Chapter One
Travis Walker stood with the rest of the congregation as the choir started to sing the closing hymn.
He’d made it through a couple of scorching months already, and not a single cell in his body wanted to leave the air-conditioned church—not even to attend the linger-longer potluck in the shaded field behind it.
But he would, because Trap never passed up free food if it was available.
There were some really good small-town Texas cooks in Three Rivers besides, and Trap had been dreaming about Marie Holster’s fried-chicken salad for the past year.
She only brought it to the linger-longer in July, and Trap would suffer through any heat to pile the crispy chicken bites with chipotle mayo and a pop of crunch from cool celery and sweet corn on a croissant.
As he glanced around, he thought he definitely saw more people at church that day. While it wasn’t a requirement to attend the sermon in order to attend the linger-longer, most people had some sort of conscience.
He stayed standing through the benediction, and then the tension in the air broke as the meeting ended.
“She didn’t go on too long today,” Colt said. “That’s something I’m grateful for.” He grinned at Trap and led the way out of the pew.
Trap followed him, with Jake Ahlstrom behind him, and Ty and Winnie bringing up the rear.
Trap nearly got swallowed by a whole herd of Glovers as they exited their rows in front of and across from where he’d been sitting.
He grinned at them and shook hands or knocked knuckles.
The Glovers swarmed their aunt, giving her hugs and telling her what an amazing job she did, which provided cover for Trap to simply follow the crowd down the hallway and past the Sunday School rooms to the back door of the building.
To his great relief, fans blew across the space, and several big white tents had been set up to cover any breaks in the sunshine coming through the trees.
A mic crackled to life and then sent a high-pitched wail of reverberation through the air.
Cactus Glover pulled it away from his mouth until it stopped.
Then he said, “Give us about fifteen minutes, folks, and we’ll have all the food set up.
If you brought anything, please bring it out now.
And of course, everyone can start with a drink from our beverage bar near the back fence. No stampeding now, you young men.”
Trap caught a smile on his face.
“Yes, Mrs. Langley brought her famous peach-almond punch, and we know that turns some of you into animals.” He pulled the mic away from his mouth even as he started to chuckle.
“Oh, I love that peach punch,” Colt said. He lengthened his stride, though the beverage tables had to be fifty yards away from where the food was being set up.
Trap went with him, though he didn’t care for the peach punch all that much. He filled a plastic cup half with lemonade and half with sweet tea and stood by Colt in the shade as Colt hummed and moaned over the deliciousness of the almond-peach punch.
Trap liked Colt, though he was a few years older than him, because he didn’t beat around the bush.
He asked direct questions and said what was on his mind.
If he wasn’t talking, he didn’t think it necessary to, and Trap had grown up in a family with a lot of cousins and a lot of aunts, all of whom seemingly loved to hear the sound of their own voice.
Trap took a sip of his Arnold Palmer, his eye catching on the skirt of a woman’s dress as the wind caught it.
“Oh, boy,” he muttered behind his cup, then lowered it slowly. “Jessa at ten o’clock,” he whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Colt sighed.
Trap watched as Jessa Arnold continued her quest toward them.
Not him, really, but Colt, as he’d been out with her a few times before ending it.
She’d literally told him they didn’t have to be exclusive if that was what it would take for them to stay together, and that had only turned Colt off more.
He’d just turned thirty-seven and had a four-year-old son, so casual dating wasn’t exactly at the top of his to-do list. In fact, Colt was a lot like Trap in that he hated nothing more than having his time wasted.
Sometimes, Trap cursed his impatience, and he had incorporated a few things into his life that deliberately forced him to slow down and enjoy where he lived, what he did for a living, and the people around him.
If he didn’t do that, he would flit from one thing to the next for twelve or fourteen hours a day, only stopping when his body finally told him it was starving and about to collapse.
“Howdy, fellas,” Jessa said.
Colt actually turned in the other direction, as if he hadn’t heard her.
Trap had never seen him be quite so dismissive before, but it was blatantly obvious to anyone with even one good eye that he did not want to talk to Jessa.
In fact, he practically pulled Tate into their circle while simultaneously cutting Trap out of it.
It was his turn to sigh. “Howdy, Jessa,” he said, his voice feeling and sounding a bit tired.
She looked at Colt, a slight frown between her brows reaching her eyes. Then she focused on Trap and brightened. “Did y’all hear they might be building a water park?”
That rumor had been going around Three Rivers for a couple of months now.
And yes, Trap had heard it so often, in fact, that he was sick of talking about it.
Everyone seemed to have an opinion on whether or not it would happen, but since Trap knew a lot about the real-estate market and what properties were up for sale and what properties needed what construction done, he happened to know no one had purchased the land rumored to become a water park on the southeast side of town.
“Yeah, I heard,” he said. “It’s not going to happen.”
“You don’t think so?” She seemed genuinely shocked. “Why do you say that?”
“Because there’s no way the Starlight Ranch owners are going to allow a water park up by them. Can you imagine?”
He shook his head, because the one and only gated community in Three Rivers was on the southeast side of town.
His uncle Wyatt and aunt Marcy had a house there, and everyone who lived there had money— and a lot of it.
They wouldn’t want their quiet, hilly road turned into Water Park Central, Trap knew that.
“Well, I heard it’s going to be on the city-council agenda in August,” Jessa said, lifting her chin.
“Well, you would know,” Trap said airily. “What with your daddy being on the library board and all.”
“Exactly.”
Trap scanned the crowd beyond Jessa, sure there was someone more interesting to talk to. She was a nice enough woman, but Colt had said it best when he described her as shallow.
“And I don’t mean that rudely,” he’d said. And Trap didn’t either— just that Jessa wasn’t that smart. Not everyone was. Heck, Trap had never been to college, and he fought imposter syndrome as much as the next person.
“It looks like they’re getting ready to say the prayer,” he said. “Should we make our way back that way?”
Jessa threw one last look at Colt, and Trap was so going to cash in on a major favor from the man one day in the very near future.
“Sure,” Jessa said, and she turned and started back across the lawn.
Trap prayed with everything he had that someone would call his name and need to talk to him about something extremely important, so he could ditch Jessa and be closer to the food at the same time.
That didn’t happen, and he found himself standing with her, as well as Finn and Edith Ackerman and Alex and Nikki Baxter, while the prayer was said.
It always amazed Trap that a fairly sizable crowd could calm and quiet enough to say a prayer, and the very moment the “Amen” got spoken, the noise and chatter swelled and resumed once more.
He didn’t immediately surge forward like the teenagers and tweens, but he found his feet moving along with the crowd.
He picked up a heavy-duty paper plate and deviated to the other side of the table as his friends filed across from him.
He got behind a couple of people moving much slower than the other side, but Trap actually found himself smiling down to the elderly woman only a few people in front of him.
He knew Olive Braithwaite, and he wondered where her grandson was.
He glanced around, looking for the seventeen-year-old, and didn’t see him.
His heart pounded in his chest, because he didn’t want to overstep.
His stomach growled at him and told him he should just keep his place, get his food, and mind his own business.
But a louder, more demanding voice said, Go help her.
Trap had only had this voice bellow at him as loudly as it currently did a couple of other times in his life. Usually, God spoke to him in a calm, quiet voice that Trap had to work really hard to hear. But apparently not today.
He took a step back and moved around the couple of people between them. “Howdy, Olive,” he said. “Can I help you with that?”
Her plate shook in her weathered, wrinkled, veined hand, and Trap put his palm underneath it right as she dropped it.
“Oh, yes, please,” she said.
Trap gave her a smile. “Where’s Joel today, ma’am?”
“He’s at a summer government camp,” Olive said, her voice shaking.
“You hold right onto my arm, ma’am,” he said. “Let me get rid of my plate.”
He looked up and found Finn watching him. He reached for the plate, and Trap passed it across the table to him. “Just give it to one of your kids,” he said. “I’ll go through the line again.”
Finn nodded, and Trap looked at Olive. “All right, Mrs. Braithwaite, you gotta tell me what you want, because I can’t read your mind.” He grinned at her, and she linked her arm through his.
“I got in line quickly,” she said, her voice also a little bit shaky. “Because it’s the July linger-longer, and that fried-chicken salad is here.”
“Oh, if they run out of that stuff, I think they know they’ll have a coup on their hands.” Trap laughed, his heartier voice joining the wheezy one of Mrs. Braithwaite. “And they put it way down on the end, hoping you’ll fill your plate before you get to it.”
“No, they’ve got bowls by it,” someone said, and that made Trap’s heart happy. He could carry a plate for Mrs. Braithwaite and a bowl of the fried-chicken salad for himself, and he wouldn’t need to go through the line again.
“Oh, is the pimento all gone?” Mrs. Braithwaite asked when they reached a bowl that looked pretty scraped clean.
“They’ll bring out more,” another woman said from somewhere. Trap’s wide-brimmed cowboy hat kept him from looking around and seeing who’d spoken.
“Coming through,” a voice said, and Trap once again stepped back from the table, moving a little bit right and in to Mrs. Braithwaite as he thought he’d heard the voice on his left.
He bumped into another soft body, his back also registering a hard rim.
He flinched away from it, still trying to balance the plate and keep his arm tight against his side for Mrs. Braithwaite to hold.
He automatically moved left and glanced over his shoulder, only to find none other than Lila Mae Dixon standing there, a bowl of fresh pimento cheese in one hand and a platter of pita-bread triangles in the other.
She sucked in a breath, and Trap realized the tray of pita was slipping. He couldn’t just whip Mrs. Braithwaite around and use his right hand.
Brains worked fast, but not fast enough, because Trap’s first reaction was to use his left hand and help balance the tray. Unfortunately, he carried Mrs. Braithwaite’s plate of food in that hand, and as he arced it up, he actually let go of it.
Huge mistake, screamed through his head, even as his fingers clamped around the platter of pita bread and saved it.
Because all he could do now was watch in complete horror as Mrs. Braithwaite’s baked beans, mac and cheese, and poppy-seed ham sandwich came down on Lila Mae’s head.