Chapter 4
CHAPTER
FOUR
Lark couldn’t believe she was holding hands with Cash Young.
Her brain cells warred with every other part of her body as he continued navigating them toward the grocery store on the southwest side of town.
He had to pull his hand away to make the turn, and Lark quickly fit the fingers on her left hand through those on her right, the skin there still buzzing as heat and adrenaline pulsed through her body.
“All right.” Cash released a sigh as he pulled into a parking spot, though there were at least a dozen closer than where he’d chosen. “Read me what I’ve got on the list.”
Lark blinked for a moment, her brain not working at all.
She wondered how she’d been undone so easily by the good-looking, quick-witted cowboy—probably because he was good-looking and quick-witted, both things Lark could admit she appreciated.
She appreciated intelligence and kindness and faith as well, and Cash seemed to have it all.
Don’t get carried away, she told herself, as her mind started functioning again.
She tapped on her phone to get it to open, and the grocery list she’d started for Cash stared back at her from a digital yellow sticky note.
She read him back the list, and then looked at him expectantly.
He unbuckled his belt and turned to get out of the truck.
“We need a lot more than that,” he said. “We’ll just go up and down every aisle.”
“I don’t want to go up and down every aisle,” Lark complained as Cash got out and slammed his door in response.
She sighed and tucked her phone into her purse and tugged her gloves back on before Cash made it around the truck to open her door.
When he did, she glared at him. “I thought we were just getting a few things for chicken pot pie.”
“We are,” he said.
“I didn’t plan on a whole-store shopping trip, and then dinner out,” she said.
Cash offered her his hand. An electric zing shot through her, though she wore gloves, when she put her hand in his and let him ease her to the ground.
“Do you ever do anything outside of your plans?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. I got up early and drove for three hours, and I was planning on a relaxing afternoon with my tablet, and a nap, and maybe some of the chocolate I brought with me.”
Cash closed her door, and they started toward the grocery store entrance. “What kind of chocolate did you bring?”
“It’s that new Dubai chocolate,” she said, a certain excitement poking through her. “Has it reached Coral Canyon yet? Because it’s delicious.”
Cash shook his head. “I haven’t heard of it.”
“We’ll look and see if they have it here,” she said. “It’s so good.”
He got a full-size cart and entered the grocery store to the produce section.
He went around each of the stands, collecting his grape tomatoes, mini cucumbers, a bunch of asparagus, cauliflower, broccoli, onions, garlic, and celery.
He got the bagged salad, a loaf of crusty French bread, and a bag of already-cubed day-old bread from the adjacent bakery.
“All right,” he said, coming to a stop in front of the refrigerated salad dressing section. “What kind of ranch do you want, Sparrow?”
He grinned at her, and Lark managed to keep her smile straight as she shook her head. She didn’t necessarily hate the nickname Sparrow, but it also didn’t make a lot of sense.
She studied the rows and rows of ranch dressing, with everything from dilly ranch to buttermilk ranch across multiple brand names.
She expected this from the big grocery chains in the college town where she’d spent a lot of her time in the last few years, but the grocery stores in Coral Canyon had always had a much more limited selection. Until now, apparently.
“Ah, this one.” She picked out the most expensive bottle of homemade ranch that the grocery store made back in the deli.
Cash simply took it from her and put it in the cart, no questions asked. Curiosity about him burned through her as he moved past a seasonal display and over to the eggs, dairy, and butter against the back wall of the store.
“You really just quit the rodeo because you felt like you should?” she asked.
He set a quart of whipping cream in the cart, along with two half-gallons of ultra-expensive organic whole milk. “Yeah.” He gave a quick shrug of one shoulder. “I mean, I guess there was this fear of getting hurt, but that wasn’t the real reason.”
He returned to the dairy case and got out another quart of whipping cream and one of half-and-half. “I’m working with a couple of amateurs,” he said. “And I have to go to Vegas next week while they ride in the NPR Finals.”
Lark’s heart pumped out a couple of extra beats. “Oh, you do?”
Cash glanced at her and then pushed the cart over to the eggs. “Yeah.” He chose a large, five-dozen package and set it at the end of the cart. “You’re moving into finals, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Lark said. “I’m just here for the week.”
“When are you leaving?” he asked.
“Sunday,” she said.
His lips twitched. “Your brothers are leaving on Saturday.”
“Yeah,” Lark said, as she was well aware of Jet and Wade’s plans to return to Coral Canyon for the Thanksgiving holiday. Because of how the days fell this year, Thanksgiving was pretty late in the month. December would begin on Tuesday next week. “I only have a couple of weeks left,” she said.
She paused as he loaded the cart with containers of sour cream, cottage cheese, and Greek yogurt.
“You can get anything you want,” he said. “You’ll be at the house for over a week. You don’t have to be at the mercy of what I’ve got in the fridge.”
Lark nodded. “I brought a couple bags of groceries home from my apartment,” she said. “And then, well, I was kind of expecting that I would just be able to eat whatever was there.” She looked at him, realizing her mistake. “I don’t know why I assumed that. My parents aren’t here.”
He gave her a quick smile. “You can eat anything you want in the house,” he said. “A lot of it is mine at this point, but I don’t care. It’s just food.”
She nodded and reached for one of her favorite flip yogurts—the key lime pie. “I’ll get a couple of these for breakfast.”
“I was going to make overnight oats,” he said. “Wade requested them.”
Lark nodded, though she didn’t like feeling like she was the last to the party in knowing things about Cash. Of course, her brothers had known him for a lot longer than her, and in a different capacity.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you.” Her nerves vibrated at her, because she should’ve had this conversation over text. Weeks ago.
“Because the holiday break between semesters is a lot longer than Thanksgiving, and I’m hoping it will be okay if I stay at the house.”
“Of course,” Cash said. “It’s your house.” He glanced at her, his eyes wide and filled with worry. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No,” she said, though part of her did. “I mean, my mother said I can’t make you leave. That she’s asked you to watch the house and tend to it until they come home, and just because I’m home for a few weeks doesn’t mean I can displace you.”
Cash nodded and moved down the seasonal aisle where he put a few bags of candy and licorice in the cart. It really did seem like they would be going up and down every aisle as he rounded the end and continued down the aisle now filled with bottled water, soda, V-8 juice, and other drinks.
“How long is the break between semesters?” he asked.
“Almost a month,” Lark said. “And I could stay in Idaho.”
“You don’t have a job there?” he asked.
Lark shook her head. “I work in a campus department, and they’ll be closed once the semester ends.”
That lip twitch again, and Lark was starting to realize it meant he wasn’t exactly pleased with what he was hearing.
She forged on, because her mother had told her to talk to Cash over a month ago, and she’d put it off.
She’d been so irritated that he’d invaded her safe space, and she didn’t understand why her parents needed a house sitter at all.
She missed her mother fiercely, and she reminded herself why she wanted to be in Coral Canyon over the holiday break.
“My grandmother needs someone to watch after her,” she said. “So I could probably stay with her too, and I might for some of the time.”
“When will you be back?” Cash asked, once again rounding the top of the aisle and heading down the next one.
This one held the freezer foods he needed, and he started opening various doors to get the frozen corn, and then the peas and carrots, a box of spinach, and more.
She’d expected him to act like a child in the grocery store, maybe pushing the cart fast with one foot and then riding on it like a scooter, but he simply pushed it like a normal human being and glanced over to her.
“You don’t know when you’re gonna come back? ”
“Yeah,” she said, giving herself a mental shake. “I was thinking the thirteenth. It’s a Saturday after the last day of finals. School doesn’t start again until the eighth of January.”
“Yeah, that’s almost a month,” he said. He stopped examining the ice creams in the freezer case and turned his full attention to her.
Lark almost wilted under it, because Cash had deep, dark, gorgeous eyes that saw way more than Lark wanted him to see.
“Look, I think we should just be honest here,” he said.
“All right,” she said.
When he didn’t immediately go on, he reached up and rubbed the back of his head, pushing his cowboy hat forward slightly. He reseated it where he wanted it, his eyes roaming the aisle around them as a woman her mother’s age walked by. He nodded at her and said, “Howdy, Mrs. Langley.”
She smiled at him with all the charm of a woman a generation older than them. “Good afternoon, Cash. Are you trying to decide what ice cream will go with your Thanksgiving Day doughnuts?”
He sighed and faced the ice-cream display again. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m making a fruit-filled one. What do you think?”
Mrs. Langley joined them, and Lark felt very out of place, though she definitely had more intel now as to what Cash wanted to surprise her with. Fruit-filled doughnuts. She had no idea how to even go about making one of those and honestly assumed only master pastry chefs could even do it.
“Maybe just vanilla,” he said. “That way it won’t compete with the toppings or anything.”
“Vanilla is always a good choice,” Mrs. Langley said.
“And if you end up making something different, it won’t matter.
” She opened the case door and pulled out a half-gallon tub in a shiny black cardboard container.
“This Black Velvet brand is my favorite.” She handed it to Cash with a smile, and he took it and put it in the cart.
“Thanks, Mrs. Langley,” he said. “Oh, do you know Lark McClellan?”
Mrs. Langley’s eyes came to Lark, and she suddenly felt like she was under a microscope.
“No, I don’t,” she said, her ruby-red lips widening into a smile. “Are you from here in Coral Canyon?”
“Dog Valley, ma’am,” Lark said.
“Oh, of course. You’re living in the McClellans’ house.” Mrs. Langley’s eyes lit up as she put the dots together. “You must be home from college. Cash has told me about you.”
Surprise darted through Lark yet again, though practically everything Cash did sent a shock through her.
“Yes,” Lark said. “Just home for the holidays.”
“Well, it’s lovely to meet you,” she said. “I’ve got to get going, because I left Harold at the hardware store, and we all know how dangerous that can be.”
Cash laughed and gave Mrs. Langley a quick hug before she continued down the aisle. Lark stood there and stared, as did Cash, and then finally the moment broke between them. She turned toward him. “You’re making a fruit-filled doughnut?”
His gaze hardened. “Yes, and don’t think you’re getting another clue out of me.”
She scoffed. “Oh, please. The next person you recognize will help you with the next ingredient, and I’ll have the whole thing put together before we leave.”
He scoffed too, his energy matching hers, and shook his head. “I don’t know everyone in town.”
Lark gave a dry laugh. “Of course you do.”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“Oh, come on, Cash,” she said. “You’re a famous bull rider. Everyone knows who you are.”
“Mrs. Langley happens to teach a pastry class at the community center,” he said. “That’s how I know her. Otherwise, she would’ve been a stranger.”
“You take baking classes from the community center?”
“It was a pastry class,” he said, his voice filled with aloofness. “Can we keep going? We still have several aisles to go.”
“You’re the one who stopped and said we needed to be honest with each other.”
“Uh, right.” Cash’s face turned red as he put both hands on the handle of the shopping cart and started down the aisle. “Maybe that can wait.”
“Can it?” Lark called, then hurried after him, having to take double the steps he did due to his long legs.
Cash talked to no less than four more people as they continued through the grocery store.
Lark did pick up some Colby Jack cheese snacks, her favorite microwaveable broccoli-cheddar rice, a bag of tortilla chips and some salsa and guacamole, and a package of English muffins and Canadian bacon to make herself her favorite breakfast sandwiches.
Cash said there would be enough eggs for her, and though he told her he had a killer salsa recipe, she kept the store-made stuff in the cart.
By the time they checked out and had everything loaded in the back of his truck, Lark really needed that nap. Cash sighed too and looked over to her with a certain weariness in his eyes.
“I don’t want to go to dinner tonight.”
“Me either,” Lark said.
He gave her a devastatingly handsome smile. “So, a table for two in Dog Valley. Chicken pot pie and green salad with homemade croutons.”
Lark nodded. Cash sobered, and his eyes dropped to his hands in his lap. “Would you…?” He trailed off, muttered something to himself that sounded angry and frustrated, and then boxed up his shoulders again. “I’m just gonna ask it. Would you be interested in going out with me another night?”
Lark’s heartbeat hammered at her, and she had to remind herself that he wasn’t the first handsome man to ask her on a date.
Thoughts streamed through her head that she couldn’t quite capture before they fled, and her response came down to her basest reaction.
She liked Cash, even though she’d spent a considerable amount of effort acting like she didn’t.
So she found herself nodding, and she even got her voice to say, “Yeah. I’d go to dinner with you sometime.”
With that out between then, she wasn’t sure who was more shocked—her or Cash.