“No?” she asked.
He shook his head and pressed his lips together. “No. An amateur needs someone who’s familiar with the circuit as it exists. I was already working with River for this season when I quit, but he’ll need a proper manager next year, especially if he’s going to go pro.”
“You don’t want to manage?” she asked.
“I’ve thought about it,” Cash admitted. “I’ve been in the rodeo for a long time, and my daddy rode the circuit for two decades.”
“So you have a lot of connections.”
“And I know a lot about it,” he said. “I know what it takes to win, and I know what a training schedule needs to look like for a champion. I could definitely manage cowboys. And hey, maybe I will. Boston says he only wants twenty acres, and that leaves me fifty-seven. I only need twenty for the cutting horse operation. So maybe I’ll build a rodeo training facility at Cousins Creek and bring on some guys. I don’t know.”
He wadded up the bags and moved to the cabinet beside the sink, where he’d found a stash of them when he’d moved in. He stuffed them in the sack there and turned to face the groceries on the counter.
“I’m only twenty-six, so I can pretty much do anything.”
“And you weren’t injured in the rodeo,” she said. “So you’re…able-bodied…and all that.”
“Able-bodied?” Cash looked over to her and found a delicious pinkness crawling through her cheeks. A chuckle rumbled in his chest as Lark turned away from him, taking an extraordinarily long time to put away the yeast and cornstarch he’d bought.
He let her have her privacy, because he wasn’t entirely happy to be in Coral Canyon, though he wasn’t sure why, as he definitely planned to live and work here long term.
“What about you?” He cleared his throat. “If you end up going to vet school, where will that be?”
“I’m looking at some places in Texas,” she said. “But honestly, I don’t know. I don’t even know if I’m going to finish this bachelor’s degree.”
Surprise shot through Cash and raised his eyebrows. “You’re not going to finish? You only have one semester left.”
“No one seems to think my grandmother needs help but me,” she said. “And I don’t know. I feel a responsibility to help her if I can. I’m going to go visit her tomorrow and see how she’s doing.”
Cash nodded, his fantasies of walking into church with the gorgeous Lark McClellan on his arm and causing a huge stir inthe Young family evaporating on sight. “So you might not be around for the doughnuts tomorrow.”
She grinned at him. “If you’re making doughnuts, I’m going to be around.” She gave him a coy look as she picked up the evaporated milk and turned to put it in the pantry too. “Grammy goes to church in the morning, and she has a lunch potluck that she does with some other widows in her community. I was planning on going in the evening.”
She faced him again, and Cash nodded, hoping his delight at having the day with Lark didn’t show on his face. He couldn’t believe he’d almost blurted out in front of the frozen food section that he liked her and wanted to go out with her.
Of course, that had to be obvious from him asking her out in the truck. And as he started to put away more of the fridge items, his mind flowed through what Wade and Jet might think of him dating their younger sister.
Lark could only be twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. And while Cash didn’t think that was too young for him, her older brothers certainly might.
Once the groceries were put away, Lark sighed. “Do you mind if I go lay down for a little bit?”
“Nope,” he said, though he definitely wanted her to stay in the room with him. “What’s a good dinner time for you?” He checked the clock. “It’s three-thirty. The chicken pot pie is going to take about ninety minutes from start to finish. That puts me at five.”
“Do you eat dinner at five o’clock, Cash?” she teased.
He grinned and shook his head. “No. It’s a little early for me.”
“Me too,” she said. “I like to stay up until midnight.”
“Oh, midnight’s for lightweights,” he said. “I’m up until one or two, and I get up around ten.”
“So the pizza you had today was really more of your breakfast.”
“I have a protein shake in the morning,” he said. “And then yeah, I eat lunch in the early afternoon and dinner fairly late, usually around eight.”
“Eight’s a long time from the pizza we had earlier,” she said.
“Six-thirty?” he asked.
