“Sit,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
So I sat, and then I lay back, and I looked up at the sky.
It had been a stormy few weeks on Red Oak Mountain, the way spring always was up here in the Ozarks.
Spring around here meant sudden downpours and rolling thunder that rattled the windows and turned the dirt roads to mud overnight.
But today the sky was a clean, brilliant blue, and the clouds that drifted through it were the lazy white kind that had no intention of doing anything dramatic.
The sun was warm on my face, and the grass had that new spring green color. Somewhere at the edge of Zane’s property, a bird was singing its little heart out.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this still.
Actually, I could. It had been at my going-away party, the summer I finally left for Chicago.
Kelly had organized a bonfire out at Hidden Lake, and half the town had shown up to send me off.
I’d sat in the grass watching the fire and feeling the bittersweet pull of leaving everyone behind. I’d looked for Zane that night.Kept turning my head every time I heard footsteps. But he never came.
Back then I’d told myself it didn’t matter. I was leaving anyway.
But lying here in his backyard with the sun on my face, I knew with quiet certainty that itwouldhave mattered. If he’d shown up at that bonfire and looked at me the way he’d looked at me today when I pulled up, I might have made very different choices with my life.
Maybe that’s why I unbuttoned the three top buttons on my blouse, trying to goad this man intoaction.
The thought was still settling over me when I heard his boots on the grass.
I propped myself up on my elbows and watched him come around the side of the house.
Warmth moved through me at the sight of him. He’d rolled his flannel sleeves up to his elbows, and he held two large paper bags in his hands.
His dark hair was loose around his shoulders today. It was the one wild thing about a man always so focused on doing his duty.
Zane Thompson was, without any room for argument, the most attractive man I had ever known in my life.
And he seemed completely unaware of that fact.
How many of the local women had tried to catch him over the years? Tina was the only one who’d succeeded for any length of time, as far as I knew.
I sat cross-legged on the blanket with the sun on my shoulders, studying this man, wondering what had compelled him to text me last night.
He dropped down onto the blanket beside me and started unpacking everything onto it.
Looked like he’d been to the farmer’s market. He had Annie’s fresh bread and Kat’s goat cheese. Nancy Hunt’s hothousetomatoes, and a generous bowl of local lettuce. Plus a plate of sliced deli meat, probably from the Red Oak Market.
“This is nice. Did you get all this from the farmer’s market?”
“Most of it. I make sandwiches for lunch all week out of these supplies.”
“You don’t go to the Hungry Rooster for lunch anymore?”
He gave me a lop-sided smile. “Naw. I quit that place a long time ago.”
“But you used to eat there every day.”
“Yup, but things change.”
He’d been my daily fixture. I could rely on him staking a claim in my zone every shift I worked.
