Gramps continued to eat as if he’d done nothing wrong and had no interest in the conversation, but Joey knew he heard every word. He hung on them, actually, and he would definitely have an opinion.
She looked over to Adam, who now had a napkin covering his mouth as he continued to cough. When he finally quieted, Joey said, “We’re nothing right now, Grams. Adam asked me to get coffee with him, so that he could explain something to me, which—come to think of it, he never did—” She shot him a look, then swung her attention right back to her grandmother.
“And then we went and bought him his first cowboyhat.”
He ducked his head then, effectively using said hat to conceal his expression.
“So you’re friends,” Grams said, looking between Joey and Adam and back.
“Sure,” Joey said. “We’re friends.”
“So it wasn’t a coffeedate,” Gramps grumped.
“Gramps, did I tell you it was a coffee date?” Joey asked. “No, I did not. Maybe you two should just mind your own business. Have you ever thought of that, you Nosy Nellies?” She looked between Grams and Gramps, and neither of them seemed to care about her ire.
Grams squinted at her and then started to laugh. “All right, Joey, we won’t ask any more embarrassing questions.”
“Good,” she said. “And you don’t need to be saying anything to my daddy either. Remember how I’m an adult and can make my own decisions?”
“If we can’t tell your dad, then there must be something going on,” Gramps said.
“No, that’s not what that means,” Joey said. “And don’t you think thatIwould like to be the one to tell everyone if Adam and I do date? I certainly don’t need one of you to do it for me.”
“She’s right, dear,” Grams said, as if Gramps had been the one who had brought this up in the first place. She reached across the table and patted Joey’s hand. “Don’t worry, dear, your secret is safe with us.”
She looked over to Adam and nodded, and when Joey looked at him, her face once again flaming like hot lava bursting out of a volcano, she found the most adorable lookof confusion on his face. If she didn’t feel like dying of embarrassment, she may have started laughing.
Thankfully, Gramps said, “Oh, your grandmother called. She wanted to know if you were going to be up there on Halloween to hand out candy.”
Joey had forgotten that her mother had asked her to come do that. “I’ll call them,” she said.
“That’s what I told her,” Gramps said.
Joey finally forked up a bite of her own dinner and put it in her mouth. She may make this faux chicken Alfredo and pasta a lot, but it was actually extremely delicious, and she found herself moaning the same way Adam had.
“See?” he said. “It’s that good.”
She grinned at him, hoping that she would have the opportunity to cook for him in the future. He didn’t like it, and she did, and everyone deserved a home-cooked meal.
Didn’t they?
Now she just had to figure out how to get him to ask her out again.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Adam set a kettle of water on the stove and lit the burner. Though Halloween still sat a couple of days away, it had started to get cold in Wyoming, and they were even predicting the first snowfall for next week. He’d been told that it had snowed much earlier in previous years, and he supposed he’d better count his blessings that this year, Mother Nature had decided to wait until November.
Adam could admit he did not possess very much patience, and it was something he was working on. He had two meetings today, one with a catering company that Morris wanted to hire for the first two concerts in December—one they would turn into OJ’s birthday party, and the other Bryce’s.
Adam checked his watch and then the clock on the microwave, noting that the representative he was meetingwith from Pork and Beans was late. Irritation fired through him instantly, because Adam had very little tolerance for tardiness. He ran fifteen million details of his own life—and other people’s lives—and yes, sometimes he had run a little bit late. Not very often, though.
He had a very narrow window to meet with the catering company, finalize the contracts, and go over the menus before he needed to meet with a woman named Diane Dodd. She was a realtor in town, and he wanted to get her going on the kind of property he wanted to buy.
Now that Adam knew he would be in Coral Canyon for at least three years, he wanted somewhere to call home. He wanted a big office right off the front door of his house, so that people could walk in and do business, and he wouldn’t have to worry about having dishes in the sink. Perhaps with an all-cash offer, he could make the move before deep winter set in.
He wanted to live a more normal life, and in the few days since he’d taken Joey for coffee and eaten dinner with her grandparents, it had become apparent all of the things that “regular people” had that he didn’t. He smiled just thinking about Joey, and he picked up his phone, remembering that she had texted about a half-hour ago.
