Page 26 of Bailey

“He loves animals,” Bailey said next, almost like she turned on a faucet, and the words had no choice but to come pouring out. “He volunteers at my clinic, and when I moved here, I told him he could help me with the duck pond. He’s been here since eight a.m., and sometimes he’s just really exuberant.”

Reeves nodded, still trying to hear the true meaning between the words she said. “All right,” he said.

He wasn’t sure of the exact time, but he hadn’t come in off the farm until two, and he’d had a quick bite to eat since he’d missed lunch, and then he’d come to Bailey’s. It had to be close to two-thirty.

“If you’ve been out here since eight, maybe it’s time to pack it in.” He raised his eyebrows. “You can shower and take care of your cats, and I’ll even let you look at your paperwork.”

He smiled at her, glad when she finally returned it, some semblance of her normal self returning. Perhaps the words had just poisoned her for a moment, and now that they were out, she’d go back to normal. Reeves filed all that for later, because telling him about a teenage boy who loved animals and volunteered at her vet clinic surely shouldn’t have caused such a negative reaction.

“And in all my research for out-of-the-way places,” he said. “I found another place on the southern highway, just past your clinic. It’s a sandwich shop with a bakery, and that sounds about perfect for our second date, don’t you think?”

Bailey brightened. “I’ve been there,” she said. “And it is really good.”

“I don’t hear a yes inside that, Miss McAllister.”

She pushed one hand against his chest in a show of flirtation. “What do you want me to say? ‘Yes, that sounds like the most romantic place ever for our second date, Reeves’?”

“Yeah, that’s what I want to hear.” He grinned at her, and Bailey laughed and shook her head.

Then she reached up and pulled her hair out of the ponytail and shook it. She raked her fingers through it, and then finally looked at him again. “That does sound like a really great place for our second date, Reeves.”

“Great,” he said easily. “So…do you want to do that tonight or another day?”

“I think if you’ll give me a couple of hours to decompress and shower and take care of my cats, we can go tonight,” she said. “Maybe around five?”

“I can eat at five,” Reeves said.

“Oh, it’ll be like five forty-five,” she said. “By the time we drive down there. Maybe you better head on home and get a little snack.”

Reeves laughed then, and he wasn’t sure when the last time he’d laughed as fully and completely as this. It cleansed him from the inside out—his chest, his lungs, his stomach, all the way up through his throat and his mouth, and even in his ears, as he heard the happiness in his own voice. He hooked one arm around Bailey and pulled her close to him. The moment sobered, but it didn’t turn serious, and he said, “All right, I’ll see you in a couple of hours.” He leaned down and swept his lips across her cheek. “I can’t wait.”

Then he stepped back, noticing how still and quiet Bailey had gotten. He whistled for his dogs and said, “Let’s go, guys. Time to load up.”

He lifted his hand in a wave before he turned to walk away from Bailey. She’d said some things about OJ and the Youngs, but Reeves knew there was more. He hadn’t pressed, because he still had his own secrets, and as he swung his leg over the seat of the four-wheeler and waited for Pansy and Sir to jump up, he glanced back to Bailey.

She’d started toward her house, and he twisted the key in the ignition and made the ATV roar to life. She looked at him then, and he lifted his hand in another wave. She did the same, and she seemed to be back to her regular self.

As he drove back to his house, he prayed. Is telling her about my online persona right for the second date?

He parked the ATV in the shed and went inside for his own afternoon decompression, once again asking God what he should disclose to Bailey that evening. The Lord didn’t answer right away, but Reeves reasoned that he still had a couple of hours until he had to pick up Bailey, and surely God would tell him before then.

CHAPTER

TWELVE

Bailey rode in the passenger seat of Reeves’s truck for the second evening in a row. He hadn’t brought another bouquet of wildflowers when he’d picked her up a few minutes ago, and she’d barely looked at him before she grabbed her jacket and her purse and joined him on the porch.

He’d asked her something about bread—maybe her favorite type?—but Bailey honestly felt like a thick wall of wax paper had been built between them. She could sort of see the outline of him and hear the warbling of his voice, and she knew until she told him about OJ and Bryce and that part of her past, this opaque barrier between them would be their reality.

He hadn’t asked her another question, and he slowed the truck to come to a stop at the T-junction where the Eastern Highway met the road the two of them lived on. She focused on the bright red octagon: S-T-O-P.

That was what Bailey needed to do too.

Stop with this nonsense, she thought. Say what you need to say and accept the consequences of it.

Part of the reason she’d wanted to return to Coral Canyon was because everyone here knew about OJ. At the same time, Bailey had never wanted to date or marry anyone who knew anything about OJ, and she should’ve anticipated this conversation before now.

Well, you didn’t, she told herself, and she folded her arms across her chest and looked over to Reeves.