She scoffed. “Oh, please. The next person you recognize will help you with the next ingredient, and I’ll have the whole thing put together before we leave.”
He scoffed too, his energy matching hers, and shook his head. “I don’t know everyone in town.”
Lark gave a dry laugh. “Of course you do.”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“Oh, come on, Cash,” she said. “You’re a famous bull rider. Everyone knows who you are.”
“Mrs. Langley happens to teach a pastry class at the community center,” he said. “That’s how I know her. Otherwise, she would’ve been a stranger.”
“You take baking classes from the community center?”
“It was apastryclass,” he said, his voice filled with aloofness. “Can we keep going? We still have several aisles to go.”
“You’re the one who stopped and said we needed to be honest with each other.”
“Uh, right.” Cash’s face turned red as he put both hands on the handle of the shopping cart and started down the aisle. “Maybe that can wait.”
“Can it?” Lark called, then hurried after him, having to take double the steps he did due to his long legs.
Cash talked to no less than four more people as they continued through the grocery store. Lark did pick up some Colby Jack cheese snacks, her favorite microwaveable broccoli-cheddar rice, a bag of tortilla chips and some salsa and guacamole, and a package of English muffins and Canadian bacon to make herself her favorite breakfast sandwiches. Cash said there would be enough eggs for her, and though he told her he had a killer salsa recipe, she kept the store-made stuff in the cart.
By the time they checked out and had everything loaded in the back of his truck, Lark really needed that nap. Cash sighed too and looked over to her with a certain weariness in his eyes.
“I don’t want to go to dinner tonight.”
“Me either,” Lark said.
He gave her a devastatingly handsome smile. “So, a table for two in Dog Valley. Chicken pot pie and green salad with homemade croutons.”
Lark nodded. Cash sobered, and his eyes dropped to his hands in his lap. “Would you…?” He trailed off, muttered something to himself that sounded angry and frustrated, and then boxed up his shoulders again. “I’m just gonna ask it. Would you be interested in going out with me another night?”
Lark’s heartbeat hammered at her, and she had to remind herself that he wasn’t the first handsome man to ask her on a date. Thoughts streamed through her head that she couldn’t quite capture before they fled, and her response came down to her basest reaction. She liked Cash, even though she’d spent a considerable amount of effort acting like she didn’t.
So she found herself nodding, and she even got her voice to say, “Yeah. I’d go to dinner with you sometime.”
With that out between then, she wasn’t sure who was more shocked—her or Cash.
CHAPTER
FIVE
Cash couldn’t quite believe that Lark had agreed to go to dinner with him. It had given him a second wind after spending almost an hour in the grocery store, trying to make sure he had everything necessary to feed them for the next couple of days and introducing Lark to the people he knew around town.
He still wasn’t sure he had everything, but Dog Valley had a small grocery store taking up half the space in the gas station, and he could get essentials in a pinch.
The ride back to Dog Valley seemed to happen in a blink, with easy, casual conversation about her finals, their family, and what he did to fill the hours in his day. He told her that he liked to cook, and he’d taken a few classes along those lines, that he sat in the hot tub every night after it got dark, and that he had a boatload of cousins and aunts and uncles who he’d spent years away from and liked to go spend time with.
He tapped to open the garage door and waited for it to rise before he eased the truck inside. “I can bring the groceries in,” he said as a gust of winter Wyoming wind set things rattling in the garage.
“I can help,” Lark said.
“It’s breezy,” he said.
“Close the door behind us, then.” Lark nodded to the remote attached to his visor. “That’s what we used to do as kids when our momma made us bring everything in.” She smiled and dropped out of the truck while he closed the garage, joining him in collecting the bags from the backseat.
Once they had everything inside and set on the counter, Cash started unloading. He liked to get everything out, stuff the bags all inside one, and store them before he put away the groceries. But with Lark there, she started loading the fridge items in and separating out the cabinet items.
