Chapter 13
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Lark shimmied into her Care Bear swimsuit for the second night in a row, shivering because it wasn’t quite dry from last night’s soak in the hot tub.
“How does he do this?” she muttered to herself.
They had been back from Coral Canyon for about an hour.
Cash had spent the majority of that time in his bedroom, while Lark lay on the couch and texted her mother in Costa Rica.
When he had sent his inaugural text: Do you want a hot tub a little bit early tonight, before your brothers get here?
Lark had immediately said yes and gone to get changed.
She left the cover-up hanging in the bathroom, and instead grabbed the towel she’d used yesterday and headed down the hall, taking short, clipped steps, as if that would somehow warm her up.
As she approached the sliding glass door, she saw the colorful glow from the hot tub lights change from teal to blue, and that told her Cash had already gotten in.
Lark pulled open the sliding glass door, every part of her dropping ten degrees as she stepped outside into the wild winter Wyoming night.
“It’s freezing,” she complained, and she quickly whipped off the top of the towel warmer, plunged her towel inside, and replaced the lid before stepping around the corner.
Steam filled the air, and she could barely see Cash in the far corner.
“My swimming suit is still wet,” she said. “How do you do this every night?”
“I’ve got more than one suit,” he said matter-of-factly. “We’ll have to get you another one.”
Lark practically dove into the hot tub, and embarrassment ran through her as the water swished and sloshed around. “Sorry,” she said.
She took the corner he’d sat in last night, but after only a few seconds, she said, “I don’t like these jets,” and she moved to the seat in front of the waterfall.
“You can sit here,” he said.
He moved over to the corner right in front of the living room window, and Lark gladly took his corner.
“This one has the best jets,” she said.
“Yeah, it does,” he said. “It’s my favorite corner.”
“I feel bad I’m taking it from you.”
“Do you?” He grinned at her. “You seem really upset.”
“Okay,” she said, barely rolling her eyes. “I don’t know how you sat in that one last night. Those jets are like needles.”
“Yeah, it’s definitely the worst corner,” he said.
“Then why did you sit there?” she asked.
“Because it was closest to you, Songbird.”
Lark was not used to men paying attention to her like this, and certainly not someone as handsome and as talented as Cash Young. She didn’t know what to say, and the bubbling silence settled around them.
“So, we survived today,” Cash said a few moments later.
“Yeah,” Lark said. “It was a busy day.”
“You never really said what you thought of the sermon.”
“I really liked it,” Lark said. “And I thought what you said at lunch was really poignant.”
Cash chuckled. “I don’t think anyone’s ever called me poignant before.”
She grinned at him, wishing there wasn’t an empty seat between them. She also couldn’t sit up in those higher middle seats, as they were raised about six inches, and that put her shoulders out of the water. She turned toward him and lifted her feet up, her toes skimming across his knee.
He wrapped one hand around her ankle and settled her feet in his lap, and no touch had ever felt so intimate as that one.
“I can definitely do a better job of putting my gratitude into actions,” she said. “Heck, sometimes I don’t even say thank you at all.”
“It can be tough,” Cash said.
“Did you hear from Wade or Jet?” she asked.
“Yeah, they made it on their flight just fine,” he said. “Though it was delayed about a half-hour.”
Lark yawned. “I don’t know if I’ll make it until they get here,” she said. “This thing puts me to sleep.”
“It’s great, isn’t it?” he asked. “I love sitting out here at the end of a long day—or even a short day.”
“It’s very soothing,” Lark said.
Cash chuckled, his hand now stroking partway up her calf and back to her ankle. “I love being out here at the end of every day,” he said. “It really is calming for me.”
Lark had not realized that Cash needed calming in his life until today, seeing him with his large family, and listening to him talk about his childhood. Lark definitely had misjudged him in the beginning.
“Why didn’t you invite your grammy to stay here this week?” he asked.
Lark shrugged one shoulder slightly out of the water, though she could barely see him through the rising steam coming off the hot tub. “It didn’t feel like the right thing to do,” she said.
“She seemed okay to me,” Cash said. “Besides the cats.”
“When they get vocal enough, she remembers to feed them,” Lark said. “Maybe I’m overreacting.” She sighed, because she’d definitely been told that before.
“Hey, that’s not what I said,” Cash said. He pushed himself away from the corner, and the water sloshed just as much with him as it had with her. Of course, he was twice as big as her too.
As he moved over to the seat in front of the waterfall and directly next to her, he said, “You’re too far away over there.”
Lark smiled at him and pulled her feet in front of her to position them on the jets there.
“Hey, I wanted that one,” Cash said, and he gently nudged her foot out of the way.
“Well, too bad, cowboy,” she said.
“Again with the cowboy.” He scoffed. “And what was with Johnny earlier?”
“You know, like Johnny Cash,” Lark said.
He tipped his head back and laughed, filling the quiet Wyoming sky with the sound of joy. He had told her once that he liked her laugh, and she grinned at him as he quieted and decided to turn her feelings into actions, too.
“I like making you laugh,” she said.
Cash looked at her, sobering all the way. “Do you really think we can do a long-distance thing?”
“Not if you’re going to call it a long-distance thing,” Lark said, giving him a mock glare.
“Well, what would you call it?” he asked.
“A relationship,” she said. “I’m not into ‘things’ when it comes to handsome cowboys. If you want to be my boyfriend, you have to call it a relationship.”
“All right,” he said.
“And relationships take work,” she said. “Which is why they’re easier if we’re in the same place. But I know there are people who have made long distance work too.”
“Yeah,” he said. “And what are we going to tell Wade and Jet?”
“Oh, they don’t need to know anything,” Lark said. “I’ll just tell them to mind their own business.” She blew out her breath. “Besides, they’re hardly part of my life at all.”
“Yeah, but they’re your brothers,” he said. “And they’re my friends. They’re part of my life. And you’ve even said that you were considering getting a veterinary degree and then going and working at their ranch in Texas.”
He shook his head. “You can pretend to be salty all you want, Larky, but I know your brothers are important to you.”
“I just wish I was important to them.”
“You’re important to me,” Cash said.
Lark nodded, her emotions pricking at her. “Thank you, Cash. I think you’re the only person I’m important to.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” he said. “Your momma and daddy—”
“Are in Costa Rica,” she said, cutting him off. “And they could come home for the holidays, but they chose not to. I’ve told them all about Grammy, and they choose not to listen to me. I’ve been away at college for three and a half years. And do you know how many times they’ve come to visit?”
“No,” Cash whispered.
“Twice,” Lark said. “And at the most inconvenient times too.” She sighed because she didn’t want this negativity in the hot tub. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to talk like this.”
“You can talk about whatever you want in the hot tub,” he said. “I spill my guts to the stars and the heavens, and I always feel better when I do.”
“My parents are great,” Lark said, because they were. “They’re good parents, but I think they were done raising kids before I left home, and I just feel….”
“Neglected? Abandoned? Like you’re talking to strangers?”
She looked at him, somewhat in awe that he had been able to nail those things on the nose.
Of course, he had moved from Utah to Wyoming, from living with his mother to living with his absent father, overnight.
Perhaps he knew a thing or two about being lonely, afraid, and feeling abandoned, neglected, and forgotten.
“I sometimes wish I had a lot of siblings that were close to me in age,” she said.
“Join the club,” he said. “I’m sixteen years older than Celeste. She’s ten.”
Lark swallowed the lump in her throat, which seemed to be growing and growing. “Yeah, but you’ve got a lot of cousins close to your age.”
“That’s true,” he said. “And they all liked you, by the way.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” she said. “I made a fool of myself over the prayer, and I left the table before anyone else, escaped to my bedroom, and left you to make the doughnuts by yourself.”
“Oh, honey, I wish I’d been by myself.” He laughed, and somehow scooted closer to her on the small seat in the hot tub.
“Lark,” he said, and she turned toward him, finding him closer than she thought.
The steam rose around them, almost creating a bubble between them and the rest of the world.
He seemed darker outside, in the night, with shadows playing across his face in yellows, golds, and oranges as the lights slowly pulsed around them.
His eyes dropped to her mouth, and Lark practically went into cardiac arrest just thinking about kissing him.
“I want to build a relationship with you,” he said. “I want to know everything about you, and I want to tell you everything about me.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen,” she whispered. “I’m only going to tell you the interesting things about me.”
He smiled and lifted a dripping hand out of the water to slide it along her neck, one finger going above her ear and the rest below.
He leaned closer, and Lark started to inch nearer to him too.
She hadn’t been properly kissed in a long time, if ever, and fear struck through her that she wouldn’t know how to keep up with a man like Cash.
His breath tickled her lips, and his touch had to be a moment away.
“Well, well, well, look at this,” Jet said.
Lark sucked in a breath and jerked away from Cash.
“Looks cozy,” Wade said, and Lark’s face burned as hot as the water, even as Cash rose from the steamy hot tub like the cowboy god he was.
“You guys made it.” He grabbed Jet and hugged him.
“Dude, you’re all wet,” Jet said, his voice laced with disgust as he jumped back from Cash.
“Yeah, let’s go inside,” Cash said.
He bent to get his towel out of the warmer as Wade asked, “Why are you sitting in the hot tub with our sister?”
But Cash simply danced back into the house, silent.
Lark stayed right where she was, pretending to be a feline and thinking perhaps if she didn’t move, her brothers wouldn’t be able to see her.
So much for Jet and Wade not needing to know anything, and Lark being the one to tell them to mind their own business.