“The baby wants pizza,” Claudia said, and Shay gave her a smile when she wanted to roll her eyes. Her baby was only five months along, and Shay wanted to scream at her that the infant didn’t have any food preferences yet.

  She walked over to the wall and pushed the button to lift the door, and Greg entered with his dolly. “Evening,” he said, his voice rich and low.

  “Hey,” she said, her eyes moving back to Sam and Claudia. “This is my brother and my sister. Guys, this is the best transport driver in town, Greg Giles.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he said, giving them a wave. He faced the pile of boxes and his shoulders lifted in a big breath. “All right, Shay. You’re keepin’ me in business this year.” He gave her a healthy smile, which Shay did her best to return.

  Sam stepped in to help Greg, and Shay went to clean up the packing tape and botched shipping labels, Claudia in tow. Her sister wasn’t the confrontational type, which Shay appreciated.

  Still, she could sense something just beneath Claudia’s tongue. “Just say it,” she said. “So we can enjoy dinner.”

  “I’m just wondering if you’ll get back together with Travis before Christmas,” Claudia said.

  Shay looked at her and found her picking her nails. So casual. So fake.

  “I don’t think so,” Shay said. “He hasn’t called or anything.” She hadn’t spoken to him in almost two weeks now. Her heart cracked a little more, and something like a sniffle caught in her chest. She refused to let it out, especially with Claudia nearby.

  She hardly ever saw her sister without her husband, and she really did want to enjoy dinner tonight. “I don’t want to talk about Travis.”

  “You miss him.”

  “So what if I do?” Shay challenged her, abandoning the job of cleaning up smeared stickers. “That doesn’t change anything. He broke up with me.”

  Claudia rose to her full height, her nails suddenly perfect. “And why’d he do that, Shay?” She could be stubborn and vocal too, though Shay had never labeled her sister that way. Or herself, but since she’d met Travis and his family, and she’d seen how they didn’t hold back from one another, she actually found the conversations they had refreshing.

  They could hash everything out and stay in the same room. They didn’t run from situations or each other. She wanted to be more like that, and she hadn’t even known it.

  “Because,” Shay said. “He didn’t get a text.”

  “A text?”

  “I stood him up, in his eyes,” Shay said. “We had a fight. He didn’t want to play my games anymore.” All of the things Travis had said to her almost two weeks ago still streamed through her head. “I don’t know, Claudia. It just didn’t work out.”

  She picked up a handful of papers and shoved them toward her sister. “Go put those in the trash, would you?” Claudia did what she asked, and Shay started switching out a nearly empty roll of tape for a fresh one.

  That done, she straightened some papers, sent a text to Elaine, and moved into her office to check who was opening the store in the morning. She’d be here, of course. Sometimes Shay thought she should put a cot in her office for how early she arrived at work and how late she stayed. She could just put on some new running clothes, spritz some perfume, and call herself bathed and ready.

  She hadn’t done it yet, because going home to a ten-pound dog and no one else was pathetic enough.

  She missed Travis terribly. She missed the excitement of simply having a message from him. She missed the fact that she’d get to see him every day, hold his hand, breathe in the warm scent of wood and cologne, and just be with another adult who wasn’t connected to Sweetspot in any way.

  She loved Jadyn and Elaine. She did. She relied on her employees, and she’d raised her wages to attract better people, who’d hopefully stick around for longer. But Shay missed Travis terribly.

  “You should call him,” Claudia said, moving to stand in front of Shay’s computer.

  She looked up, her eyes glazed over as she’d been thinking about Travis and had forgotten her sister had even come to the store today. “I’m not going to call him,” she said.

  “I will for you.” Claudia picked up Shay’s phone, and she bolted to her feet.

  “Claudia.”

  “Greg’s ready for you to sign the paperwork,” Sam said, entering the office.

  “Okay,” Shay said, her palm still out toward her sister. Claudia put the phone in her hand, and Shay moved past her siblings and back into the more industrial, warehousey part of the store where they stored their inventory and packaged their shipments.

  “Hey,” she said with a sigh as she approached Greg.

  He turned with a smile on his face and handed her the clipboard she signed every single night. “Seventy-seven,” he said. “That’s one of your bigger days.”

  “You’re shocked I got it all packaged before you showed up, aren’t you?” She grinned at him, looked at the clipboard, and signed on the line required.

  “Not at all,” he said. “I understand how days get away from people.”

  “Yes, the egg farm.” She gave him the clipboard back. “Thank you, Greg. You’re the best.”

  “Yeah.” His smile stayed in place, and this was the point where he usually left. Tonight, he kept staring at her. Shay’s body temperature rose, and a flush worked its way up Greg’s neck.

  “Listen,” he said, and Shay knew what came next. She’d been out of the dating game for a while before she’d started seeing Travis, but she’d been asked out before. “I was thinking that after the holiday rush, and things settle down, you and I could go to dinner together.”

  “Oh, uh.” Shay shuffled her feet. “I don’t know, Greg.” Travis’s face filled her mind, and every nerve screamed at her that if she went out with Greg, she couldn’t go out with Travis too.

  “No?”

  “I just…I’m seeing someone.” She couldn’t believe the words had come out of her mouth. She wasn’t dating Travis. Not anymore.

  You miss him.

  Her sister hadn’t spoken untrue. The problem was, neither had Shay. It didn’t matter if she missed Travis. Unless she did something about it, the situation wasn’t going to change.

  “Oh,” Greg said, rubbing his hand up the back of his neck. “Okay. I didn’t know. I guess I should’ve asked that first.” He gave her another brilliant smile. “Makes sense.”

  “What does?”

  “You seein’ someone,” he said. “You’re so personable and pretty and all.”

  Shay could smile at that, though it did make her sad. If she was so personable and pretty, why hadn’t she been able to hang onto Travis?

  He just got mad, she told herself. You have to help him get un-mad.

  Hadn’t he asked her to do that for him once? Calm him down and tell him when he was being a jerk? He had, and instead of doing that the weekend before Thanksgiving, she’d let him break-up with her and walk out of her life.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “If you break-up with the guy, let me know,” Greg said, and he backed up a step. “I’ll go now, before I embarrass myself further.” He strode away and jumped off the loading dock, disappearing into the darkness a moment later. The growling of his truck’s engine filled the air, and then he rumbled away.

  Shay turned back, only to find both Sam and Claudia standing there. How much had they heard?

  “You’re seeing someone?” Claudia asked, cocking one hip.

  Too much.

  “I thought you broke up with Travis,” Sam said, his eyebrows practically on the ceiling.

  “First,” Shay said, unable to move toward them. “He broke up with me.” Her eyes flitted to her sister’s. “Second, I miss him. Third, I want to call him and get back together with him. I just don’t know how.”

  Claudia’s smile started small and grew, grew, grew until Shay stopped talking. Her whole chest vibrated with nerves, because Sam and Claudia then exchanged a glance that could only mean one thing. She’d just played right into their hands.

  She wasn’t going to enjoy dinner with them at all.

  “Did you hear that, Sam?”

  “I did,” he said.

  “Stop it,” Shay said. “I just need help.”

  “I told you I’d call him for you,” Claudia said.

  “I’m thirty-five years old,” Shay said, a touch of impatience in her voice. “I can call my boyfriend myself.” She caught herself, and she pressed her eyes closed. “My ex-boyfriend.”

  “Mm hm,” Sam said, a chuckle following instantly. His footsteps came closer, and Shay opened her eyes. He took her into his arms and held her against his chest. “Don’t worry, Shay,” he whispered. “I can see you love him, and once he sees it, he’ll forgive you and take you back.”

  “How do you know?” she whispered back.

  “Because you’re so personable and pretty,” Sam teased.

  Shay half-laughed and half-cried. She welcomed Claudia into the three-way hug again and as she truly let them absorb some of the weight she’d been carrying all this time, she finally admitted to herself that she had fallen in love with the cross cowboy, Travis Cooper.

  Not only that, but she didn’t need to be embarrassed of her family. They loved her in their own way, and the Nelsons didn’t need to be like the Coopers. The world would probably implode if they were.

  She stepped back and wiped her eyes, then tightened her Fort Knox ponytail. “Okay,” she said. “I hope y’all have some good ideas, because I’ve got nothing and I do need to apologize to him for a few things.”

  “Why don’t we start with why he broke up with you,” Claudia said. “The real reason, and not because he didn’t get a text.” She gave Shay a stern look, and she quivered slightly.

  “Fine,” she said. “He asked me if I wanted to break-up, and I said I don’t know. This was after he’d waited at a restaurant for our three-month anniversary, because no, he didn’t get the text I sent that said I had to work late.”

  “Ah, okay,” Claudia said. “I know the problem.”

  “Me too,” Sam said, guiding her toward the exit. He punched the button to lower the garage door. “So we need a plan to let him know you’re not already married to your job.” He looked at Claudia. “This might take more than one session.”

  “Might,” Claudia said, and she didn’t have to sound so gleeful about it.

  “No,” Shay said, horrified. “That’s not why he broke up with me. He just didn’t get a text, and he’s kind of…he has a temper. He gets cross about things that he shouldn’t.”

  “Mm, nope,” Sam said, holding the door for her to leave the warehouse. “Shay, the man thinks you’re married to your job. You canceled on him for a very important anniversary via text. Whether he got it or not, he’d have been upset.”

  Shay blinked at her brother, pieces falling into place. “Before that, I was a little distant. His family is so great, you know? And I was feeling…not as great. So I’ve been thinking about a lot of things for a while.”

  “This is so much worse than I thought,” Claudia said, leading the way outside, her head high. “She started to run, Sam. And Travis cut her loose to do exactly that.”

  “I didn’t run,” Shay said, though she had possibly, maybe started. Just a step or two.

  “We need pizza to keep talking about this,” Claudia said. “Come on. And turn on your brain, Shay. You have to come up with at least one idea for how you can get this cross cowboy back into your life. Sam and I can’t do all the heavy lifting tonight.”

  “No,” Shay muttered to herself as she followed her sister. “Heaven forbid that.”

  At her side, Sam chuckled and put his arm around her. “Don’t worry, Shay. We’ll figure it out, and you’ll be stuffing stockings with Travis before you know it.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” she said, glancing at her brother. But she was really glad she didn’t have to figure things out on her own. She’d been doing that for over four long years, and she could use some help.

  24

  Three months! I can’t believe we made it three months. Well, of course I can. Here’s to three more, then three years, and then thirty.

  Travis read over the message he’d scrawled into the card he’d bought for Shay. He’d planned to give it to her nineteen days ago, at their three-month anniversary dinner. When she hadn’t shown up, and then he’d broken up with her, he’d tossed the roses, the card, and the jewelry box in the big garbage bin that sat in the driveway at the cabin.

  Will had rescued two of the three—the card and the bracelet. He hadn’t said anything to Travis about them until Thanksgiving Day, and now that Travis had them back, he simply needed to find a way to get in touch with Shay.

  He’d thought about going into Sweetspot and asking to see her again. He’d done that when she hadn’t called him about the Fall Ball.

  Sweet Water Falls was hosting a New Year’s Beach party this year, and he’d thought about asking her to that as his date. Maybe attending a town function would have a better result this time. Maybe she’d give him a second first date to impress her enough to make her want to buy a bikini and dance the night away barefoot in the sand.

  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  Travis hated the word maybe.

  The front door opened, and male voices reached his ears. He stuffed the greeting card back into its well-worn envelope and shoved it under his pillow. He hurried to his feet and then down the hall to the kitchen, where Will already had the coffee pot in his hand, and Lee already sat at the bar.

  “Hey,” he said, nearly breathless.

  “Told you he’d be here,” Will said dryly.

  “I was just…” Travis didn’t know how to finish the sentence. He didn’t want to tell his brothers he was searching for his bravery, nor that he’d been looking at the greeting card again. As far as Will knew, he’d thrown it away again. He’d kept the bracelet but tossed the card. Only Travis knew he’d snuck down the hall to the kitchen to retrieve it after Will had gone to bed.

  “It’s fine,” Lee said. “Don’t worry about it, Trav.”

  Travis barely knew what to do with a more relaxed Lee. Ever since Ford had spilled the beans about the dating app, Lee had been less…barky, at least among the brothers. Travis thought it was downright nice that they could all be human and cowboys at the same time.

  “When’s the big day?” Lee asked.

  “For what?” Travis took the mug from Will.

  “He hasn’t called her yet,” Will said.

  “You haven’t called her yet?”

  “No.” Travis sighed as he sat on the barstool. “I don’t know how.”

  Lee stood up and dug his keys out of his pocket. “I have to go get Ford from his mother. I’ll drop you at her house before, and we’ll stop by and get you on the way back.”

  Will sipped his coffee, silent, his eyes watchful.

  “That’s maybe twenty minutes,” Travis said.

  “How long do you need to say you’re sorry, and you’re dying a slow death without her?” Lee looked genuinely confused as he switched his gaze between Travis and Will. He focused on Travis again. “Come on. Get your bracelet and your phone, and let’s go.” He started for the front door. “I can’t take another day of Droopy Travis.”

  “Droopy Travis?” he called after his brother. “Come on.”

  “Go,” Will said in a much gentler voice. “She’ll forgive whatever you said, and you’ve already forgiven her.” His light eyes sparkled at Trav. “Just think about how happy you’ll be in less than an hour.”

  Travis did like the thought of that, so he drew a deep breath and went down the hall to get the bracelet from his bedroom. He took a moment to consider taking the card, and in the end, he grabbed it and shoved it in his back pocket.

  “Wish me luck,” he said to Will as he jogged toward the still-open front door.

  “Good luck,” Will called. “And tell Lee to bring back pizza!”

  Travis slammed the door before Will could really get out the last word, but he’d tell Lee. “Will wants pizza.”

  “Tell him to call it in,” Lee said.

  Travis sent the text, not realizing that Lee had already started moving. Before he knew it, the tires evened out over asphalt and not dirt, and Travis’s stomach buzzed with a thousand honeybees. The racket they made drowned out the radio and anything Lee might have said.

  Before he knew it, Lee pulled into Shay’s driveway. Trav stared at the cute little house with the dark blue door, every emotion in the world streaming through him.

  “Go,” Lee said. “I can’t be late to get Ford.”

  No, he couldn’t, and saving his brother from his ex-wife’s wrath was the only reason Trav got out of the truck and started toward the door. He clutched the box in his fingers until they hurt, and he barely had strength in his joints to press the doorbell.

  The noise of Lee’s truck faded, and only the neighborhoodly chirping of early crickets filled the air. He glanced over his shoulder to the driveway, where Shay’s huge white truck sat. She had to be here.

  Travis swallowed, sure he was about to be sick. He should go. He should’ve called first. He should⁠—

  The door opened, and Elaine stood there. She blinked as she recognized him, and they both drew in a breath together.

  “Hey,” he said, the word firing from his mouth. “Is Shay here?”

  “No,” Elaine said slowly as little Sweetie came clicking over to her ankles.

  “Oh.” Travis looked at the truck again. “Is she at the shop then?” He could get over there. In that moment, he’d do anything to get over there and talk to her.

  “No,” Elaine said again, her brow furrowing this time. “You must not have talked to her.”

  “No,” Travis said just as slowly, a gong in place of his heart. “We broke up.”

  “Yes, I know,” Elaine said. “But Travis, she left about twenty minutes ago with her sister. They were going to…well, they were headed out to see you at the farm.”