He drew her into his arms, and oh, Caroline had not known such a tender male touch in her life. Tears touched her eyes, and she clung to Dawson in a way surely he could feel. She stayed too long in his arms, and when he finally released her, she pulled in a deep breath and tried to stabilize her emotions.
She flashed a smile at him and said, “I’ll call you, okay?”
“Can’t wait.” He got behind the wheel of his truck, tipped his hat at her, and backed out of her driveway. Caroline watched him go, wondering if the ground she stood on would crack and allow the earth to swallow her whole.
That was how her life felt right now. Like she had no idea what might happen next, and the thrill of that kept prodding her to make another almost irrational decision. Like….
“I am talking to Belle tonight,” she vowed to the empty driveway. Then she added, “Dust and shadows,” and spun to go back into the house, praying that the swamp cooler had been cooling the house since she’d gone up onto the roof to fix it and she could get the flaming in her face to go down a couple of notches.
Chapter Thirteen
Dawson crouched down to get the pictures Link needed. “He’s not going to be happy about this.”
Heck, Dawson wasn’t happy about it. “Blasted owls,” he muttered as he moved his phone to get a different angle. The resulting picture showed the bright yellow orbs of owl eyes in the den, and Dawson got to his feet.
Cawing sounded overhead, and Dawson looked up to find his two inky friends circling. He straightened, feeling a bit lightheaded for being crouched down and looking up, and he took a moment to get his bearings.
As he moved away from the property line between Shiloh Ridge and Hidden Hills, he whistled through his teeth, though he didn’t believe for a moment that Nugget and Rocks couldn’t see him.
Nugget tried to imitate him, but he didn’t whistle well. They did descend toward him, but Dawson had started walking back down the fence line. They could fly alongside him the way Ruffin trotted at his side, or they could hop along the fence posts if they wanted.
Rocks, of course, had something gripped in one of his claws, and that only made Dawson smile. As much as anything these days, though he’d definitely taken his flirting game to a new level with Caroline.
“Yeah,” he huffed out as his boots caught on a clod of dirt and he nearly face-planted. “You still haven’t been out with her.”
She sure seemed interested in him. She called him when she needed help. She responded to all of his texts, with funny memes and videos of her own. She laughed and flirted right back. So maybe the ball was in his court, and he hadn’t even known it.
“No,” he muttered. “You asked her three nights ago if she’d talked to Belle, and she gave you the thumbs-down.” Dawson wasn’t going to ask her out again until he felt certain she could say yes.
And then actually go on the date.
It cost him too much emotionally and mentally, and frankly, he was running out of pink sticky notes, as he used one every time he needed to remind himself to text Caroline. He wondered if she realized most of his texts came after three o’clock or in the evening, and he vowed to keep his barn-office locked so she’d never see his to-do list…. After all, she wouldn’t want to know he had toplanto text her.
Nugget cawed again, calling him back to the present, and Dawson slowed his step to smile at the crow who’d just landed on the fence post a few feet from him. “Hey, you.” He smiled at the bird, wondering if he could give him a stroke the way he did his dog.
Rocks swooped in, nearly flapping Dawson in the face with his wings, and he dropped the object in his foot. Dawson didn’t have the reflexes of a ninja, unfortunately, and the item thudded into the dirt at his feet.
That seemed heavy, and he bent to pick it up. Confusion puckered through him. He couldn’t make sense of the bends of metal, but as he straightened, he realized what he had.
“A belt buckle,” he said, his smile growing wider. Silver and shiny, it glinted in all the right ways to attract Rocks’s attention. “Clever thing.” He pocketed the belt buckle and nodded down the fence. “C’mon, guys. We’ve got to get back in service to call Link.”
Nugget cawed and took off, but Rocks hopped from post to post as Dawson made the trek back to where the burrowing owls lived on his ranch. He’d parked near there, as the road didn’t go much further.
“Uncle Dawson,” someone called as he got closer, and he found April waving her hand above her head as if he might miss her.
Something heavy settled in his stomach, because itwasn’t even lunchtime yet, on a school day. “Hey, you,” he said as he went past his truck and toward her. He realized he’d just spoken with the same level of care and concern to his niece as he had a crow, but no one else needed to know that.
April stood at the enclosure marking the owls, and Dawson moved to her side. “What are you doin’ here?”
She cut him a look out of the corner of her eye. Oh, so nothing good. “I couldn’t go to school today.”
“Youcouldn’t? Or…why couldn’t you go to school today?”
“It’s not my fault, and as soon as Momma and Daddy meet with my history teacher, they’ll know that.”
Dawson sighed internally, but if he wanted April to keep coming around and telling him things, he couldn’t let it out of his mouth.
“Still got the owls,” she said.
