1
Travis Walker stood with the rest of the congregation as the choir started to sing the closing hymn. He’d made it through a couple of scorching months already, and not a single cell in his body wanted to leave the air-conditioned church—not even to attend the linger-longer potluck in the shaded field behind it. But he would, because Trap never passed up free food if it was available.
There were some really good small-town Texas cooks in Three Rivers besides, and Trap had been dreaming about Marie Holster’s fried-chicken salad for the past year. She only brought it to the linger-longer in July, and Trap would suffer through any heat to pile the crispy chicken bites with chipotle mayo and a pop of crunch from cool celery and sweet corn on a croissant.
As he glanced around, he thought he definitely saw more people at church that day. While it wasn’t a requirement to attend the sermon in order to attend the linger-longer, most people had some sort of conscience.
He stayed standing through the benediction, and then the tension in the air broke as the meeting ended.
“She didn’t go on too long today,” Colt said. “That’s something I’m grateful for.” He grinned at Trap and led the way out of the pew.
Trap followed him, with Jake Ahlstrom behind him, and Ty and Winnie bringing up the rear. Trap nearly got swallowed by a whole herd of Glovers as they exited their rows in front of and across from where he’d been sitting. He grinned at them and shook hands or knocked knuckles. The Glovers swarmed their aunt, giving her hugs and telling her what an amazing job she did, which provided cover for Trap to simply follow the crowd down the hallway and past the Sunday School rooms to the back door of the building.
To his great relief, fans blew across the space, and several big white tents had been set up to cover any breaks in the sunshine coming through the trees.
A mic crackled to life and then sent a high-pitched wail of reverberation through the air. Cactus Glover pulled it away from his mouth until it stopped. Then he said, “Give us about fifteen minutes, folks, and we’ll have all the food set up. If you brought anything, please bring it out now. And of course, everyone can start with a drink from our beverage bar near the back fence. No stampeding now, you young men.”
Trap caught a smile on his face.
“Yes, Mrs. Langley brought her famous peach-almond punch, and we know that turns some of you into animals.” He pulled the mic away from his mouth even as he started to chuckle.
“Oh, I love that peach punch,” Colt said. He lengthened his stride, though the beverage tables had to be fifty yards away from where the food was being set up.
Trap went with him, though he didn’t care for the peach punch all that much. He filled a plastic cup half with lemonade and half with sweet tea and stood by Colt in the shade as Colthummed and moaned over the deliciousness of the almond-peach punch.
Trap liked Colt, though he was a several years older than him, because he didn’t beat around the bush. He asked direct questions and said what was on his mind. If he wasn’t talking, he didn’t think it necessary to, and Trap had grown up in a family with a lot of cousins and a lot of aunts, all of whom seemingly loved to hear the sound of their own voice.
Trap took a sip of his Arnold Palmer, his eye catching on the skirt of a woman’s dress as the wind caught it.
“Oh, boy,” he muttered behind his cup, then lowered it slowly. “Jessa at ten o’clock,” he whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Colt sighed.
Trap watched as Jessa Arnold continued her quest toward them. Not him, really, but Colt, as he’d been out with her a few times before ending it. She’d literally told him they didn’t have to be exclusive if that was what it would take for them to stay together, and that had only turned Colt off more.
He’d just turned thirty-six and had a four-year-old son, so casual dating wasn’t exactly at the top of his to-do list. In fact, Colt was a lot like Trap in that he hated nothing more than having his time wasted.
Sometimes, Trap cursed his impatience, and he had incorporated a few things into his life that deliberately forced him to slow down and enjoy where he lived, what he did for a living, and the people around him. If he didn’t do that, he would flit from one thing to the next for twelve or fourteen hours a day, only stopping when his body finally told him it was starving and about to collapse.
“Howdy, fellas,” Jessa said.
Colt actually turned in the other direction, as if he hadn’t heard her. Trap had never seen him be quite so dismissivebefore, but it was blatantly obvious to anyone with even one good eye that he did not want to talk to Jessa. In fact, he practically pulled Tate into their circle while simultaneously cutting Trap out of it.
It was his turn to sigh. “Howdy, Jessa,” he said, his voice feeling and sounding a bit tired.
She looked at Colt, a slight frown between her brows reaching her eyes. Then she focused on Trap and brightened. “Did y’all hear they might be building a water park?”
That rumor had been going around Three Rivers for a couple of months now. And yes, Trap had heard it so often, in fact, that he was sick of talking about it. Everyone seemed to have an opinion on whether or not it would happen, but since Trap knew a lot about the real-estate market and what properties were up for sale and what properties needed what construction done, he happened to know no one had purchased the land rumored to become a water park on the southeast side of town.
“Yeah, I heard,” he said. “It’s not going to happen.”
“You don’t think so?” She seemed genuinely shocked. “Why do you say that?”
“Because there’s no way the Starlight Ranch owners are going to allow a water park up by them. Can you imagine?”
He shook his head, because the one and only gated community in Three Rivers was on the northeast side of town. His uncle Wyatt and aunt Marcy had a house there, and everyone who lived there had money— and a lot of it. They wouldn’t want their quiet, hilly road turned into Water Park Central, Trap knew that.
“Well, I heard it’s going to be on the city-council agenda in August,” Jessa said, lifting her chin.
