“I would have told whoever came up with such a harebrained idea that they were talking sheer nonsense,” Taryn replied.
“I like your answer better.” Jorja giggled.
The sun had set an hour before Anna Rose left the farm that evening. She waved at Jorja and Forrest from the window of her truck as she drove away, and then she plugged her phone into the system and started her favorite playlist. “Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not” by Thompson Square popped up as the first song, and it immediately reminded her of Jorja and Forrest. There was no doubt in her mind that this new friendship would blossom into something beautiful, but it wouldn’t happen overnight. She thought about the conversation the cousins had had about weddings. Jorja had declared she wanted the whole church thing, just not overdone like the one they’d set up for that afternoon.
Anna Rose would bet that when the time came in another year or maybe two, since neither of them would rush this thing, that they would either make a trip to the courthouse or else get married in the middle of a watermelon field. Of all three of them, it seemed to her like Jorja was taking to this business of farming better than either of her cousins.
“Good for her,” Anna Rose said. “If the Lucky Shamrock was going to work out romantically for any of us, I’m glad it’s Jorja. We’ve all had our problems, but hers was worse than mine and Taryn’s.”
Anna Rose had left Shamrock in her rearview mirror by the time the song ended and the music from Blake Shelton’s “God Gave Me You” started. She smiled and tapped her thumbs on the steering wheel. That was Taryn and Clinton’s song, and they would not wait a whole year to make a quick trip to the courthouse. She stopped tapping her thumbs on the steering wheel and wondered if Zoe’s first word would bemamaorda-da.
“The next song is for me,” she muttered, and then laughed when Brooks & Dunn’s old song “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” began to play.
If that song was as strong an omen for her future as the first two had been for her cousins, then she didn’t have to pick out a wedding dress for a long time. There was a lot of dancing in honky-tonk bars left in the boots she was wearing that night. A vision of the shamrock painted on the flower-shop window popped into her head. The plant had three leaves, so that should be a sign that each of the cousins would have good luck.
But it doesn’t mean all at the same time,her grandmother’s voice whispered, so clearly that Anna Rose looked up in the rearview to see if Nana Irene was sitting in the back seat.
She opened her mouth to say something but clamped it shut when “Broken Halos” started playing. After Amos’s funeral, the song pricked her heart. She thought of her grandmother and Ruby, and tears began to roll down her cheeks. “Please, God,” she prayed, “give them the third leaf on the shamrock. I’ll forfeit my lucky day if you’ll let them live for a few more years.”
She’d barely gotten the words out when she heard a loud pop, and her truck began to swerve to the right. She hadn’t passed a single car coming or going since she’d left home, so it looked like she wouldn’t be getting any help from a knight in shining armor who knew how to change a tire. She quickly pulled over to the side of the road, got out, and saw that the tire wasn’t just flat but had blown out, leaving strips of rubber back along the highway. She wondered if this was an omentelling her that, when she had changed the tire, she should turn around and go home.
“It’s not a sign,” she said, arguing with what she knew Jorja would tell her.
She had the spare tire in her hands when a truck slowed down and then parked right in front of her vehicle. The driver was nothing but a silhouette in the lights of her truck when he got out and waved, but she could tell that he was a tall, hunky cowboy by his broad shoulders, hat, and boots.
“Need some help?” he asked.
Anna Rose squinted and shook her head.
“I’m Quincy Jameson. Don’t think we’ve met. I’m moving to Shamrock to help my friend. You can call him if you’re worried. His name is Clinton McEntire.”
“I’m Anna Rose.” She smiled. “And I would love some help—I know Clinton well. It’s nice to meet you. Clinton told us you were coming to help him, but we didn’t know when.”
Quincy covered the distance in a few long strides, slid the jack into the right place, and then removed the lug nuts. His biceps filled out the sleeves of his pearl-snap Western shirt, and his boots were a testament to the fact that they’d been worn for more than just two-steppin’ around a dance floor. “Looks like you ran over something back along the road. Know what it was? I could drive back that way and get it off the road before it causes a wreck.” He pulled the ruined tire off and tossed it into the back of the truck.
She handed him the spare and said, “I have no idea what I hit. I didn’t feel a bump, but I did hear a pop, and then the truck began to swerve, so I pulled over.”
“Have you been crying?” he asked bluntly as he put the spare on and began to tighten the lug nuts.
“Yes, I have,” she answered. “I was listening to a sad song by Chris Stapleton. Why do you ask?”
“Was it ‘Broken Halos’?” Quincy asked. “That one always makes me get a lump in my throat. I only asked because you have black streaks running down your cheeks.”
“Yep,” Anna Rose admitted, with a swipe at her rogue mascara. “It made me think of a couple of people I know. Amos and Ora Mae, and then of Nana Irene and Ruby. Do you believe in omens or signs?”
“I do,” Quincy answered. “Do you?”
“I didn’t—but here lately, I’ve been changing my mind,” she answered.
He finished the job, stood up, and put the jack away. “What caused you to change your mind and believe in omens and fate?”
“The Lucky Shamrock,” she answered. “Looking back, it seems as if ...” She paused. “Well, that fate had a hand in it.”
He leaned against the fender of the truck and nodded. “I can believe that. Clinton moved to Shamrock because he liked the place when he visited as a child. Talking to him these last months and hearing happiness in his voice, especially since all y’all came to town, made me want to have whatever is in that small town that made him glad to be there. Besides, I miss him. So yes, I believe that fate steps into our lives sometimes.”
“Thanks for that. I should be getting on back to the farm. I don’t want to take a chance on driving home without a spare in the early-morning hours,” Anna Rose said.
He flashed a bright smile her way. “I’ll follow you. Can’t let someone as beautiful as you are get stranded on the road again.”
