Gum in her hair?
Dirt on her face?
“My mother is a happy person, I guess. She’s no nonsense.”
“So,” she said. “Nothing wrong with that. Your father is too. Doesn’t he smile?”
Clay laughed. The first time she’d seen him laugh.
Oh crap.
She was in trouble.
His eyes crinkled at the corner, his skin wrinkling like a man who spent a lot of his life outdoors in the sun.
His lips that were always firm and in place, spread, showing his straight white teeth.
“I don’t think of my father smiling,” he said.
She pointed her finger. “You’ve got a dimple.”
His smile dropped quickly. “Forget you saw that.”
“Nope,” she said. “I can’t.” That would just be added to her dreams now.
“So, what are you doing here today? Just observing?”
“If you read my email, you’d know that. Yes. I talked to the bride and she liked the idea of me being here though I’ll be out of the way. I want to take some pictures, which I’ll do now. Then when those she hired get here too. I want to have references of how things can get done if people just rent the barn and not our services.”
He nodded. “That’s good.”
“I know what I’m doing,” she said.
“I never said otherwise.”
“Even though you don’t know what I’m going to do?” she asked, lifting an eyebrow.
He stared her down again, then shrugged.
“Are you wearing that or do you want a shirt?”
She looked down at her jeans and sneakers. She had a yellow cotton shirt on. Why would he think she’d wear this for someone’s wedding?
“I’m going to change before they get here,” she said. “What shirt did you think I’d wear?”
“A Ridgeway one like mine,” he said. He had a red shirt on with his logo in the corner.
“Are you working the bar today?”
“Yes,” he said. “Me and my father. He likes doing it.”
“But you don’t?”
Clay shrugged. “I don’t mind it.”
“You hate talking to people.”
He snorted. “There isn’t much to talk about. They want a drink and I give it to them. Or they talk about the hard cider. I don’t mind those things. Not even sports.”
