She sighed. “I didn’t know I was signing on for a marathon shopping trip.”
“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to come,” he said. “Which, by the way, you must not have eaten at The Branding Iron for a while, because they took the chicken pot pie off the menu.”
Lark opened her mouth as if to say something, but nothing came out but a puff of breath. For some reason, that drove a vein of satisfaction through Cash.
“We could go shopping,” Cash said. “And then go there for dinner. No cooking required tonight.”
She scoffed. “Now you’re just trying to get out of making me dinner.”
“Not true,” he said. “We can have the chicken pot pie for lunch tomorrow after church.”
“Maybe I don’t go to church.”
“Then you can put it in and babysit it while I’m gone,” he said without missing a beat. He also didn’t believe for a single second that Lark McClellan didn’t attend church. Her brothers both did, and her parents were currently serving achurch-sponsored mission in Costa Rica.
She went to church.
“I need milk,” he said, continuing with his grocery list. “Half-and-half. Frozen corn. Mini cucumbers.” He paused while her fingers tapped across her screen.
“You’re not even giving me these in any type of order.” She looked up at him, but Cash kept his eyes on the road, as they’d entered the curvy part of the Apple Highway, and he didn’t want to end up wrapped around a tree trunk.
“Order?”
“I make my lists in order,” she said. “The mini cucumbers go with the salad mix and the grape tomatoes.” Her voice trailed off into something quieter as she kept typing on her phone. “The frozen items go together. Dairy, eggs, cheese….”
Cash tried to hide his smile, and he mostly managed. “What are you studying in school?”
Lark sighed like he was the most insufferable man on the planet, but when he looked over to her, she watched the landscape out the windshield and not him. “Animal science.”
Cash had not been expecting that. Maybe teaching, or English, or something more…feminine. “Oh. What are you going to do with that?” He had no idea what kind of classes would even be offered in an animal science degree.
“I don’t know.” She exhaled again, then drew in a deep breath. “I thought I wanted to be a vet, but now I’m not so sure.”
Cash flicked a glance in her direction. “Why aren’t you so sure anymore? You don’t like what you’re studying?”
“It’s not that. It’s just…so much longer to get the DMV, you know? And my grammy isn’t well, and I don’t know. I just feel like maybe it’s not the right thing to do right now.”
Cash nodded, his own uncertainty swirling through him. “I get that.”
“Do you?” Lark sounded like she really wanted to know.
“Yeah, sure.” He rolled one shoulder in a faux shrug. “I mean, I quit the rodeo—mid-year, mind you—for no discernible reason.”
Silence filled the cab of the truck, and Cash wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
“Well, there must’ve been a reason,” Lark finally said, her voice about half its previous volume.
“It felt like the right thing to do,” he said simply. A nervous laugh followed. “I don’t know why, only that the Lord kept callin’ me back here, and I couldn’t ignore Him any longer.” He pressed his lips together and kept going. “So I’m here, and housing opportunities have kept me here.”
Lark let several seconds go by before she said, “You call house-sitting for my parents a ‘housing opportunity’?”
“Yeah.” He completed the last curve in the highway, which straightened from here. “What would you call it?”
“Squatting?”
Cash tipped his head back as a big, full, belly laugh came flying out of his throat. To his delight, Lark joined him, and something twisted and thawed between them. He grinned over to her, really enjoying the way her pretty pink lips tipped up into a smile too.
“That was a good one.” He shook his head. “You’re quick, sparrow.”
