Things clicked together inside Travis’s mind. He covered her hand with his, but she couldn’t move those heavy rafts herself. “It’s not stupid. They’re for the⁠—”

  “You’re going to ruin it,” Will said.

  “It’s already ruined,” Travis snapped back. “What do you want me to do?”

  “It’s not ruined,” Rissa said. “Travis.” His name came out in a hiss, and she looked at Shay.

  His heart sunk. “It’s fine,” he said, reaching for the envelope. “Open this, Mama. Then it’ll make sense.”

  She took the envelope, but Shay turned away. “Shay,” Travis said at the same time Mama ripped open the envelope. His girlfriend headed for the exit, and Travis tore right in half. “Shay,” he called after her.

  Mama pulled the papers out of the envelope. Travis watched her, but the weight of all of his siblings’ eyes weighed heavily on him. Even Daddy looked more at him than Mama.

  “A cruise?” Mama asked, her face lighting up as she looked up from the papers. “You guys are taking me on a cruise?”

  “All of us,” Travis said. “We’re all goin’ for your birthday, Mama. Over Christmas.”

  Pure delight etched its way around her eyes. “This is wonderful.” She hugged the papers to her chest. “What about the farm?” She met Daddy’s eyes. “You never leave the farm.”

  “We have good men and women who can manage without us for a few days,” Daddy said, beaming at his wife. “It was Travis’s idea. He met with the travel agent in town and put it all together.”

  “Get over here, my boy.” Mama reached for Travis with both arms, and he hurried around the table. He hugged his mother, his eyes pressing closed for a couple of moments. When he opened them, he looked toward the wide doorway that led into the living room and then out the front door.

  He hoped to find Shay standing there watching. She wasn’t.

  “Go find Shay,” Mama said, releasing him. “Wayne, help me up so I can get these floaties out. They look amazing, and we’re going to need them on our cruise.”

  Travis grinned at Lee and Will, who smiled back. They’d all do anything for their mother, but Travis finally felt vindicated. Neither of his brothers had thought a cruise was a good idea, but Mama clearly thought differently.

  Now, he just had to find Shay, figure out what was going on, and then ask her to go to Cozumel, Grand Cayman, and Jamaica with him.

  21

  Shayla pressed her back into the west side of the farmhouse, Travis’s voice calling her name reverberating through her head. He said it again, and she pushed away from the perfectly white siding.

  Everything about the family, this farm, this fantasy life was so, well, fantastical. Shay didn’t deserve any of them, and she couldn’t go on the Christmas cruise with Travis and his family.

  He hadn’t asked her to yet, but he would. She knew he would. She had to come clean with him. She rounded the corner of the house, and he stopped jogging across the lawn. He froze the way she suspected deer did when they perked their ears up to listen for danger.

  “There you are,” he said, thawing quickly and hurrying toward her again. “You didn’t have to leave. Mama loves the floaties now that she knows about the cruise.”

  “I didn’t mean to ruin anything.”

  “I should’ve had her open the cruise envelope first,” he said. “It’s my fault.” He reached her, but Shay didn’t want his comfort. She still let him take her into his arms. She didn’t melt the way she normally did, and she felt it. Travis must be able to as well.

  “Tell me what’s goin’ on,” he said. “You’ve been, I don’t know. Weird or aloof or something for a week or so now.”

  “I’m just really busy at work,” she said, her standard excuse.

  “That’s not it,” he said.

  “I’m dealing with a lot with my family,” she said. “Claudia wants me to go shopping for cribs with her. My mom set a pie-baking Saturday.” Shay didn’t want to do either of those. Every time she spent any time with Trav’s family, she realized how dysfunctional hers was. She shouldn’t compare, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “I didn’t mean to blame you in there,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “This isn’t about your family.” He pulled away, taking the warmth and safety of his arms with him. “Talk to me, Shay.”

  “I don’t want to break-up,” she said.

  His brow furrowed, and he moved back another step. “Wow. I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “I can’t go on the cruise with you,” she blurted out. “I want to, but I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have to work.”

  “Come on,” he said, exhaling heavily. “My family never takes a break from work. Literally never. I can’t remember the last time Lee took an hour off, even when he had walking pneumonia. If we can take six days for a cruise, so can you.”

  “I don’t want to.” The words landed like hammers, and she witnessed the blow of each one. Travis flinched with them, shutters coming up over his eyes.

  “Christmas is such a busy time,” she said. “Your family is wonderful. You’re wonderful. I work in retail. I can’t take time off at the holidays.”

  He nodded, his jaw jumping. “So this is just about the cruise.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t want to break-up with me.”

  “No.”

  “You’ve been distant,” he said. “Tell me I wasn’t imagining that.”

  Shay couldn’t deny it. “You weren’t,” she said. “I just didn’t know how to tell you. I don’t want to prioritize work over you. I understand if you’d rather…I don’t know. Find someone else to take on your family cruise.”

  Travis wore confusion now, and he shook his head. “Why would I do that?” He put one hand under her chin. “Shay, I don’t get this conversation. At all.”

  “I just…I don’t feel like I’m good enough to be a Cooper. I make different choices than y’all make.”

  Travis opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and pressed his lips together. “It’s fine.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes.” He stepped back again and extended his hand toward her, not taking her hand in his, but offering it for her to take. She did, sighing as she slipped her fingers between his. “Come back inside. Mama is so excited about the floaties. You’ll see.”

  Shay went with him, because she did love Chrissy Cooper. She wanted the woman to be happy, and as she watched Wayne blowing up the oversized floaties, she hugged the older woman. “Happy birthday,” she said. “These are the best rafts for the outdoors. We sell a ton of them at Sweetspot.”

  “I can’t wait to use them,” Mama gushed. “Thank you, Shay. Thank you so much.”

  She smiled and migrated back to Travis’s side. She wasn’t normally so self-conscious, but everything about the Coopers made her feel less-than, and she had the distinct thought that she better figure all of that out—or she was going to lose her place at Travis’s side among them.

  “I don’t know, Mom,” Shay said, immediately stuffing a broccoli tree in her mouth. She really wanted a sleeve of saltines and a cube of butter. She could run off all the calories in the morning.

  Her mind wandered while her mother started in on her again about how long it took her to fall in love with Daddy. Of course, theirs had been a romance made in heaven, and if Shayla was smart, she wouldn’t let Travis get away.

  Or some such. She’d heard it all before, so she hadn’t really been paying attention to her mother’s lectures for the past few years. This one was probably number thirty-two, and Shay had heard it a thousand times.

  She thought about the last time she’d stress-eaten saltine-and-butter sandwiches. Travis had been standing in her kitchen, watching her smear butter on the crackers, then him laughing as she salted them.

  “What?” she’d asked.

  “What? You salted that butter.”

  “These are no-salt crackers,” she’d said, which had made him tip his head back and laugh, laugh, laugh.

  Travis had a great laugh.

  “Shay,” her mother barked. “Are you even listening to me? Turn off that timer.”

  Shay flew into motion and jabbed at the button on the stove to get the beeping timer to stop making so much noise. She grabbed the oven mitts and pulled out the pie crust she and her mother had been blind baking. “It looks good,” she said.

  “It’s too blonde,” Mom said, and Shay could’ve mouthed it along with her.

  “Mom, it’s done.” Shay wouldn’t let her mom put it back in, and she moved it over to the cooling rack with the cookie crust they’d baked already. “Do you have the peaches done?”

  “Right here.” Her mom lifted the bowl, and Shay hoped she could sneakily add another teaspoon of gelatin. Her mother always made the runniest pies, and Shay didn’t think an adjective like that belonged anywhere in a dessert description.

  “You haven’t said how things are going with Travis,” Mom said as she started to pour the fruit into one of the baked and cooled crusts.

  “Yeah, uh…” Shay kept her head bent as she reached for a recipe card. A chocolate mousse needed to be made for the cookie crust, and it was a finicky recipe. Maybe she could focus on that, and her mother would forget all about her boyfriend.

  Yeah, right, she thought. And maybe a meteor will fall to Earth and land right here on the house in Beeville.

  “You’re still seeing him, aren’t you?” Mom asked.

  “Yeah, of course,” Shay said. “We see each other every day.” That much hadn’t changed between them. The length of Travis’s visits had, and she hadn’t been out to the farm for a week or so. The holidays were a terribly busy time in retail, and Travis said their new dairy cows hadn’t settled into their new farm as easily as everyone had hoped they would, but Shay knew it was more than that.

  She’d closed some door between them, and Travis had let her. She wished he hadn’t, but he had. It would make running so much easier, and her chest vibrated with the need to put on her best marathon shoes and just hit the road.

  “Why didn’t he come today?” Mom asked. “You said he might be able to.”

  “The Berthas were being stubborn,” she said.

  “Berthas?”

  Shay sighed and rolled her neck. “Mom, I don’t want to talk about Travis anymore, okay?”

  “Okay,” her mom said, her voice high-pitched and full of false cheer. “I get it. I ask too many questions.”

  Shay glanced over to her mother, whom she’d gotten her dark hair and dark eyes from. She hadn’t gotten the baking gene, but Shay could live with that. “I’ll make the chocolate mousse,” she said. “Do you want to make the pumpkin or the pecan?”

  Perhaps if Shay threw her whole concentration into making pies, she wouldn’t have to obsess over what the next step in her relationship with Travis should be.

  Shay’s head pounded. Her phone hadn’t chimed since she’d texted Travis about the Camping USA executive appearing in her office unscheduled. And a little bit miffed. Majorly miffed, if Shayla were being honest.

  She had managed to calm Zackary enough to figure out what had brought him all the way from the home office in Littleton, Colorado to Sweet Water Falls, Texas.

  The happy-camper-family tent barcodes had been printed incorrectly. That was something Shay could potentially fix, but it had taken her and Zack quite a long time to get to the heart of the problem.

  She’d insisted that the price on the happy camper tents wasn’t two thousand dollars. Well, it was, but they were doing an introductory and holiday pricing schedule through December twenty-fourth. The tents were only nine-ninety-nine until then.

  But, according to Zack and the six—yes, six!—tents he’d flown into town with, the price kept ringing up at double that. Then his employees had to do a fifty percent price reduction, and their paychecks were getting dinged for offering too many discounts.

  Shay didn’t want to tell him that his business model for how he treated his employees wasn’t her problem, even though it wasn’t.

  The tents in her store rang up correctly, as she’d demonstrated to him time and time again. His didn’t, as he was just as adamant about. The only blessing of his arrival was that Sweetspot had been closed for ten minutes already. He’d pounded angrily on the metal door behind the desk, demanding to be let in. She couldn’t even imagine dealing with him while customers tried to shop.

  There may have been some heated moments. Some exchanged words and glares—mostly from him. He was her customer, and she was trying to make things right for him.

  In the end, she’d pulled a tent from the back room—one that had just arrived on a truck from the construction facility in San Antonio—and it too had rung up incorrectly. That had led both of them to examine the barcodes more closely, and then Shay had gotten on the phone with her pricing manager, and then the company that provided the barcodes for her product.

  “Yes, I’m still here,” she said as a woman’s voice chirped in her ear.

  “I’m so sorry, ma’am,” the woman drawled. “But we can’t change the price on our end. You have the barcodes in your account, and you can set whatever price you want on them.”

  Shay stared at the long list of codes only ten inches from her face. Whenever she blinked, she saw black and white lines with numbers. “I can’t,” she said. “They’re grayed out, as I said, and I can’t alter them.”

  “On our end you can. You might need to wait twenty-four hours and try again.”

  Shay pressed her eyes closed, so ready for this day to be over. Two more employees had quit, and she didn’t have replacements for them. She couldn’t move the nearly-expired energy bars, despite lowering the price, and she’d have to toss them by the end of the week. And because of Zack’s appearance and the subsequent fiasco she still hadn’t fixed, she’d texted Travis to cancel their three-month anniversary dinner and hadn’t heard back.

  “Okay,” she said feebly. “I’ll wait and try again. If it doesn’t work, I’ll call back.”

  “Great,” the woman chirped. “If there’s anything else we can do for you, let us know.”

  Shay wanted to tell her there was plenty she could do, including changing the prices on all of the barcodes that had been programmed wrong. Instead, she hung up as the automated “give us your feedback on this call” message started to play in her ears.

  She swiveled toward Zack, who perched on the end of the table where she and her staff ate lunch. “They can’t fix them. They say I should be able to, but they’re grayed out.”

  “I heard all that,” he said.

  “I can print stickers,” she said. “You can get them out to your people and they can use those over the sewn-in codes.”

  “Let’s do both,” he said. “You keep trying to fix the ones we’ve got, because that’s going to be far easier than me mailing out stickers to my three hundred stores.”

  Shay nodded, her teeth pressing together. Of course he had to make sure she understood the gravity of the situation. Camping USA was the largest outdoor retailer in the country. If she didn’t have her products in their stores, she’d lose a huge chunk of her business. Her one storefront, in dinky homegrown Sweet Water Falls, wasn’t anything compared to Camping USA.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said as she got to her feet. Her legs felt like someone had made the bones into rubber, and they barely held her up. “You could’ve called.”

  Before he could answer, another angry fist landed on the metal door to her right. Both she and Zack looked that way, and Shay got herself moving in that direction. Something told her not to open the door, but then she heard Trav’s voice.

  “Shay,” he called. “Are you in there?”

  Relief punched through her. He’d rescue her and whisk her off to dinner. She’d finally accept his invitation to his family’s Thanksgiving dinner and invite him to pie night at her parents’ place. With the holiday next week, she needed to do both.

  It took a couple of seconds to flip all the locks, during which Zack pressed in close behind her. “Do you know this guy?”

  “Yeah,” Shay said, opening the door. “It’s my⁠—”

  “Finally,” Travis barked. He lowered his phone from his ear. His eyes flashed with danger and furious fire. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for hours.”

  “I texted you,” she said, but Travis stepped into her, clearly not in listening mode.

  “Who’s this guy?”

  “This is Zack⁠—”

  “You know what? I don’t care.” Travis almost seemed wild, his anger a scent on the air. “I’m tired of this game, Shay. I’ve been sitting over at that restaurant for an hour and a half, trying to get in touch with you. At first, I was like, oh, ha-ha, she’s just late. Then I actually started to worry. Like, legit worry.”

  He paced in the back room office, completely upset. Shay looked at her phone while trying to listen to him too. Tired of this game? What did that mean?

  Her text had gone through. At least on her end, it said delivered. She held up her device. “I texted you.”

  “No, you didn’t.” He glared at her. “I should’ve known you’d be at work, but once I finally found the tiny bit of self-respect I have, I left the restaurant and went to your house. You weren’t there, so I came here.”

  “There was an emergency,” she said.

  “There always is,” he bit out. He finally stopped pacing, and Shay simply looked at him. She was so tired too. Beyond tired.

  “I’ll go,” Zack said from somewhere outside her line of vision. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “Sure.” Shay lifted her hand in some sort of weak wave, and the metal door slammed behind Zack after he left.

  Travis stood there, his fists clenched, staring at her. “Well?” he finally challenged. “Who was that guy and why will you be talking to him in the morning?”

  22

  Travis could barely see straight. He’d been making such an effort to see Shay every single day. He lived a long way from town, and he made the drive far more often than she did. He felt like he was chasing her, and she’d gotten in her truck and was driving away from him as fast as she could.