this girl. She knew everything .
“Anyone else going to be there I should know about?” I’d fretted all week about meeting Gavin’s parents, but if his brothers were going to be there, too, my nerves would be shot.
Would they believe I was only Josie’s teacher and there at her request? Or would they quickly suspect something else was going on? And would they want that for their son?
Oh boy. I blew out a breath and fisted my hands.
“They know,” Gavin said and glanced at my hands and then at my face. “I told Mom and Dad about seeing you.”
He spoke quietly, but given Josie’s penchant for hearing everything, I turned up the music on the radio.
He smirked at me and lowered his voice. “I might be waiting to tell her , but I won’t hide you from my family. They’ll be cool, and they’re excited to meet you.”
“Okay,” I whispered. “It’ll be fine.”
“It’ll be great. I promise.”
Well then, there wasn’t any reason to be nervous, now, was there?
We drove through town. It might have been Sunday morning, but the town square was littered with people, most of them walking likely to or from church with coffee cups from Jumpin’ Beans wrapped in gloved and mittened hands.
Cars lined the road outside the grocery store where I suspected Lydia was inside working.
“I love this town.” I sighed. “It always feels so peaceful.”
“It usually is,” Gavin said and there was a bite in his tone that made me flinch. Of course it hadn’t been recently.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“No worries.”
“Miss Pesco! When we get to Grandma’s house today, we have a surprise for you!”
“You do?” I turned around and glanced at her.
“Josie…” Gavin warned. “It’s not a surprise if you tell her first, remember?”
“But it’s so hard! And you always say we shouldn’t keep secrets.” Her purple-booted feet kicked the back of Gavin’s chair.
I fell back to my seat and twisted toward Gavin. “You have a surprise for me?”
“A birthday surprise. And present. So you have to wait.” His eyes went to the rearview mirror. “And little miss Josie is going to keep that secret a little bit longer, isn’t she?”
“Fine,” she grumbled. “But it’s a good one. And you’re going to be super happy,” she told me.
“I can’t wait.” Excitement buzzed through me, replacing my earlier nerves. “Thank you in advance for the wonderful day.”
“It hasn’t even started yet!” Josie chirped.
“I know. But I can already tell it’s going to be my best birthday ever.”
“Wow… And you’ve had a lot of them.”
Gavin snorted.
I laughed.
Josie was right. I’d had a lot of birthdays, most of them spent alone. Never had I received a present or a surprise except for my eighteenth birthday when Maize brought me cupcakes and candles. Until then, I’d never even wasted the money on learning how to make a birthday cake and we’d only splurged for treats on Christmas and Thanksgiving.
Yes, this was definitely going to be my best birthday ever, and all due to the man sitting next to me.
“Thank you,” I told Gavin and let him see the emotion in my eyes, the thankfulness and care I had for him.
We might have been at the beginning of whatever this was going to become, but it was already more important than any other relationship in my life outside Maize.
“You’re welcome,” he replied, and his tone was as serious as mine. “You deserve it.”
We turned right at the stoplight that would take us out to the ranch. I hadn’t been out that way yet since there really wasn’t a reason to, so surprise hit me as soon as I saw the fence posts marked with signs declaring it Kelley Ranch land. They had a ton of land, I had been told, and I knew it was in multiple thousands of acres, but until we crested a small hill and all I saw were cows and their fencing and open land for as far as the eye could see, I hadn’t truly been able to picture it. Far to the west were snow-capped mountains, barely visible, but they were still magnificent, peeking out beyond the trees and grass and fields in front of us on both sides of the road.
“Wow.” I blew out a breath and stared at the open plains in awe. “I didn’t realize it’d be so beautiful. Or large.”
“In the spring, I’ll take you out on the horses or trucks and show you all of it,” Gavin said.
In the spring. I glanced at him, checking to see if he caught what he’d said. Spring was months away.
One side of his lips curled up. “You heard me,” he stated and turned back to the road.
“I’d like that.”
I’d like to be with him in the spring, and I’d like to still be with him in general, and more than anything, I’d go out on a truck or a horse or on foot, if I had to, to see it all with him.
Gavin slowed his truck and turned off to the right. We bounced along a gravel road, the small rocks pinging beneath the carriage of his truck.
“That’s my grandparents’ original house.” He pointed to a brick home with a large front porch and a couple rocking chairs out front. “Dalton lives there now. He moved in when they decided to retire. Beyond his place is where some of the ranch hands stay and most of our equipment.
There were buildings upon buildings. Sheds and massive equipment and smaller penned in areas.
I pointed to one of them. “What’s that?”
“That’s one of the pens we use to vaccinate and tag and castrate the calves every year.”
“Oh.” Well, I didn’t need that image in my head.
“Whole town comes out, well, most of them. It’s a huge process, so we need as many extra hands on deck as we can. Mom and the women fix up a huge spread of food and drinks. It’s a party. You’ll love it.”
He was grinning again, and I shook my head. First spring, now he was thinking of me there in the summer. This man wasn’t messing around with his intentions, that was for sure.
“I’m sure I will.” And I squeezed my hands together, pinched the inside of one palm to ensure I wasn’t dreaming.
The sting of pain told me this was real. Real and maybe better than anything I could have dreamed up on my own.
We drove around Dalton’s house farther down the road where the pens changed and off to the left were several horses wandering around in another fenced in area. A large barn was beyond it, and Josie bounced so hard in her booster seat the truck swayed back and forth.
“That’s Pickles!” she shouted.
There were at least eight horses corralled together. So I had no idea which one she meant.
“Which one?”
I leaned forward, which made me also lean closer to Gavin so I could see out his window. He hissed in a breath and shot me a look that had my toes curling in my boots.
Smoldering, indeed. The man nailed that look.
“She as all the brown spots.”
I spotted the horse she talked about, and indeed, the horse was a light tan color with milk chocolate covered spots on her. “She looks more like a chocolate chip cookie.”
Josie laughed so hard she snorted. “We already had a Cookie!”
Gavin nodded. “Mom has a couple barrel racing horses she uses to train kids wanting to learn. Their names are Brownie and Cookie.”
“Your mom teaches barrel racing?” I didn’t exactly know what that was, but I could imagine it enough.
“Used to be really good at it, but only does it for fun. If kids nearby have an interest, she gets them started, sees if it’s really something they’re committed to before helping them find trainers. Helps keep their expenses down in the beginning.”
From all I’d heard about Jenny Kelley, the woman might be in the running to be declared a saint upon her passing.
“She sounds so wonderful,” I told him.
“She is. You’ll see.”
“We’re here!” Josie squealed from the back seat and right as she said it, a large, two-story home came into view. Trucks, cars, and two four-wheelers were parked to the side of it, filling in most of the space between the horse barn and home.
Gavin pulled his truck in behind a large, black Ford covered in dirt and dust.
“We’re here,” I repeated Josie’s words.
“Home sweet home,” Gavin said and threw his truck into park. “Ready to see your surprise?”
Was I ever. Nerves be damned, I was ready to see what he’d whipped up for me.