“It’s just your momma and daddy,” she said.
“Yeah, and they’ve got four kids under the age of ten,” he said. “And my daddy is a dark horse.” He laughed. “At least, that’s what he’s always called himself.”
“Oh, so he’s grumpy.” Lark grinned at him. “I think we’ll get along just fine. I’m the salt queen, remember?”
Cash laughed again, but Lark wasn’t kidding.
He made a turn into a two-story white church that Lark hadn’t visited in quite a while. Something settled in her soul, though, at the sight of the steeple as it stretched into the sky, and the way the other worshipers went up the wide front steps and through the door.
“Anyway,” Cash said. “My daddy doesn’t hold back when it comes to asking questions, and I’m sure he’ll want to know what we are.”
Surprise darted through Lark, and her adrenaline spiked. She didn’t quite know what to say, and her mind raced to find an answer. Then a man’s face filled Cash’s side window, his door got opened, and Lark yelped. Cash cried out too as he spun toward the source of the disturbance.
The man there laughed and said, “Howdy, Brother. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Oh, you did too,” Cash said, and he swatted at the man’s chest and quickly unbuckled his seatbelt. He got out of the truck saying, “Howdy, Bryce.”
“We just saw you pull in,” Bryce said, looking past Cash as he pounded him on the back to where Lark still sat in the truck. “I didn’t know you were with someone. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, it’s just Lark,” Cash said.
Lark’s stomach lurched at the same time her chest completely squeezed in on itself.Just Lark?She undid her seatbelt and opened her own door to get out of the truck. She found a blonde woman waiting near the front hood with a little boy in her arms, who had to be about two years old.
Lark grinned at both of them, somehow remembering that Bryce’s wife’s name was Codi. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Lark McClellan. Cash is staying at my parents’ house.”
“Oh, of course,” Codi said. “You guys are doing Thanksgiving there this year. Are your brothers here yet?”
Cash obviously stayed in touch with his family, otherwise Codi wouldn’t know those details.
Lark shook her head. “No, they’re coming in tonight, but I got in yesterday from Idaho.”
“Yeah, you’re going to school there?”
“Yes,” Lark said, wondering what else Cash had told his cousins. “I think you’re Codi.”
“Oh, yes,” Codi said with a smile. She beamed down at her son. “And this is Matthew.”
He wore a sober expression, though Codi radiated a bright smile to go with her long blonde hair and blue eyes.
“You ready to go in, baby?” Bryce asked as he joined them. “Howdy, Lark. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s all right,” she said.
“You met Bryce and Codi,” Cash said as he came to his cousin’s side.
“Yep,” Lark said, trying not to let the hurt pinch in her heart too much. Butjust Larkran through her mind in Cash’s voice over and over, and she wondered if she had been imaginingeverything—every touch, every smile, every question, the way he’d cut out birds for the chicken pot pie—in the past twenty-four hours. Lark knew she was lonely, but she wasn’t that desperate. Was she?
Codi and Bryce turned toward the church, Cash moving with them as he fell into another conversation with his cousin. Lark ended up bringing up the rear, feeling like a complete extra who didn’t belong.
She actually looked over her shoulder toward Cash’s truck as the others entered the building ahead of her.I knew I should have driven my own car,she thought, but it had felt natural and normal for her to simply get in Cash’s truck and go to church with him. He promised that the sermon would be less than an hour and they’d be home by eleven so he could make lunch for his cousins, who would be coming at twelve-thirty.
“You coming, Songbird?” Cash asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.
Lark spun toward him, finding him practically on top of her. He took both of her hands in his right there on the front steps of the chapel.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I don’t know what to do, and I didn’t know what to say.” He kept his gaze down on their joined fingers. “We need to talk about this.” He squeezed her hands.
Lark nodded, and then someone behind her said, “Excuse me, are you going in or out?”
