She lifted her gaze to his. “Where did you order that from?”
“I made that,” he said. “It’s a piece of cedar, and I whittled it on my front porch.” She searched his face as if he were speaking another language.
“And then I snuck into my momma’s workshop and used her paint.” He couldn’t quite see Cleo through the blooms, but he’d worked hard on that Bengal. “It’s a potting stick. You can take it out of this pot and put it in any other one you want.”
The pot of flowers started to get heavy, and he shifted it in his hands. “I know you were talking about putting tomatoes on your back porch, and it would do fine there, or if you’ve got a plant over at the Intake Center, or at one of the cat houses.”
He told himself to stop talking, but he apparently had more to say. Before he could go on, he swallowed to wet his throat. “Or when you get your garden planted next spring, you can put it at the end of the row.”
A soft sigh fell out of her mouth, and Trap wasn’t sure if that was a good reaction or not. “Can you make more of these?”
Trap grinned at her, the spark that had always been between him and Lila Mae roaring to life. When he’d first met her, he’d found her irksome, and he’d thought that the charge between them was because she sent him demanding texts and asked too many questions.
She might continue to do that in the future as well, but this spark inside Trap’s soul meant something deeper.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “I’m just getting back into the hobby, and I won’t tell you how many times I had to start over with her.”
Lila Mae smiled, and everything in Trap’s world got righted.
“Listen, I’m really sorry,” he said, dying to get the words out. “I know we’re all entitled to have bad days, and maybe I just caught you on a really bad one.”
“Maybe,” she whispered.
“I know you’ve already apologized, but I haven’t,” he said. “And maybe I got my feelings hurt too easy, and maybe I was a little frustrated with you on the client side.”
He shook his head, because none of this was what he had rehearsed when he’d imagined standing in front of Lila Mae and having this conversation.
“I see now why my daddy says not to date clients, because it’sreallyhard to separate the personal things from the business things. But I told him it doesn’t matter, because I don’t want us to be separate onanyof the things.”
“You don’t?” Her voice sounded tinny and small, and Trap hated it.
“No,” he said. “I want to be with you, Lila Mae. So I can learn everything about you, and I can keep falling in love with you.”
She reached out with both hands and took the black cat pot from him. “Come in, Trap.” She turned and stepped out of the way. “Come in. I don’t need to be air conditioning the whole sanctuary.”
Trap took a deep breath and followed her into the tiny house, closing the door securely behind him. “It smells really good in here.”
“I called your mother and got her recipe,” she said, setting the flowers on the end of her countertop, where they added such a bright flavor to the décor.
“You did what now?”
“I called your mother.” Lila Mae stood at the end of the counter and folded her arms. “I have two brothers and a daddy,” she said. “And I’ve worked with countless businessmen over the years, and I know that the best way to make a man happy is to make sure he’s well fed first.”
Trap blinked at her, still stuck back on the fact that she had called momma and that his mother hadn’t told him about that.
“She told me what makes her roast so special, and no, I’m not going to tell you.”
Trap’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
Lila Mae grinned at him. “She said you’re partial to Yukon Gold potatoes—which I did not know—and that you don’t like cooked carrots—which I did—and that I would do better to put radishes in the roast, as those are your favorite slow-cooked treat in the world.” She held up one hand and then let it fall. “A new fun fact about you.”
Trap didn’t know how to respond, and yet he heard himself say, “I really like slow-cooked radishes with beef. Momma never does that, because none of the other kids like them.”
“She called you an old soul.” Lila Mae pushed her hair over her shoulder and folded her arms. “I mean, who likes radishes, right?” She smiled, but Trap still wasn’t sure if she was teasing him or not.
“Anyone who doesn’t like radishes hasn’t had them slow-cooked with a beef roast,” he said. He cocked his head and studied her. “Did you hear what I said? Just, you know, right there?” He hooked his thumb toward her front door.
“I heard you.”
