Briar did not repeat theamen, and Tarr lifted his head, his eyes automatically seeking hers. He found them and hooked, and something strong and powerful tethered the two of them together.
Tarr cleared his throat and reached for a plate. “I don’t think we’ll be going to church this weekend.”
That seemed to break the silence, and Briar shook her head as she took the plate he handed her. “Do you go every week?”
“I try to,” he said. “Part of my post-rodeo-Tarr persona I’m trying to become.” He flashed her a smile and picked up the other plate she’d put on the counter. “I already know you don’t go, and it’s fine. It’s not like I’m going to be pressuring you or anything.”
She used the tongs to put one of the chicken breasts on her plate. He followed her down the line, and then he followed her into the living room to sit on the hearth, their backs soaking up the warmth of the fire.
“It’s not that I don’t believe in God,” Briar said.
Tarr speared a miniature potato with his fork and dunked it in the puddle of ranch dressing he’d poured onto his plate. “Is that right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s just…I guess I don’t feel like I need organized religion in my life. I can believe and read the scriptures and pray on my own.”
“Sure,” Tarr said. “Those are all important. I guess I like feeling—I guess I like being around other people in a community who think and believe a little bit the way I do.”
Briar nodded as she balanced her plate on her knees and cut into her chicken. “I can see that.”
They ate in silence for a couple of minutes. Tarr finished in about half the time as Briar. He stood and took his plate into the kitchen. “I’ll make us some dessert,” he said. He put his dirty dishes in her sink and turned to the cupboard to get out the pudding cups. “I grew up in Texas, and my momma made dessert with every meal.” He smiled just thinking about his mother. “Sometimes it was this big, elaborate sheet cake, and other times she’d give us miniature bags of M&M’s.”
He chuckled as the childhood memories ran rampant through his mind. “I don’t hardly ever make elaborate desserts,” he said. “But I always plan out a little something sweet for the end of every meal.”
He opened her utensil drawer and pulled out a couple of spoons. He took the pudding cups back over to her and exchanged her now-empty plate for the dessert. After putting her dirty dishes in the sink and returning to the hearth, he peeled back the plastic lid on his pudding cup, the scent of chocolate rising up to meet his nose.
“I’ve only got the one brother,” he said. “He’s older than me, and, well, Wayne and I don’t really get along. I don’t talk to him much.”
“What about your parents?” Briar asked. “Are they married? Divorced? Do you talk to them?”
“They’re still married, yeah,” he said. “Still in Stephenville. I talk to them all the time, especially my momma.”
Briar nodded. Tarr told himself to eat slower, and he took one bite of his pudding, the creamy goodness of it coating his tongue. After he swallowed, he dealt with a pulse thundering like horses’ hooves.
“What about you?” he asked, deciding to try to get a little bit personal with Briar. He’d called their breakfast that morning a date, and she hadn’t corrected him. She’d invited him to stay with her. She’d made dinner, and they’d talked about religion, for crying out loud. He could certainly ask about her family. “You got any siblings? Your parents still alive? Together?”
He deliberately didn’t look at her, because he didn’t need to. She’d tensed up at his side and remained silent. He took another bite of pudding and then another, the questions starting to grow daggers and pierce the tension now filling the cabin.
“My parents are divorced,” Briar finally said. “Though they both still live in Calgary.” She looked up and over to him.
Tarr had never seen a more beautiful woman in his entire life than Briar in that moment, cast in shadows on one side of her face and a gorgeous orange glow on the other.
“I grew up there—Calgary.”
He nodded, a silent gesture of encouragement for her to go on.
“I’m an only child,” she said. “And I haven’t really spoken to either of my parents since I left Canada about four years ago.”
Surprise moved through Tarr for several reasons. One, that she told him so much. And two, that she really did exist on this planet as an island, alone, all by herself here in Colorado.
His heart ached for her, and he took her empty pudding cup and stacked it inside his. He put their spoons inside and set themon his other side, and then edged closer to Briar and put his arm around her.
“So that’s why you don’t go anywhere for holidays.”
“Yeah,” she said. “There’s just been a lot that’s happened, you know?”
Tarr didn’t know, but he nodded. “Families can be really complicated.”
Briar seemed to melt into him for a couple of moments, and pure bliss moved through Tarr. He wondered if this would ever become commonplace for him—that he would come home to this cabin, and they would eat dinner together and talk, and everything would be comfortable and normal, filled with kindness and gentleness and love. He wanted it more than anything he had ever wanted before, and he wasn’t sure why, as he didn’t know Briar all that well.
