“Do you want some coffee?” Jean asks.
“I can’t stay.”
“To go then?”
I scrub a hand over my face, trying to conceal my frustration. Coffee might help me think a little straighter. “Sure, Jean. Thank you.”
“I heard your ball game got rained out last night,” Jean says, pouring steaming coffee into her largest to go cup.
“It did.”
“That’s not all I heard.”
She seals the lid to the cup and slides it across the counter. I refuse to take the bait, though. Either the storm sheltered us from gossip, or the entire town now knows Everleigh James kissed me after hitting a homerun. I really don’t feel like explaining the part where she and I ran back to my house, hand in hand. Not to her grandmother this early in the morning, anyway.
Jean looks up at me, her lips stretched into a straight line. They bend into the faintest smile as she adds, “Would you hate me if I told you to be patient a little while longer?”
“I’d wait a lifetime if I had to,” I say to her, really fucking hoping I don’t have to.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t takethatlong.”
“Hey Sheriff,” Ester Thompson says, touching me on the arm. “I heard you saw Walter.”
“I did.” As I’m briefly filling her in about Shady Pines and the pleasant surprise of new ownership, it hits me.
Birdie.
Everleigh might sneak out of town without saying goodbye to me, but she wouldnotleave without saying goodbye to Birdie.
CHAPTER 15
Everleigh
“I’m glad we didn’t have to steal the alpacas,” Macy says as Faraway Ranch disappears in a dust trail in the rearview mirror. “I’d have a hard time explaining that to my brother.”
“We wouldn’t havetoldyour brother,” I point out.
It took an hour longer than expected and a few thousand dollars more than I bargained, but the woman who purchased the alpaca trio from Walter’s shady grandson a few weeks ago finally accepted my offer and allowed me to load up Karen and Penelope in the horse trailer Paps loaned us. She didn’t like being reminded that one of them escaped without her even noticing. That guilt is what finally made her break.
My grip tightens on the steering wheel when I remember her saying she split the three up, thinking it wouldn’t be a big deal. It’s no wonder Birdie set her mind to escaping. She probably thought her friends were back home.
“You should call Wyatt,” Macy says.
“I will,” I agree. “Once we’re back at Stone Ranch, and Karen and Penelope are reunited with Birdie.”
Guilt twists in my stomach at the way I snuck out of his bed this morning. I hope he found the note amusing, but now that I think about it, he might’ve taken it the wrong way. But once I saw Grandma Jean’s text about Faraway Ranch, I had no choice but to leave the way I did. I didn’t know what I’d be walking into. If I involved Wyatt, the law might have tied his hands. If someone was going to get in trouble for how this whole matter was handled, I wanted it to be me, not the man up for reelection soon.
“Thank you for helping me, by the way.”
“You know I’m always up for an animal heist if it’s for a good cause.” Macy reaches for her phone, checking it, and setting it back down in her lap. “Now are you going to tell me what’s up with you kissing my brother at the softball game last night?”
“You heard about that, huh?”
“The whole town heard about that, Ev.” Macy doesn’t sound offended, but she tends to give people the benefit of the double before coming at them.
I consider how to start this confession and decide to just go for broke. “I love him.”
“Oh, you finally figured that out, huh?”
