Chapter 34
“Here goes nothing,” Trap muttered to himself, killing the engine and dropping out of the pick-up truck. In the next moment, he eyed Lila Mae’s tiny house as he rounded the hood to the passenger side.
Surely she’d heard him pull up. She had a dirt road that led to a gravel driveway, and his truck possessed a growly engine. On the best of days, his heartbeat growled at him too, and it only got louder as the moments went by.
But Trap had taken everything he’d talked about with his father, and he’d thought through it all for the past couple of days, all while rediscovering his whittling skills.
He pulled open the passenger door and got out the flower arrangement. He’d purchased lilies and sunflowers and daisies in a variety of colors. The dyed flowers didn’t come cheap, but Trap could afford almost anything, especially if it would make Lila Mae smile.
Fine, he was trying to win some points with the flowers too, though he knew what he really needed to do was simply sit down and talk with Lila Mae.
With the black cat pot secured in his hand and all of the flowers blooming out of the back of the feline, Trap also reached for the potting stick he’d whittled for Lila Mae.
It was really just a pointed piece of wood that she could poke down into a potted plant or the row of a garden, and he’d carved Cleo in a five-inch figurine.
Then, he’d stolen into his mother’s workshop and painted the cat to look like Lila’s favored Bengal.
Trap had been praying like his life depended on being with Lila Mae, and as he faced her house now, something calm and serene flowed over him. The air became the perfect temperature, and Trap had the strangest, most wonderful feeling in the world that he was loved unconditionally.
Why he needed to know such a thing right now he didn’t know, but he pressed his eyes closed and whispered, “Thank you, Lord,” before taking the first step toward the tiny home.
It smelled like his mom’s beef roast as he approached, and Trap did what he’d always done when he arrived at a beautiful woman’s house for a date: he knocked.
He felt like a fifteen-year-old on his first date, with his momma waiting in the minivan to drive him and his prom date over to the high school for the dance.
Thankfully, no matter where Lila Mae was in her house, it only took about twenty seconds to come to the door.
Trap didn’t have to wait that long before the beautiful apple-blossom blonde opened the door.
She curled her fingers around the top of it and leaned her hip into the latch, a smile already etched on her face. “Well, hello there, handsome.”
Trap grinned and dropped his chin. “Howdy, ma’am.”
They’d been texting for the past couple of days, and Trap had told her that he wanted to talk and clear the air between them before he came to Feline Friends for next week’s mega construction craze.
He’d scheduled himself at the ranch all week to put up the walls and roof on Cat House Three, and he really didn’t want anything left unsaid between him and Lila Mae.
“These are for you.” He lifted the flowers as if she couldn’t see them. “They ordered in the black cat pot special from Fort Worth,” he said. “And those daisies are periwinkle, Granny Smith green, and bubble gum, for the official record.”
When she didn’t say anything, Trap got up the nerve to lift his eyes to hers. She stared at the flower arrangement with wide eyes, and then she reached out and barely touched the top of Cleo’s head.
“Is this Cleo?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She lifted her gaze to his. “Where did you order that from?”
“I made that,” he said. “It’s a piece of cedar, and I whittled it on my front porch.” She searched his face as if he were speaking another language.
“And then I snuck into my momma’s workshop and used her paint.” He couldn’t quite see Cleo through the blooms, but he’d worked hard on that Bengal. “It’s a potting stick. You can take it out of this pot and put it in any other one you want.”
The pot of flowers started to get heavy, and he shifted it in his hands. “I know you were talking about putting tomatoes on your back porch, and it would do fine there, or if you’ve got a plant over at the Intake Center, or at one of the cat houses.”
He told himself to stop talking, but he apparently had more to say. Before he could go on, he swallowed to wet his throat. “Or when you get your garden planted next spring, you can put it at the end of the row.”
A soft sigh fell out of her mouth, and Trap wasn’t sure if that was a good reaction or not. “Can you make more of these?”
Trap grinned at her, the spark that had always been between him and Lila Mae roaring to life. When he’d first met her, he’d found her irksome, and he’d thought that the charge between them was because she sent him demanding texts and asked too many questions.
She might continue to do that in the future as well, but this spark inside Trap’s soul meant something deeper.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “I’m just getting back into the hobby, and I won’t tell you how many times I had to start over with her.”
Lila Mae smiled, and everything in Trap’s world got righted.
“Listen, I’m really sorry,” he said, dying to get the words out. “I know we’re all entitled to have bad days, and maybe I just caught you on a really bad one.”
“Maybe,” she whispered.
“I know you’ve already apologized, but I haven’t,” he said. “And maybe I got my feelings hurt too easy, and maybe I was a little frustrated with you on the client side.”
He shook his head, because none of this was what he had rehearsed when he’d imagined standing in front of Lila Mae and having this conversation.
“I see now why my daddy says not to date clients, because it’s really hard to separate the personal things from the business things. But I told him it doesn’t matter, because I don’t want us to be separate on any of the things.”
“You don’t?” Her voice sounded tinny and small, and Trap hated it.
“No,” he said. “I want to be with you, Lila Mae. So I can learn everything about you, and I can keep falling in love with you.”
She reached out with both hands and took the black cat pot from him. “Come in, Trap.” She turned and stepped out of the way. “Come in. I don’t need to be air conditioning the whole sanctuary.”
Trap took a deep breath and followed her into the tiny house, closing the door securely behind him. “It smells really good in here.”
“I called your mother and got her recipe,” she said, setting the flowers on the end of her countertop, where they added such a bright flavor to the décor.
“You did what now?”
“I called your mother.” Lila Mae stood at the end of the counter and folded her arms. “I have two brothers and a daddy,” she said. “And I’ve worked with countless businessmen over the years, and I know that the best way to make a man happy is to make sure he’s well fed first.”
Trap blinked at her, still stuck back on the fact that she had called momma and that his mother hadn’t told him about that.
“She told me what makes her roast so special, and no, I’m not going to tell you.”
Trap’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
Lila Mae grinned at him. “She said you’re partial to Yukon Gold potatoes—which I did not know—and that you don’t like cooked carrots—which I did—and that I would do better to put radishes in the roast, as those are your favorite slow-cooked treat in the world.
” She held up one hand and then let it fall. “A new fun fact about you.”
Trap didn’t know how to respond, and yet he heard himself say, “I really like slow-cooked radishes with beef. Momma never does that, because none of the other kids like them.”
“She called you an old soul.” Lila Mae pushed her hair over her shoulder and folded her arms. “I mean, who likes radishes, right?” She smiled, but Trap still wasn’t sure if she was teasing him or not.
“Anyone who doesn’t like radishes hasn’t had them slow-cooked with a beef roast,” he said. He cocked his head and studied her. “Did you hear what I said? Just, you know, right there?” He hooked his thumb toward her front door.
“I heard you.”
“Okay, well.” He lifted both hands and let them fall helplessly back to his side. “What do you think? Can we talk through everything that happened and keep going? Do you want to be with me, too?”
He fell silent, all of his questions out now. Please, please, please, he prayed, apparently all out of words besides that one.
Lila Mae watched him for what felt like an agonizingly long time, and then she nodded.
Trap hadn’t thought that his life could be changed by such a simple thing, but as she continued to nod, and a smile spread her lips, and she said, “Yeah. I want to keep trying, because I really like you, Trap,” his whole existence improved.
“And let’s be honest,” she said. “This probably won’t be the last time I say something to hurt your feelings.”
“I hope not.” He couldn’t contain his smile as he swept his cowboy hat from his head and tossed it toward the hook beside the door.
It didn’t quite catch, but Trap certainly didn’t care.
He took the two steps to Lila Mae and wrapped her in his arms, taking a deep breath of her hair, her perfume.
Everything about her lit him up and filled him with hope.
“You’re my favorite person,” he whispered, enjoying the way Lila Mae wrapped her arms around him and hugged him back.
“Because of the roast?”
“Because of you.” He pulled back and looked at her.
She reached up and ran one hand down the side of his face and along his beard. “I have missed you so much,” she whispered. “You’re my favorite person in Texas, and it has nothing to do with the perfectly carved Cleo, or the black cat pot, or these adorable dyed flowers.”
Trap chuckled. “No? None of that counts? Dang, I was hoping I’d score a lot of points with those.”
Lila Mae giggled and tucked herself against his chest for a moment, then pulled away and looked up at him again. “You definitely scored yourself a lot of points with those, cowboy.”
“Enough points to kiss you?” he asked.
She nodded slowly again, and Trap prayed his life would be continually changed by Lila Mae nodding at him.
He slid his hand up her shoulder and into her hair, gently tilting her head back a little bit more so he could kiss her properly.
He matched his mouth to hers, and Trap let himself fall as a brand-new—and hopefully better—relationship with Lila Mae started with this single meaningful, needful, make-up kiss.