“Just because you’re a grown man doesn’t mean you can’t get yourself into trouble.” She smiled at Winnie. “You are lovely, and I’ll stop embarrassing my son now.”
“You’re not embarrassing me,” Ty said. He dropped his hand to Winnie’s and captured hers in his. “Winnie has a pretty good idea of how I am.”
She nodded emphatically, her smile wide, her teeth so white against her bright red lipstick.
“Here’s your drink,” JJ said, and he handed Ty a fizzy, bright orange drink with a maraschino cherry floating on top. “Winnie, I went ahead and got you the other one. This one’s Judy’s. It’s a Shirley Temple, with a citrus twist.”
“It’s nonalcoholic, right?” Winnie said. “I don’t drink.”
“It’s nonalcoholic,” JJ said. “The Glovers have too many kids to be serving alcohol.”
“Okay, great,” Winnie said, and she took the pink drink and lifted the straw to her lips. “Ooh, this is good,” she said after she’d taken a sip. “You’ll like it.” She extended the drink toward Ty. “You love ginger ale.”
“I do.” He fumbled, but managed to get his lips around her straw and take a drink. He felt like a complete fool with his momma and daddy watching, as this felt like an intimate moment that only he and Winnie should be sharing.
He expected the cherry to come with his ginger ale, as that made a Shirley Temple, but he also got a hint of something sour at the end. “That’s good,” he said. “What is that?”
“I think it’s grapefruit.” Winnie took another drink. “What’s yours?”
JJ had already left, and Ty tried to remember what Trooper’s drink had been. “I think it’s blood orange and mango,” he said. “With orange juice and Sprite.”
“It’s a lot of citrus,” Momma said.
Ty took a sip and his mouth puckered. “Yeah, this is sour—just what I like.”
He offered the drink to Winnie, and she took a sip too. “Yes, I can see why you would like that.”
Ty looked back to his parents, and Daddy now wore slightlynarrowed eyes. Momma’s were as big as moons, and they kept moving between him and Winnie, him and Winnie, him and Winnie.
“How long you two been going out?” Daddy asked.
“Our first date was just one week ago, sir,” Winnie said.
“But she’s your physical therapist, right?” Daddy asked.
“Dad,” Tyson said, his tone laced with warning.
Momma laced her arm through his. “It’s clear that they’ve known each other for a while. Come on, Ethan-baby, let’s go get ourselves a drink too—since no one seems to be sharing withus.” She gave Ty a raised-eyebrow-brilliant-smile look, and reached out and grabbed onto Winnie’s forearm as she passed. “It really is great to meet you, Winnie. I hope Ty will bring you around to some of our family dinners.”
“I’m sure he will, ma’am,” Winnie said, and she turned her head and watched as Momma and Daddy made their exit.
The breath whooshed out of Ty’s lungs, and he raised his drink and took another long sip, the sourness notwithstanding. “Well, there you have it,” he said. “You’ve met a bunch of my friends, and my parents.”
Winnie swallowed another sip of her drink. “And neither one of us died.”
“Yet,” Ty muttered, which only made Winnie scoff and shake her head as she giggled.
The crew who would be setting up the tables and chairs for the dinner started entering the ballroom, and Ty took that as their cue to leave. As he walked with Winnie through the double doors and out into the foyer, he tilted his head toward her.
“So will you dance with me at this wedding?” he asked. “Or is all dancing off-limits, all the time?”
Winnie cozied up next to him, pressing in tight to his right side and sending fire through every cell in his body when she said in a flirty tone that told him he would have to constantly remind himself that they were not alone while holding Winnie in his arms on the dance floor, “I’ll dance with you tonight, cowboy.”
15
Dawson Rhinehart stood on his back porch, surveying the yard with a critical eye. The January sun beat down with surprising warmth, a welcome reprieve after weeks of bitter cold and biting wind that had kept everyone hunkered down and watching the sky for a break. The temperature had climbed into the mid-sixties, and while Dawson knew better than to trust Panhandle weather, he was grateful for the break.
“The tables look good, baby. Thank you.” Caroline stepped beside him with Bronco—the star of today’s show—balanced on her hip. Their youngest, who turned one today, wore a ridiculous cowboy hat that kept sliding down over his eyes, and he kept pushing it back up with chubby fingers, giggling every time.
