Cash chuckled. “I don’t think anyone’s ever called mepoignantbefore.”
She grinned at him, wishing there wasn’t an empty seat between them. She also couldn’t sit up in those higher middle seats, as they were raised about six inches, and that put her shoulders out of the water. She turned toward him and lifted her feet up, her toes skimming across his knee.
He wrapped one hand around her ankle and settled her feet in his lap, and no touch had ever felt so intimate as that one.
“I can definitely do a better job of putting my gratitude into actions,” she said. “Heck, sometimes I don’t even say thank you at all.”
“It can be tough,” Cash said.
“Did you hear from Wade or Jet?” she asked.
“Yeah, they made it on their flight just fine,” he said. “Though it was delayed about a half-hour.”
Lark yawned. “I don’t know if I’ll make it until they get here,” she said. “This thing puts me to sleep.”
“It’s great, isn’t it?” he asked. “I love sitting out here at the end of a long day—or even a short day.”
“It’s very soothing,” Lark said.
Cash chuckled, his hand now stroking partway up her calf and back to her ankle. “I love being out here at the end of every day,” he said. “It really is calming for me.”
Lark had not realized that Cash needed calming in his life until today, seeing him with his large family, and listening to him talk about his childhood. Lark definitely had misjudged him in the beginning.
“Why didn’t you invite your grammy to stay here this week?” he asked.
Lark shrugged one shoulder slightly out of the water, though she could barely see him through the rising steam coming off the hot tub. “It didn’t feel like the right thing to do,” she said.
“She seemed okay to me,” Cash said. “Besides the cats.”
“When they get vocal enough, she remembers to feed them,” Lark said. “Maybe I’m overreacting.” She sighed, because she’d definitely been told that before.
“Hey, that’s not what I said,” Cash said. He pushed himself away from the corner, and the water sloshed just as much with him as it had with her. Of course, he was twice as big as her too.
As he moved over to the seat in front of the waterfall and directly next to her, he said, “You’re too far away over there.”
Lark smiled at him and pulled her feet in front of her to position them on the jets there.
“Hey, I wanted that one,” Cash said, and he gently nudged her foot out of the way.
“Well, too bad, cowboy,” she said.
“Again with the cowboy.” He scoffed. “And what was with Johnny earlier?”
“You know, like Johnny Cash,” Lark said.
He tipped his head back and laughed, filling the quiet Wyoming sky with the sound of joy. He had told her once that he liked her laugh, and she grinned at him as he quieted and decided to turn her feelings into actions, too.
“I like making you laugh,” she said.
Cash looked at her, sobering all the way. “Do you really think we can do a long-distance thing?”
“Not if you’re going to call it along-distance thing,” Lark said, giving him a mock glare.
“Well, what would you call it?” he asked.
“Arelationship,” she said. “I’m not into ‘things’ when it comes to handsome cowboys. If you want to be my boyfriend, you have to call it a relationship.”
“All right,” he said.
