Chase was at a loss. His idea of romance was taking a woman to the Rocking J for a hamburger and a beer.

  But with Rainey he wanted to do it right. He sent her flowers and candy. Took her on a picnic. Made reservations at as fancy restaurant as he could find in their part of Montana. He plied her with candlelight and expensive wine and took her on moonlit walks.

  The one thing he didn’t do was rush it. He didn’t try to even kiss her. He was going to take this slow, do it right, but he had to admit, he was completely out of his league when it came to romancing a woman like Rainey.

  And for all the romantic things he’d tried, Rainey didn’t appear to be falling for him. She seemed to be waiting for something. He wished he knew what that something was.

  It was Saturday night and Rainey was singing with the band at the Rocking J. Chase was sitting at the bar sipping a beer and hoping to see Cupid so he could undo this. Cupid though had cleared out since that first night.

  “Chase, I have to talk to you.” He turned to find AnnaRose beside him. “Please, could we step outside a moment?”

  He could tell something was wrong. He nodded, and they went out the back door into the alley. A sliver of silver moon hung over the rooftop. The star-splatttered sky provided just enough light for him to see that AnnaRose had been crying.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. When she’d left him, he’d told himself it wouldn’t last and he’d looked forward to the day she would realize her mistake and come running back to him.

  “It’s Lee.” She bit her lip. “We had a big fight, and he said a lot of things…Oh, Chase. I should never have left you for him. I made the biggest mistake. Can you ever forgive me?”

  Those were the words Chase had been waiting to hear. But to his surprise, they didn’t have the affect him he’d expected. “AnnaRose--.”

  “I’ve missed you so much.” She stepped into his arms, and automatically he held her. It felt so familiar and yet wrong. With a shock, he realized the he’d never held Rainey like this, had never even tried.

  “AnnaRose, I’m sorry, but I’m…” Chase glanced up. Over her shoulder he saw Rainey standing in the shadows, saw the hurt expression on her face

  As she turned and went back into the bar, he ran after her, but she wouldn’t listen.

  “Chase, I knew it was just a game for you, wanting to make me fall for you again. You’ll never be serious about anyone.”

  “That’s not true.” At that moment, he looked in her eyes, remembered every day they’d spent together as kids, and realized he wanted this woman – and not because of Cupid and his damned arrows. “Rainey, I think I have always been in love with you.”

  She laughed. “Oh, really, Chase? I just caught you in another woman’s arms. Do you even know what love is?”

  “I didn’t. But I do now. I’ve never felt like this before. That first night in the bar when I heard you sing, that’s when I saw--”

  She held up her hand. “I don’t care. You hear me? You’ve hurt me for the last time, Chase Calloway. Now leave me alone.”

  And on the way back to the ranch, Chase thought about the night of the high school Valentine’s Day Dance. Tiny pink and read cupids hung from the ceiling, spinning slowly in the warm air. Rainey had looked…so pretty. She’d looked like a…girl. A stranger.

  She wasn’t his buddy from the tree house. The Rainey he knew, and he’d felt his palms go damp at the thought of asking her to dance. He’d noticed her standing on the sidelines, turning down anyone who asked her to dance. He’d known she was waiting for him to ask her. When the band began to play the last song of the evening, he saw her coming across the dance room toward him.

  Now he knew how much courage that had taken her. He felt his heart strings twang with a pain he’d never felt and cursed himself for what he’d done. He hurriedly pulled Patricia Birney out on the dance floor. He’d seen Rainey’s face, known how much he’d hurt her. After that he hadn’t been able to face her and was glad when school ended and they both went away after that to different colleges.

  A summer later, he’d gone to their tree house hoping to find Rainey there so he could explain. She had always kept some of her sheet music there, and sometimes sang for him. But when he climbed up the ladder, he found all of her things were gone, and he knew that that part of their lives was over.

  Now he felt as though he’d been given another chance, and had blown it as well. For the rest of the ride home, he cussed Cupid.

  During the weeks that followed, Chase didn’t set foot off the ranch. He worked from sunrise until dark, painting, mending fences, shoveling out the barn. Anything to keep his mind off Rainey. Only it didn’t work.

  So when Sunday rolled around, he rode his horse over to the Bishop ranch.

  “I thought I’d seen the last of you,” Rainey said when she opened the screen door.

  “I tried to stay away, but I couldn’t.” He looked down at his Stetson in his hands. “Would you just give me five minutes.”

  She hesitated, then relented and led him into the living room but didn’t offer him a chair.

  “You know the night at the Rocking J when I told you something had happened to me?”

  She nodded skeptically.

  “That night I saw Cupid right after you began to sing. He shot me with two of his little arrows.” He’d expected her to laugh. Or throw him out.

  Instead, Rainey looked thoughtful for a moment. “Two arrows? Not just one?”

  “I guess Cupid wanted to get me good. Anyway, after he did it, I told him he’d made a mistake. I told him you didn’t even like me.”

  Rainey seemed to be fighting a smile. “And what did Cupid say?”

  “He just went for a swim in my beer and disappeared in the foam.”

  Rainey nodded again as if it was the most logical story she’d ever heard. “Cupid? At the Rocking J? I’ll be darned.”

  “I knew you weren’t going to believe this. But just think about it. Would I be making a jackass of myself if it wasn’t true?”

  She looked him in the eye, and he could tell she thought he could make a jackass out of himself without any help at all from Cupid. “It isn’t going to work,” she said quietly. “Oh, it’s original, I’ll grant you that, but it doesn’t change anything. Love takes trust and I’m afraid to put my trust in you, Chase.”

  He looked down at his boots. He could hear a fly droning against the screen door behind him, smell rain in the warm air, feel his heart pounding. “How can I prove I love you?”

  “I’m not sure you can. Maybe you should ask Cupid since you’re on a first name basis.”

  He stood there for a while just looking at her, his chest squeezing the life out of his heart with each breath.

  “All right, Rainey. Don’t worry about me following you around, asking you out, making a fool of myself anymore. I’m sure by now Cupid’s realized the mistake he’s made. He’s bound to fix it sooner or later so I quit mooning over you.”

  He put his hat on as he backed away from her and out through the screen door. “Goodbye, Rainey,” he said, then turned and headed for his horse.

  The moment he hit the saddle he took off for home at a gallop and didn’t look back.

  * * * *

  The next Saturday afternoon, he went to the county fair alone. He heard Rainey singing as he made his way through the crowds around the booths. A half-circle of bleachers around an open bandstand at the middle of the fairground overflowed with people dressed in summer-bright clothing.

  Rainey’s hair was pulled back in a braid patterned with browns and golds looking like earth and sun all twisted together. She wore new blue jeans and a yellow Western shirt, and Chase thought he’d die for wanting her. She was so beautiful.

  The song ended. The crowd clapped and cheered. Chase followed her into the shade under the bleachers after her set.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said.

  She shook her head and kept walking. “I thought you weren’t ever going to bother me again?”

  “Damn it, Rainey.” He grabbed her arm and spun her around. A shaft of sunlight cut through the slats in the bleachers and caught in her eyes, making them appear as clear as a high-mountain lake.

  “Let’s quit dancing around each other. I love you. And I’m not going to stop loving you.”

  “What? You couldn’t reach Cupid to make him take it back?”

  Chase shook his head and grinned. “Do you really believe Cupid made me fall in love with you? Rainey, you and I are meant to be together. All Cupid did was remind me of how much I’ve missed you.”

  “Oh, Chase.” She started to shove past him.

  But he grabbed her and pulled her into his arms and kissed her, putting everything he felt into that one kiss.

  She resisted for a moment, then slowly melted into his arms, into his kiss.

  When the kiss ended, he learned back enough to look into her face. “I love you, Rainey Bishop. I want to spend the rest of my life looking into your eyes. Don’t you understand? What I love about you is that I can still see that skinny, metal-mouthed girl from the tree house in you, that spunk and independence, everything I loved about you then – as well as the beautiful, talented woman you’ve become. I’m not that scared boy from high school. I want them both.”

  He brushed a strand of hair back from her cheek. “I love them both.”

  “If only I could believe--.” Suddenly, she stopped and gasped. Her hand went to her heart.

  “Rainey?” he asked in alarm.

  “Did you hear that Chase?” she asked. “The whisper of tiny wings.”

  He grinned at her. “Did it feel like a tiny pin prick at about heart level?” he asked.

  She nodded, her eyes filling with love as she met his gaze. “Don’t look, but he’d sitting over there on the top bleacher. “Don’t look. All we need is for him to miss me and shoot you again.”

  But he did look and even though Rainey was joking, he saw Cupid sitting up there on the top bleacher, his chubby legs dangling over the side, his bow in his hand and that self-satisfied look in his cherub face.

  Cupid gave him a wink.

  “Thanks, old buddy,” Chase mouthed and pulled Rainey close. “Does this mean you like me a little now?”

  Rainey smiled up at him. “Why do you think it only took one of Cupid’s arrows, Chase? I’ve been in love with you since long before that day in the tree house.”

  He kissed her again and wondered if Cupid had planned it to end this way all along.

  Love Signs

  By B.J. Daniels

  Copyright 2011 B.J. Daniels

  Smashwords Edition

  I slam my suitcase and sit down wearily on the end of my bed.

  “Are you crazy, Zoey?” my friend Lisa Marie demands. “I would be excited if I were in your shoes. A romantic weekend for two in a secluded cabin with pine trees and moonlight on the lake…and here you are acting as if you’re going to a funeral.”

  I look up at my roommate and grimace. Funeral indeed! “This could be the death of Jake and me. The funeral of our relationship. The end.”

  I hadn’t been wild about this weekend idea of Jake’s from the start. Partly because we haven’t been getting along all that well lately.

  Our arguments are always about the same two things: my mother and her silly superstitions and marriage.

  It drives Jake wild that I don’t want to get married until…well, until I get some sort of sign.

  “We’re so…different,” I tell Lisa Marie now as I reopen my suitcase to double check that I haven’t forgotten anything. “He’s so down to earth and I’m too…”

  “Too much like your mother?” Lisa Marie quips.

  Had it been anyone but her saying it, I would have slugged her. Even though it was somewhat true.

  When it comes to love, I guess I’m superstitious like my mother. I need to know. I’ve been waiting for a sign since I met Jake.

  The last night we went out, I remember standing in the backyard. It was one of those warm, clear nights. Perfect. Jake came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. I looked toward the sky overhead. I waited to see something. Anything. A falling star. Even the trail of a jet. But the sky was clear. No flash of neon saying: Marry this man.

  “Your mother likes Jake so what is the hold up?” Lisa Marie asks now.

  I laugh. “Mom says when the moment is right, there will be a sign.”

  “Like maybe thunderbolts from the heavens, fireworks, a vision?”

  I shake my head. Not a clue.

  “Are you sure you aren’t missing the signs?” she asks. “Or maybe Jake isn’t the right man for you.”

  That thought nearly breaks my heart.

  But I know that this weekend is about me making a decision. The moment he knocks at our door, Lisa ushers me and my suitcase out into the hall and whispers, “Those who hesitate are lost.”

  “Hi,” Jake says as he takes my suitcase and leans down to give me a kiss.

  It was one of his jump-start-my heart kisses. Geez, how I love those! But I suspect even Jake’s amazing kisses aren’t the sign I’m waiting for.

  “Hi.” I feel shy and excited and scared. I know Jake was going to ask me to marry him again this weekend. He is tired of waiting and I don’t blame him. I’m just afraid that if I don’t say yes this time, I would lose him.

  We leave town and hit the highway that will take us to the mountain cabin. Driving along the scenic route, we keep the conversation light.

  Suddenly Jake hits the brakes. “Oh, no.” he groans. Ahead of us car swerves, hesitates, then speeds off in a cloud of dust.

  From the side of the road, a boy of about nine drops his bike and runs into the highway to kneel beside a furry black mound.

  “That car just hit his dog,” Jake says and jumps out of the jeep.

  I follow him, my heart in my throat.

  “Patches!” the boy is crying as he kneels next to the dog. Patches is lying on her side. Her eyes are open but she isn’t moving.

  “It’s all right,” Jake says as he squats beside the boy. The dog whimpers softly. “Zoey, get that old blanket out of the back of the jeep and anything you can find that’s flat like a board so we can stabilize the dog.”

  He turns to the boy. “What’s your name?”

  “Zach Browning.”

  “Zach, we’re going to help your dog.”

  “Is Patches going to…die?” he asks, his eyes brimming with new tears.

  “I hope not. I saw a veterinary hospital back up the road.”

  Jake eases Patches onto the heavy piece of cardboard I’ve found. He talks to the dog quietly, whispering, “You’re going to be all right. Just hang in there.”

  At the animal hospital, the vet suspects internal bleeding and at least one broken bone. He suggests we go and wait in a coffee shop down the highway while he operates on Patches.

  “What to do you say to ice cream?” Jake asks Zack after an unsuccessful attempt to reach the boy’s parents.

  “Chocolate?” the boy asks.

  “Whatever flavor you want.” Jake licks his lips. “How about a sundae with lots of whipped cream?”

  A small smile curves the boy’s mouth. “And then we’ll come back and see how Patches is doing?”

  I shoot Jake a look. He is as worried as I am, but he hides it from Zack as we head for the coffee shop.

  All the time we’re eating our sundaes, Jake talks to Zach about baseball, school, bikes and girls, trying to keep the boy’s mind off his dog. And in no time he has us all laughing at his stories.

  When we finish our sundaes, Jake is finally able to reach Zach’s mother, whose been working out in the yard. She says she’ll meet us back at the animal hospital.

  Mrs. Browning hugs her son and thanks us. Jake and I sit down by the window. He holds my hand, his thumb making nervous circular patterns on my palm.

  “I had a dog when I was a kid,” he says quietly.

  “His name was Ruff,” Jake said. “I got him when I was six.” His grip on my hand tightens. “He was my best friend.”

  I swallow, afraid I know how this story ends.

  “He died of old age when I was nineteen. I cried like a baby.”

  Just then the doctor comes into the waiting area. “Patches came through surgery just fine.” He smiles at Zach. “She has a broken leg that will have to be in a cast for a while.”

  We say our goodbyes. Once outside, Jake grabs me and swings me around in a circle, laughing.

  “I love you,” I whisper when he sets me down.

  His gaze softens as he studies me. “You’re just dizzy.”

  We don’t reach the cabin until late. Twilight casts the water in liquid silver. It is warm and beautiful, the air rich with the scent of pine.

  “Let’s walk down to the lake before we unpack,” Jake suggests. “Last one to the lake is a rotten egg!” He takes off in a run.

  “Cheater!” I yell.

  By the time I reach the dock, Jake was already pulling off his shoes and socks.

  “You know what the penalty for cheating is, don’t you?” I ask trying to keep a straight face as I step to him.

  He must have caught the gleam in my eye, because when I go to shove him off the dock, he takes me with him.

  We hit the water and come up laughing. The water isn’t exactly warm, but it feels wonderful. Or maybe it is just being in Jake’s arms. Jake pulls me even closer. His kiss warms more than my heart.

  “You know why I got you up here,” Jake says later after we’ve showered and changed and plopped down in front of the fire he’s built.

  He touches my face, his eyes dark. “I have to know how you feel about me.”

  “You already do. I love you.”

  “Come on, Zoey. Time’s up. I need a real answer. I promised myself I wouldn’t pressure you, that I’d wait as long as it took. But dammit, Zoey, I want you to be my wife. I want to wake up next to you in the mornings. I want to make babies with you and join the PTA and go to piano recitals and Little League games.”

  I start to say something, but he stops me. “Wait. Stay right here.”