Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“ D id she really walk into town and get ice cream with you?” Mack asked later that night.
He’d made good on his promise and brought sub sandwiches over for supper, even getting a couple for Chevy and himself after Lorna invited them both to stay and eat with them.
Leni knew her sister well enough to know that after they ate, Lorna was going to talk them into staying to play cards or a board game. She loved a good game night.
“She sure did,” Leni told him. “Apparently, the woman makes a point to walk two miles a day, so the walk into town was nothing for her. I think she’s in better shape than I am. But we had a great time visiting with her while we sat outside the Tastee Freez and ate our ice cream.”
“We even got to have ice cream too,” Max said, waving around his small ham and cheese sub. “Elizabeth took us to meet them there after the liba-rary.”
“And then we insisted on giving her a ride home,” Lorna said. “While Chevy and Leni walked back to the house.”
“And I got to see the cow,” Max told him. “I wanted to bring her an ice cream too, but Mom said no.”
Leni ruffled her nephew’s head. “Don’t worry, buddy. That cow had already had plenty of treats today.”
“Wow,” Mack said. “I’d like to meet this Berny. She sounds impressive. And it sounds like quite a day. I’d like to contribute to the conversation, but I spent most of my day mending fence with Ford, and he’s not much of a talker.”
“No, he is not,” Chevy agreed. “But he will talk if he’s got something to say.”
“Tell us about you,” Lorna said, leaning toward Mack. “What was your life like in Texas?”
Mack waved a hand in front of him. “Nah. My life was boring. Never found a cow in my yard. Maybe because we never had any flowers for them to eat. Texas is hot and dry, and that’s about all there is to tell.” He nodded toward the knee scooter. “How’s your leg feeling? You gettin’ around on that thing okay?”
“Oh yeah. I still crash into things, but it’s so much easier than crutches. And Chevy also brought me a walker from one of his knitting group gals to use around the house, so other than feeling like a ninety-year-old woman, I’m doing great.”
“Don’t worry. You don’t look a day over eighty-three.”
She laughed and playfully kicked at him with her good foot.
Mack dodged the kick as he turned to Chevy. “You’re in a knitting group?”
Chevy shrugged. “Yes, but it’s not as hokey as it sounds.”
“He’s a terrible knitter,” Leni added.
“It was for my grandma,” he explained. “It was her group. I started out just giving her a ride into town then she convinced me to come in and say hello and visit a spell. Then I started picking up a couple of her friends on the way, and then…I don’t know…when she was gone, I just kept picking up the others and somehow, I became part of the group.” He shrugged. “It’s fun, and I guess it still makes me feel close to my grandma.”
“Sorry man,” Mack said. “I wish I could’ve met her.”
“You would’ve loved her,” Chevy said. “Everyone did.”
Leni noticed the way Mack had deflected the questions about himself, but maybe he really did think his life was boring and didn’t have anything to add to the conversation. He seemed like a good guy—polite, thoughtful, attentive to Max, and kind to everyone, especially Lorna, and he was completely smitten with Izzy—but it wasn’t the first time Leni had noticed that he’d redirected the conversation away from himself.
Was he just being a good listener, or did he have something to hide?
Leni wasn’t sure.
One thing he couldn’t hide was his ineptitude at Settlers of Catan . But maybe that’s because he was paying too much attention to Lorna and playing a side game of Candyland with Max to focus much on his strategy.
“That was a fun night,” Leni said, hours later when she was walking Chevy out to his truck.
It was already dark, but the streetlight at the end of the block gave off enough light to see by. Mack had already headed back to the ranch to help with the evening chores, and Lorna was reading to Max while she nursed Izzy before putting them both to bed.
“Yeah, it was,” Chevy agreed as he leaned back against the door of his truck and pulled Leni against him to nuzzle her neck. “We could have nights like this all the time…if you stayed.”
Her body stiffened, and he noticed, letting out his breath but not letting go of her.
“Sorry. Don’t know why I said that. I know you have a life and a job you love in Washington. It just feels awful good having you here.” He brushed a lock of hair from her cheek and looked down into her eyes. “And I don’t want there to be any doubt or question as to whether I want you to stay. I’m not putting pressure on you or asking you to. It’s your decision. I just want you to know that I do. Want you to stay. If you want to.”
She didn’t say anything—wasn’t sure what to say—so she just nodded and pressed a kiss to his lips.
Five minutes later, or maybe it was an hour, it was hard to tell how much time passed when she was wrapped up in Chevy’s arms and kissing him, she finally pulled away. “I should probably get back in and check on Lorna.”
He opened the truck door and the light from the cab spilled onto the street. “Hey, with all the excitement today, I almost forgot. Murphy bought you something.” He pulled a plastic bag from the seat and handed it to her.
“For me?” She opened the bag and pulled out a black T-shirt. Holding it up, she laughed out loud as she read the front. It had a picture of a cowboy hat in the middle surrounded by pink lettering that said, Cowboys & Dirt Make Me a Flirt. “Wow, this is perfect. Exactly my style.”
“That’s what Murphy thought,” Chevy said, teasing her since they both knew she would have never picked that shirt for herself. “He wanted to replace the one he stole, but there weren’t a lot of choices for black shirts at the Mercantile. It was either this or a blue one that said, Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy .”
“Always a classic choice.”
“Oh, and they had a red one with a rooster on the front that said, Just a Girl Who Loves Peckers . Murphy really wanted to get that one. It was a real toss-up, but in the end, we went with the solid black and pink choice. We thought this one seemed the most sophisticated, and that you’d appreciated the way the words rhymed. It felt almost like a poem.” He pointed to the shirt. “I mean, that’s some cowboy poetry right there.”
She laughed harder as she pulled the shirt on over her head, thankful he hadn’t chosen the one proclaiming she loved peckers. “It’s perfect. I love it. I had no idea your dog had such good taste.”
“Yeah, well, he comes by it honestly,” Chevy said.
“Tell him thank you. I love it.”
And I love you.
She’d almost said the words. They were on the tip of her tongue.
“I’d better get inside. I need to put Max to bed. I’ll see you later.”
“Call you tomorrow,” he said before sneaking in one last kiss.
“Sounds good. I’m at the coffee shop until three.”
She went into the house and found Max had already brushed his teeth and put himself to bed. She tucked him in, kissed his forehead then grabbed the load of laundry from the dryer and took the basket into the back room to check on Lorna.
“Nice shirt,” her sister said, taking a tiny onesie from the basket as Leni set it between them before dropping onto the edge of the sofa bed.
“Chevy’s dog bought it for me. Apparently, it came out of his treat budget since he stole mine the other day at the cabin.”
“Makes sense. Although, you should have bought that dog a gift. From what you told me, him taking your shirt worked out quite well in your favor.”
“True,” she said, not able to keep the wicked grin from creasing her face.
“So, how’s it going with you two?”
“Good.” She let out a sigh as she folded one of Max’s shirts that had a Transformer on the front. “I told him I loved the shirt, then I almost told him that I loved him too.”
“Whoa. That’s big. Do you love him? Like still? Or maybe again? Or were you just having a knee-jerk reaction to a hot make-out session followed by a cute cowboy giving you a gift?”
“I don’t know. I mean this shirt does inspire all kinds of romantic feelings,” she said, pulling out the front of the T-shirt. “But all this stuff, the making out, the more than making out, the fun times we have together…I mean we rescued a cow and took an old lady out for ice cream today…how could I not be falling in love with him?”
“Oh honey, you might not be able to admit it to yourself, but I’m not sure you’ve ever stopped loving him.”
“I’m not sure about that either. But how do I know how much of my feelings are memories from before versus new feelings I have now?”
“What do you think?”
“I think that the boy I loved has seemed to have turned into an amazing man, and I can’t stop thinking about him.” She stacked another one of Max’s T-shirts onto his pile. “This whole day has just been crazy.”
“ More crazy things happened beyond finding a cow in our backyard?”
“Oh yeah. This morning, I took donuts out to the Lassiter ranch to thank the guys for all their help, and when I ask Dodge where Chevy was, he told me that he’d been with Jolene all morning, and that they were still out in the barn together.”
“ Jolene ? The girl he left you for that summer after high school?” Lorna crushed the shirt she was folding in her fist. “He was seriously with another girl? This morning? I am going to kill him.”
“I thought that same thing. And then I found out Jolene wasn’t a girl?”
Lorna stopped crushing the shirt and tilted her head at Leni. “Huh?”
“She’s a horse. And according to Ford and Duke, a pretty good one.”
“Wait. Chevy broke up with you for a horse ? Like I said, I’m gonna kill him.”
Leni gently took the shirt from her sister like it was a loaded weapon. “That’s what I thought too. At first.” She filled her sister in on everything that had happened that day.
“Wow. You have had a crazy day,” Lorna said when she was done. “You had a lot to unpack there, sis.”
“There’s one more thing,” Leni said, her heart racing just thinking about it. “Just now, out by the truck…Chevy asked me to stay. Well, he didn’t ask me to exactly , but he said he didn’t want me to have any doubt that he wanted me to.”
Her sister’s eyes went wide. “Are you thinking of staying? Because you know you can totally have your old room back. Or we can turn the whole basement into a place for you. I’m just using it to store paper towels and mom’s old junk. We can paint it whatever color you want, and we’ll get the guys to move your bed and dresser. I know the bathroom down there is outdated, but we could paint the vanity and redo the tile in the shower ourselves. It can’t be that hard. And it would be fun to do it together.”
Leni held up her hand. “All right, slow down there, HGTV. Don’t start watching YouTube videos on how to tile a shower just yet. I committed to staying a few more weeks to help in the shop while your ankle heals, but I never said I was coming back for good. I never even considered it.”
“Until now?”
She sighed. “Yeah, until now.”
“What about the dream job you just took with NASA?”
Leni folded a pink onesie covered in hearts that read ‘Auntie’s Little Bestie’ and thought about how much she loved being with Max and Izzy and how the job at the space center in Texas would take her so far away from them. “Yeah, I guess I need to figure NASA out.”