An hour later, Dani and Maggie were in Pearl trying to navigate the old gravel road out to the homestead. She had remembered the route but had forgotten the giant potholes in the road. Out that way there was just the old Cooper spread and theirs and apparently no one had even been trying to maintain the road. Poor Pearl was not a happy camper with the constant scraping of her undercarriage. “Gee, Dani,” Maggie said as they bounced through yet another pothole, hitting their heads on the soft top of the convertible, “if you had told me we were going out here we could have taken my Explorer. Your expensive car is going to be ruined.”Note to self, if I did move out here, Pearl and I were going to have to have a difficult chat about replacing her with a 4-wheel drive.“Yeah, well, it’s been a minute and I kinda forgot how bad this road can get,” Dani said, gritting her teeth as gravel flew up to hit the windshield despite creeping along like a turtle. “It’ll be ok. We’re almost there.”A
Levi couldn’t remember being so tired in his life. Even when his dad had him working long hours as a teenager, he hadn’t felt this exhausted. It was a good kind of tired, though. One earned with accomplishment. After he had fired the farm hands, he had been happy to discover that they had at least kept up with his cattle. The prize breeding stock was well taken care of and his pastures looked good. He spent hours studying bloodlines and creating his own specialized feed that would be mixed by Johnson’s Feed & Seed as soon as he could make time to get into town. He also updated the spreadsheets for the farm’s finances and did maintenance on equipment that had seen better days. It was also up to him to make sure the stock were fed and watered and check all the fences were up to par. He’d also made a first pass at the gravel road trying to fill in some of the holes and smooth out the ruts. He couldn’t believe his mom had been traversing this road on a regular basis and never got anyone
“Good Lord. Jesus take the wheel!” Dani said, her eyes widening. “What did I miss?” asked Maggie, her lively brown eyes darted around, looking for the action, as she set their lunches down on the table at Common Grounds. She was well-aware of her friend’s new favorite sport of people watching and was always ready to add to her ever-growing pot of fertilizer for the Gladewater grapevine. “That.” Dani pointed with her chin, trying to be discreet but failing miserably. Her eyes ogled the man who just climbed out of an old, faded red Chevy pickup, a truck that somehow looked familiar.The man himself looked like he was hot off some cowboy romance novel cover. He was at least six foot four, his dusty, faded Wranglers were tight in all the right places and sported holes that she bet were put there from hard work and not by a designer. His white t-shirt was so tight it left little to the imagination. No wondering if there was a six pack under there, you could count every ab muscle. His bice
Dani managed to mostly avoid town for the next couple of weeks, meeting with contractors at the farm and talking Maggie into bringing her things under the guise of desperately needing her design expertise. At the end of the day, she would haul herself back to her aunt and uncle’s house, grab a bite and fall into bed. Slowly but surely the house was taking shape and she had avoided accidentally running into Levi. “I know what you’re doing,” Maggie told her one evening when Dani had begged her to come out to the farm to help her pick out paint colors and bring wine.“I’m kicking ass and taking names getting this house together,” was her cheeky reply, trying to pretend she didn’t know what her friend was getting at.Maggie completed an Olympic-worthy eye roll. “Sweet baby carrots! You know what I’m talking about, Daniella Lynn. You haven’t been to town in 2 whole weeks! You’ve been dragging me out here every couple of days for some imaginary design emergency. Tonight is an intervention.
“Thanks, Sofia,” Levi said distractedly, not even looking up as his burger and fries were placed in front of him. “Well, well, look what the cat dragged in,” Maggie said dryly, crossing her arms over her chest.Levi hunched almost imperceptibly and slowly turned to face Maggie. “Uh, hey, Maggie,” he said trying to use a friendly tone, “kept hearing such good things about this place, I couldn’t stay away.”“Glad you finally made it in,” Maggie motioned to the chair opposite him silently requesting an invitation to sit.Levi scrambled up halfway from his chair, remembering his manners at the last second, “Please, have a seat.”Maggie sat and crossed her legs. “JT told me you had moved back. Are you staying?”Levi nodded. “Yeah, it was time. I’ve started a new breeding program. Time to get out of beef cows. And the city was starting to wear on me.”When Maggie continued to watch him placidly without comment, he rushed to fill the silence. “Uh, and my mom wanted to move over to that new
“Goddammit straight to hell!” Levi cursed, dropping his hammer and shoving his thumb into his mouth. He’d been trying to work on framing up the new bathroom in the bunkhouse but had spent more time hammering his thumbs and yanking out crooked nails than making any progress. All because of Dani.He couldn’t focus. His mind kept drifting to seeing her sitting there right in front of him in Maggie’s café. It still felt like a dream – looking into her burning green eyes, putting his arms around her and holding her close again. He’d never felt that thrum of electricity with anyone else in all these years. Her hair even smelled the same, like coconut and citrus.He’d checked his phone multiple times today making sure his ringer was on and he hadn’t missed a call from her. “I’m acting like a teenage girl,” he muttered, disgusted with himself but unable to stop.Why didn’t I make her give me her number? He hadn’t wanted to push too hard, didn’t want to spook her or make her shy away from him
She sat there staring out the screen door until the sun was on its last descent, casting long shadows from the trees onto the front porch, the cicadas’ song gaining volume. “What am I going to do?” she questioned out loud to her freshly painted walls, walking to the kitchen to find her cell.As she listened to Maggie’s phone ring, she retrieved a half empty bottle of pink Moscato from the fridge and a jelly glass from the cabinet. She hadn’t gotten around to unpacking her ‘kitchen’ box yet but had found a few old jelly jars she had washed and was using for glasses.Maggie finally answered just as Dani was preparing the message in her head that she wanted to leave on the voicemail. “Hey, girlfriend! Sorry, I was going over menus with JT and left my phone on the charger. What’s up?”Dani decided the direct approach was best. “Levi just left here. He kissed me.” Her voice sounded flat to her ears.“Whaaaaaat?” Maggie shrieked into the phone. “No, don’t say another word. I’m on the way o
Dani woke up feeling like she had spent the night in the honky tonk on the edge of town and knew it wasn’t from the one glass of wine and a couple of sips of margarita she’d had the night before. It was from making her best friend cry and generally being a monster to Maggie when she was just trying to help. She really hadn’t meant to be such a bitch. She really had to make it right asap. She was just all in a kerfuffle. Between moving, taking care of her aunt, working all hours on the house and now Levi swooping in and churning up emotions that were best left buried, she was caught in an undertow and didn’t know which way to swim to fight out of it. Damn him anyway! She’d been fine, more than fine, all these years. She’d had a very nice life. She had a steady, rewarding job. Nice things. A rich, successful boyfriend. Even though he wasn’t her dream guy, he was predictable. Everything nice and planned and predictable just like she liked it. So why did all that now seem so boring and g