Chapter 10
CHAPTER
TEN
Reeves had not texted anything specific about what Bailey needed to wear or not wear on their date that night.
So she wore a skin-tight pair of blue jeans and chose a pale blue blouse with tiny white butterflies all over it to match.
She’d always looked good in blue, she knew, as it really brought out her eyes and made her hair shine like gold.
She’d just finished tying the pair of sneakers that she’d used a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser on to get back to bright white when her doorbell rang. She clapped both hands on her knees and pushed out her breath.
“This is it,” she said to the cold fireplace in front of her.
Her first first date in five years. She felt ready but also incredibly nervous, and she hadn’t told anybody about this dinner with Reeves—not her administrative assistant at work, not her mother, not even the best friend she’d left behind in Butte.
She didn’t think the date would go poorly, but for some reason she didn’t want any expectations about having to report about it to anyone. She simply wanted to enjoy every moment of it, and let it be what it was going to be.
She snagged the sweatshirt she’d laid over the back of the couch as she passed it to open the front door.
In that brief moment of time, with anticipation pulsing against the back of her tongue, she wished she had cameras on her front door the way Reeves did.
Then she’d be able to see the handsome cowboy and what he was wearing.
But she didn’t, so she’d have to have her first impressions of him on full display.
The door swung open and Reeves stood there, a plentiful bouquet of wildflowers in one hand, and his other tucked into the pocket of a pair of dark-wash jeans that made Bailey’s mouth water.
He looked up from the flowers, and it took an extra-long moment for his gaze to clear the brim of his cowboy hat—one that Bailey had not seen him wear before.
Of course, the man could own dozens of cowboy hats, and she wouldn’t know.
He’d trimmed his beard shorter, which caused Bailey to smile, and his whole face lit up, including those slate-gray eyes, as he returned her grin.
“Evening, ma’am,” he drawled like a proper cowboy gentleman.
“I didn’t know what to wear,” she said as she gripped the doorknob with her right hand and lifted one foot. “I hope sneakers are appropriate.”
“Completely appropriate,” he said. “We’re just going to be walking on a flat path out to a river and an overlook. It’s maybe a third of a mile.”
“So you did plan an outdoor date.” She gave him a mock glare, hoping he could hear the playfulness in her voice.
He shook his head, his expression falling back to something more somber.
“Not entirely,” he said. “I found a great diner on the highway up toward Rusk, and it claims to have the best pie this side of the Mississippi.” He quirked his eyebrows.
“I figured we should at least try that and see if it holds true.”
Bailey grinned at him and leaned her weight into one hip. “That is a bold claim,” she said.
“Right?” he half-laughed and half-spoke. “And then, since it’s a diner and surely won’t take long, I thought we’d take a little walk and see the early wildflowers and catch a glimpse of Coral Canyon at night.”
Bailey’s pulse settled back to its normal rhythm. “That sounds perfect.”
The tension in Reeves’s shoulders disappeared, settling them down an inch or two. “I got these for you.” He extended the bouquet toward her.
Bailey beamed at the bright orange, yellow, and pink blooms. “Did you have these delivered?” she asked as she stepped out onto the porch and reached for them.
“Sure did,” he said.
She giggled as she leaned down to smell them. She didn’t know why women did that—pollen didn’t smell good, and she quickly straightened. She looked at him and, in the most flirtatious voice she possessed, said, “You’re going to have to teach me all your delivery ways.”
He tucked his other hand in his pocket and rocked back onto the heels of his cowboy boots. “Happy to do it anytime.”
“Come in,” she said. “And I’ll put these in a vase.”
She turned and walked away, glad when she heard Reeves close the door behind him.
“It’s twenty-three minutes to the diner,” he said. “So I hope you’re not starving.”
“I’ll be fine.” Bailey quickly pulled out a vase from underneath the kitchen sink, filled it with water, and set the wildflowers in it. She turned back to him and found him loitering on the other side of her peninsula.
“You called me wildflower a couple of days ago.”
Reeves blinked, and something blank and fierce covered his expression, just like someone pulling the shutters closed on something they didn’t want to see. “Did I?”
His voice came out a touch harsh, and Bailey didn’t like that. She rounded the counter and slid one hand up the dark gray shirt he wore. It bore no emblems, stripes, or logos; if he put on a tie, he’d be ready for church.
“You sure did,” she said quietly. “When you carried me into the bedroom the night it rained.”
He swallowed but didn’t grind his voice through his throat—both tells Bailey had seen from him before. This man had a lot to say, and chose not to say it. Bailey found she wanted to hear his innermost thoughts. “Do you not remember?” she asked.
“I remember,” he said quietly, his dark gaze holding hers in the intimate space under his cowboy hat. “My grandmother loved wildflowers. We hiked all over Montana and parts of Canada just to see them. I love them. They’re beautiful, they’re so free, and they bloom in even the harshest conditions.”
Bailey searched his face, waiting for him to say something more. He leaned down, and her pulse kicked and paraded through her body. He’s going to kiss me, she thought. But he didn’t. Instead, he swept his cheek along hers and pressed there.
“You remind me of that,” he whispered, his mouth practically catching on her earlobe. “Beautiful, wild and free, and able to bloom anywhere.”
Bailey sighed, so comfortable with him and surprised at how he’d called forth the perfect words and paid her the kindest compliments. “Well, thank you,” she managed to say.
Reeves pulled back and dropped his hands to hers. “Let’s go eat,” he said. “I’ve been so nervous about this date, I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
Bailey wondered if there would come a time when this man didn’t say something that surprised her, and she squeezed his hand as they moved back into her living room and out onto the front porch. “You’re nervous?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“Well, it’s my first date in five years,” Bailey said, and she blew her breath out. “So there, now you know. I haven’t had a boyfriend or been out with anyone in a really long time.”
He led her all the way around to the passenger side of his truck and opened her door, but Bailey paused and looked him straight in the eye. “What about you? All you have to do is say higher or lower: Has it been higher than five years since you’ve dated, or lower?”
“Lower,” he said. “But only slightly. I haven’t dated anyone in Coral Canyon, and I’ve been here for a while.”
Bailey nodded, starting to get a better picture of Reeves.
She wondered if his previous relationship up north had been what had driven him to Coral Canyon for good, maybe forcing him into his reclusive ways and spurring him to learn everything about delivery services and how to stay off the grid.
She didn’t ask, because she boosted herself into his truck and started buckling her seatbelt.
He went around to the other side to get behind the wheel, pulling forward as if he’d enter her garage and then backing out again so he could pull out of her driveway facing forward.
“I can’t wait to see if this pie really is the best west of the Mississippi,” she said.
Reeves grinned over to her. “Have you ever been east of the Mississippi?”
Bailey giggled and shook her head no. “Have you?”
“Can’t say that I have,” he said.
“But you’ve been up to Alaska,” she said. “Is that where you’re from?”
“No,” he said. “I’m from a tiny little town in northern Montana, only about thirty miles from the Canadian border.”
“Ah, so that’s what you meant by up north,” she said.
“Yeah. You said you lived up there, too.”
“Butte,” Bailey said. “I built my first veterinary clinic in Butte.”
She looked out her side window, wanting this conversation to take a different turn onto a different topic. Reeves said he hadn’t dated in a while, but he could certainly read body language, and Bailey hoped he’d pick up on hers.
“Did you move back here because your family is here?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I grew up here in Coral Canyon.” She glanced over to him. “I fell in love with Montana when I went there for college.”
He nodded. “It’s a beautiful state.”
Thankfully, he asked her easy questions about her siblings and her clinic, and before she knew it, he pulled up to a cute white wooden building with a rusty metal sign that said Spoons and Spurs.
He came to get her door and tucked her hand in his before he opened the door for her, and they walked into the restaurant.
Much to her relief several of the tables held people, and it smelled like good brown gravy and freshly baked bread.
A woman wearing a red dress with a white apron tied around her waist said, “Y’all can pick anywhere you want to sit, and I’ll be right there,” just before she delivered four plates of food to two couples sitting at a table against the wall on her left.
Reeves paused and looked around, then led Bailey over to a table for two against the opposite wall.
He pulled out the chair for her, and she sat down.
To her surprise, he didn’t take the chair across from her, but pulled it around the table and sat kitty-corner from her, his back to the restaurant and the door.
In fact, the only person he could see was her, and the same was true for everyone else in the restaurant.
She smiled at him and covered his hand with hers. “You don’t want anyone to see you, do you?”
He shook his head and kept his hat tilted low as the waitress arrived with two paper menus.
“Howdy, folks,” she said. “Can I get you something to drink tonight?”
“Can you make me a Shirley Temple?” Bailey asked.
“Sure can. What about you, cowboy?”
“I’ll take a Diet Coke,” he said. “And you can put some of the cherry in that too, please.” He picked up the paper menus and handed one to Bailey.
“Coming up,” the waitress said, and she pointed one blood-red fingernail at the menu. “We have chicken-fried venison tonight as one of our specials, and we’re all out of our fried potato cakes. Other than that, everything we’ve got is on the menu.”
Bailey flashed a smile at her and said, “Thanks.”
She left, and Bailey looked down at the all-American diner menu. “Oh, they serve breakfast all day,” she said.
“Is that a positive for you?” Reeves asked.
“Yes,” Bailey said. “I don’t make breakfast for myself very often, because I’m always rushing out the door, but I love breakfast foods in general.”
“Noted,” he said, and Bailey had the distinct feeling that he’d noted everything she’d told him, stemming way back to when he’d found her passed out in her driveway in a snowstorm.
She really liked him, and the easy, quiet way he had about him reminded her so much of Bryce.
Reeves was a muted version of the boy she had fallen in love with as a young college student.
While she feigned studying the menu, Bailey’s thoughts blitzed through her mind, telling her that if she and Reeves were really going to have a serious romantic relationship, she’d have to tell him everything.
She hadn’t had to fully do that with a friend or a partner in the past fifteen years since she’d given birth to her son and then given him up for adoption.
She stole a glance at Reeves, and he too lifted his eyes to meet hers. “What is it?” he asked.
Bailey found her throat full of nerves and unspoken words she’d never said before. She certainly couldn’t say them now, so she forced a smile to her face and shook her head.
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m just thinking of trying the chicken-fried venison. What do you think about that?”