Ty put his arm around her and watched, once again, as her parents went through a roller coaster of emotions. Neither of them spoke for several long seconds, and then they looked at one another as if they had rehearsed it.
“It might be a good solution, Cecil.”
“I don’t like it,” her daddy said.
Her mother let out an exasperated sigh. “You wouldn’t likeanythingwe proposed.” She shook her head and then stepped forward. “It’s wonderful to meet you, Ty. Winnie has told us a lot about you.”
“It’s great to meet you too, ma’am.” He stepped forward and shook her daddy’s hand. “Sir.”
He grinned around at all of them, though he didn’t see Winnie’s sister. “Now, it smells like coffee in here, and it has to be better than the glop I drank from the gas station at the Oklahoma border.”
Winnie’s mother sucked in a breath. “Was it Harrod’s?”
He nodded, and she tisked her tongue. “This is terrible news. Come get something good.”
Winnie beamed at him like he’d just done something amazing, and Ty honestly felt like he had. For the first time since Winnie had left town, he felt like he was walking on clouds as he followed her mother into a small kitchen where she poured him a fine-smelling cup of coffee.
39
Winnie hummed to herself to calm her nerves as she made the turn, deftly following Ty onto the highway that ran east and west. They’d been in a three-car caravan from her parents’ house for the last couple of hours. She was still twenty-five minutes from her house, but to get to the hobby farm Ty had purchased, they had to turn here and go down the highway toward Amarillo for about three miles. Then he made another right turn onto the property, and Winnie’s sedan bumped over the dirt road just fine.
It had been a whirlwind of a week, with plenty of crying from both Daddy and Taylor, but Winnie noted that her mother had never once protested again. She didn’t have to pull Winnie aside and tell her that she was secretly thrilled about the developments happening for Winnie to know it was true.
“And now,” Winnie said to herself, because Ty had his truck and she had her car, and her parents had insisted on bringing their minivan. “We just need to figure out where they’re going to live.”
She almost hoped it would be here on Ty’s property. He’d said the smaller, single-level house was move-in ready, and she had lain inhis arms on a blanket in her parents’ backyard and worried that they would displace him off of his own property.
He said he didn’t mind at all if it would get them to move here and make her happy. She’d talked with her parents about them getting their own little apartment closer to the hospital and doctor’s appointments, where Daddy could just walk and Momma could buy groceries from a shop a half-block away. No car needed.
She’d talked about her parents living in the spare bedroom at Winnie’s house, where Ty had been all this time. Any of those solutions would work, and Winnie’s parents were planning on staying with her for at least a couple of nights, until her father’s first appointment. She honestly wasn’t sure if she could handle much more than that, though she wanted to be able to.
Ty came to a stop outside the cute little farmhouse, and Winnie pulled in beside him. Pure goodness flowed through her, along with a sense of calmness and peace. She got out of the car and joined Ty at the front corner of his truck.
“This place is amazing, Ty,” she said, because she had never seen it in person.
“This is just one of the houses.” He slung his arm around her. “I’ve had a couple of service people in,” he said. “The plumber, and the heating and air-conditioning guy, and they say it’s ready. I had the septic tank pumped, and since it’s only a half-mile off the road and we’re moving into summer, I don’t think I need to do any asphalt or concrete yet.”
Winnie looked at him. “I can’t believe you’re willing to let my parents stay here.”
“I’m okay with it,” Ty said, and he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “What about us?”
“What do you mean—what about us?”
“I mean, I know you said you didn’t want to get engaged before six months—that it felt too fast and all that—and I’m fine with that, but there’s a lot of things we haven’t talked about, and one of those is a family. Do you want kids, Winnie?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I think I’m good with kids.”
“I think you’d be a phenomenal mother.”
Winnie turned into Ty and fiddled with his collar, something she did when nerves ran rampant through her, and she didn’t know how to contain them. Ty seemed to know it, and he simply let her do so until she was brave enough to look up at him and vocalize her thoughts.
“We won’t know much about my daddy’s surgery until Tuesday, but a full recovery could be six months or more.”
“Winnie….” Ty drew a breath and blew it all out.
“I’m worried about them living here and keeping you off your own property.”
“There’s another house,” he said.
