Chapter 14 #3
Caroline glanced at the girl as she loaded hers the same way her daddy did. She passed him the plate, and he swapped his for hers. She started loading it with the other toppings, and about the time she finished, she and her daddy were able to switch plates again.
She wanted to ask what kind of trouble the teenager had gotten into, but she held her tongue.
“I’ll tell you later,” Dawson whispered, nudging her down the line.
“You can eat them straight up,” he added in a louder voice.
“Like a legit quesadilla. I like to dip some of mine in ranch dressing.” He leaned over and picked up the bottle on the edge of the counter.
“And I like to make others into tacos, like April said.”
“So it’s chili,” Caroline said, seeing all the pieces in front of her. Close family. Lots of good food. Warm house. “But it’s a quesadilla-taco-type of situation.”
Dawson grinned at her. “You got it, darlin’.”
“You want your cheese melted?” Duke asked, though his plate was done and he could join his wife at the table.
Caroline looked at the two quesadillas she’d put on her plate. “Just one,” she said, quickly removing the other. She put a healthy handful of cheese on it and gave the plate to Duke.
“I’ll get it for her,” Dawson said.
“Thanks, brother.” Duke said the word easily, but Caroline wondered how it landed in Dawson’s ears. He didn’t seem to think much of it, and he made all but one of his quesadillas into triangular tacos.
He did get her plate out, and she dressed up her second quesadilla the way he had. “Can I share your ranch dressing?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he said, taking his plate and the bowl of dressing toward the table. He sat next to Duke, leaving a place for Caroline on the end. Across from April, with a chair still at the head of the table.
For his daddy.
“Daddy,” Dawson said when his father arrived with four quesadillas with only melted cheese on them. It was like a chili pizza at this point. “This is Caroline Thompson. Be nice to her please. I’m tryin’ to get her to come ‘round more often, and I don’t need you scaring her away.”
“He’ll do that just fine on his own,” Brandon teased.
Caroline smiled at him, then looked at Wade. “It’s great to meet you.”
“You too,” he said in a perfectly pleasant voice. She’d just taken a bite of her chili-taco-dilla when he asked, “How long have you and Dawson been dating?”
Shredded lettuce flew down her throat she sucked in so hard.
She immediately began to cough and choke, while around her, Duke started to laugh, Abby chastised her husband for asking, Wade grumped about being able to ask “perfectly normal” questions, and Dawson patted her on the back, handed her a napkin, and as she recovered, sat there with a positively murderous look on his face.
Finally, it was April who said in a very loud mock whisper, “Grandpa, this is Car-o-line. The woman Dawson’s in love with but can’t get to go out with him.”
“Dust and shadows,” Dawson muttered, his eyes suddenly dark and filled with venom. “You can’t come out to the owls with me anymore. In fact, you can’t ever come out onto the ranch with me ever again. Also, don’t come by my house. It’s the end for you.”
April simply grinned at him and said, “You should’ve done what I said.”
Caroline finally got control of herself, though her lungs felt like they’d have shredded lettuce in them for the rest of her life. Shredded lettuce dipped in bleach. They burned, but she managed to breathe through the raging thoughts that everyone in his family knew about her.
They seemed to know how he felt about her, even the fourteen-year-old girl. This man…he didn’t keep things secret—at least not from his family.
She looked at Dawson. “What did April tell you to do?”
“Nothing,” Zona yelled from at the other end of the table. “Everyone knock it off. This is why she’s not going to come back.” She gestured around with her hand, her arms long and reaching far. “And we don’t even have all our kids here.” She shook her head. “My word, you’re as bad as my family.”
“That is so not true,” April protested immediately while Duke scoffed.
“As bad as your family?” He’s the one who shook his head now. “Baby, you have eleven brothers and cousins. That’s more than my whole family combined.”
Zona said nothing as she bit into her next chili-taco-dilla. Duke looked past Dawson to Caroline. “And then they’re all married. And we all have kids. You get together with the Glovers, it’s like a hundred people—and that’s if some of them are sick or out of town.”
“Please,” Dawson said. “None of them are ever sick or out of town.”
That brought a beat of silence to the kitchen, and then all of the Rhineharts—Dawson included—burst out laughing. Even Arizona.
“He’s right,” she said as she giggled. “We’re a circus.” She looked lovingly at her husband. “But it’s a good circus, right, hon?”
Duke nodded, a long string of cheese coming from his chili-pizza-taco. “Yeah, baby. It’s a good circus.” He smiled at her and then Caroline, and then went back to eating.
Everyone did, but Caroline had not gotten her question answered. So she ate her taco and then leaned into Dawson as she wiped her mouth. He bent his head closer in a beautiful, personal way, so he could hear her better.
Oh, she loved that. Always had.
“I still want to know what April advised you to do,” she murmured.
To which he said, “I’ll tell you later,” with a delicious, ruddy flush crawling into his face.