Aunt Patty had been making a good recovery, and she’d started talking about coming back to work. But she didn’t want complete control of the shop. Gretchen was fine running it, though she’d changed several things in the six months since she’d been at the helm of Sweet Water Taffy.

  She needed another truck like this one, and this one needed an upgraded generator and the steps on the front of it replaced. With the increase in business she’d been drumming up over the months, she could probably afford both.

  She had hired more people as the business had grown too, and that included Jon, who she’d brought on after the very busy event at Sweetspot. William Cooper had helped her set up then, but Gretchen’s face still warmed with embarrassment every time she thought about him doing so.

  She was a professional. She shouldn’t have relied on a bystander to help her with her business. Thus, Jon’s position had been created in Gretchen’s mind, and he ran all of their out-of-shop events now. When she showed up with the van loaded with the copper caramel pot and plenty of truffles, it was Jon who helped her set everything up.

  Not only that, but the man could charm anything alive and probably all rocks, and having him as the public face at their events and in the truck had increased their sales yet again.

  Gretchen set to work fulfilling the orders Jon had taken while she’d been gone to get the apples, leaving her mind free to roam. It moved along paths labeled Sweet Water Falls Farm and Will Cooper, though she didn’t really appreciate being blamed for his placement of the caramel apple.

  The orders actually started to slow, and Gretchen glanced at the digital clock she’d velcro’ed to the wall. “Holy cow,” she said. “It’s after eleven-thirty.”

  “Some of the other trucks are closing up,” Jon said.

  “Let’s do that while we can,” Gretchen said. Jon would drive the truck back to the shop, while Gretchen would take the van home. She’d deemed tomorrow a vacation day, and she was looking forward to sleeping in and then making a late brunch for her dad and Aunt Patty at her childhood home.

  She’d spend the day there, and while she’d like to promise herself she wouldn’t work, she knew she would. Daddy had a bit of yard work to do, and Gretchen loved puttering around in a flowerbed. She’d also go over this week’s and next week’s schedule, send work text reminders, and go over her events calendar for the next couple of months. She tried not to do a lot on her days off, but she hadn’t mastered truly stepping away from the business yet.

  A flash of sadness hit her as Jon shut the big doors on the front of the truck that meant they were closed. She couldn’t help thinking of Malcolm and all she’d lost when she’d left the praline shop behind in New Orleans.

  She pushed her ex-boyfriend, her ex-candy-shop, and her ex-life out of her mind. Candy-making was a messy business, and she set an alarm on her phone so she wouldn’t miss the ringing in of the New Year, and then she got busy cleaning up the stoves and countertops in the mobile candy truck.

  The next day, Gretchen sang along with the radio in her car, Aunt Patty strapped into the passenger seat, and plenty of brunch items riding in the back. They’d arrive in Short Tail in a matter of minutes, and Gretchen had achieved one of her goals for the day.

  She hadn’t gotten out of bed until nine o’clock, and for someone who usually keyed their way into the candy shop by dawn, that was a huge accomplishment.

  She made a right turn, and then a left. Daddy’s house came into view, and Gretchen found herself sighing.

  “Here we are,” Aunt Patty said. She was Daddy’s sister, and neither of them had moved too far from their childhood home. Gretchen’s grandmother had died last year, and she currently rested in a town due west of here named Sugar Hill.

  “We can go see Grandma on the way home,” Gretchen said, glancing at Aunt Patty.

  “That would be lovely, dear.” Aunt Patty smiled and patted Gretchen’s hand. “Let’s go see how your daddy is doing.”

  Gretchen knew how he was doing. She saw him nearly every day, and on days she didn’t, she texted or called. He wore a tube in his nose that fed him oxygen all the time now, and Gretchen had gotten used to the mechanical whirrings of the machine, and the somewhat robotic way he seemed to breathe.

  She got out of the car and went to the back to collect the things she’d brought. Aunt Patty used a cane as she walked up the front sidewalk, and Gretchen went past her on the steps to the front porch and all the way inside the house.

  “Daddy,” she called, and a dog barked from outside. They were in the back yard, and Gretchen couldn’t blame her father—or his dog, Howl—for that. Daddy’s backyard had a tiny stream flowing through it, and when Momma had been alive, she’d cultivated the Garden of Eden back there.

  Gretchen had loved growing up in the two-story house with a steep roof, and she’d come to help her two brothers paint it last year after their grandmother’s death.

  The back screen door screeched, and Howl’s old-man bark filled the air. Gretchen grinned as she slid the tray holding the eggs, croissants, and ultra-pasteurized milk onto the counter before turning to greet the little white dog.

  He was a squatty little thing, part schnauzer and part Maltese. He only stood twelve inches off the ground, but what he lacked in height, he made up for in bulk. He was a healthy thirty pounds, and while he looked like he could be picked up, no one—including him—was happy when someone tried.

  Gretchen bent down to pat him, finding his groomed schnauzer eyebrows so expressive. “Howdy, Howly,” she cooed at him. “Were you and Daddy out in the gardens? You better not have been doing anything.”

  She spoke in a baby-voice, but she meant every word. Daddy hadn’t fallen and broken his hip, but he couldn’t really cart his oxygen tank around the back yard. Momma had put in octagonal pavers, and the wheels of the tank got caught on the edges, the tufts of grass between the pavers, and everything else.

  Just now, as he came toward her, the tank jammed against one of the table legs. He yanked it free without even looking behind him. “Hello, sweetheart,” he twanged at her, and Gretchen enveloped her father into a hug. “You didn’t have to bring food.”

  “I did if I wanted to eat something besides sprouted wheat bread and mushrooms,” she joked. But she wasn’t really joking. She’d never eat half the things her father put in his mouth. She started unloading the items from the tray so she could go get the rest, saying, “I’m going to make those egg sandwiches you like. Cut up some fruit. Can we eat on the back patio?”

  “Should be able to, yes,” Daddy said about the time Aunt Patty made it inside the house.

  “Reginald,” she yelled. “Your oak out front looks like it might have a disease.”

  “She might have a disease,” Daddy grumbled, to which Gretchen could only smile. Aunt Patty and Daddy got along just fine, but she liked to tell him all the things wrong with his yard and house, and he liked to tell her to mind her own business.

  As that conversation started, Gretchen retrieved the fresh vegetables and fruit from the back of her car and got to work in the kitchen. Just as the egg patties came off the heat and she yelled, “Brunch is ready,” into the living room, her phone rang.

  It was Jon’s ringtone, and Gretchen hesitated at the same time she jerked into motion. She should answer it. She didn’t need to answer it. Not today. No one was working today. There was no emergency that must be handled before another breath was taken.

  She let the call go to voicemail as she went to help Aunt Patty to her feet. She managed that only to have to kick her father’s Army green camouflaged oxygen tank free from underneath the side table. He’d almost refused to bring the tank home with him, and Cory, Gretchen’s brother, had finally convinced him by saying they could wrap the tanks in Army green camo.

  Daddy had served proudly in the Army for several years, and that had done the trick. Gretchen moved at the speed of a snail behind her aunt and her father as they padded through the kitchen and toward the back patio.

  “I’ll grab this plate and be right behind you,” she said. Her phone rang again, and annoyance and acceptance rang through her simultaneously.

  She plucked the phone from her apron pocket and answered Jon’s call with, “This better be life-or-death.”

  “I’m with a gentleman that says it is,” he said.

  “Who?” Gretchen demanded, her eyebrows drawing down. In her opinion, there wasn’t anything worse than cold eggs, and with the sloth-like movement of her family members, that had already happened.

  “Well,” he drawled. “I was just at the shop to try out those grasshoppers. Remember you said I could come in to do that?”

  “Yes,” Gretchen said, though she had forgotten. “We’re closed today, though.”

  “William Cooper doesn’t seem to understand what that means,” Jon said, almost under his breath.

  “Wait. What? Will Cooper?” Gretchen’s face flushed again, and the man wasn’t even here.

  “Just let me talk to her,” came through the line in Will’s sexy bark. Gretchen couldn’t believe what was happening, and she checked the phone to make sure this call wasn’t a prank.

  “Gretchen?” Will’s voice came through the line. “I just dropped by to talk to you for a second, but you’re not here.”

  “We’re closed today,” she said as practically as she could. “Jon told you that.”

  “Mm, yes, he did.” Will sounded like he didn’t buy it for a second. “Listen, Gretchen, I’d love to see you face-to-face for just a second. Would you mind if I stopped by? It won’t take but a minute, I promise.”

  “Stopped by?” she repeated as if no one had ever stopped by her house before.

  “Yes,” he said. “If you just give me your address, I’ll swing by. Sixty seconds. It’s important.”

  Gretchen had no idea what would be so important that he’d need to stop by, but she found herself giving him her father’s address.

  “Short Tail, huh? You live out there?”

  “My dad does,” she said. “I’ll be home later today, if you want to wait.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.” The call ended without him handing the phone back to Jon, and Gretchen once again stared at her device like she’d just been the victim of a practical joke.

  Then she immediately started calculating how long it took to drive from Sweet Water Taffy to her father’s place. She knew the exact number of minutes, as she’d made the drive plenty of times after work.

  She now had twenty-two minutes to eat and enjoy brunch—and convince herself not to throw up—before Will “stopped by.”

  3

  Will followed the directions on the screen in his pickup truck, his heart beating louder than the radio played. He couldn’t believe Gretchen hadn’t been at the candy shop, nor that his nerves hadn’t given out yet.

  Short Tail sat about twenty-five minutes past her sweet shop, and he wondered how she lived this far from work.

  “She doesn’t,” he told himself as he peered out his side window. “She said her father lived out here.” She hadn’t divulged where she lived. Rightly so, as Will had gone into grump-mode and demanded her employee get Gretchen on the line.

  Even when Jon had said she was spending the morning with family after the first phone call hadn’t been picked up, Will had insisted. He wanted to sleep tonight, goldarn it, and until he apologized to the gorgeous Gretchen Bellows, he couldn’t.

  The map on his screen got replaced with Daddy’s name and picture as a phone call from his father came in. Will reached to tap the connect icon as he turned onto the street Gretchen had given him.

  “Hey, Daddy,” he said, one thousand percent distracted. She was here, on this street, at one of these houses.

  “You left in the middle of milking?” Daddy barked into the truck.

  Will blinked, focusing on the situation at hand. He shouldn’t have answered this call. “Uh, yes, sir,” he said. “Travis said he’d cover for me.”

  “Travis is currently covered from head to toe in manure,” Daddy said sourly. “Where are you? This better be somethin’ like you needin’ an epi-pen or something.”

  Will didn’t point out that Daddy had used the word “something” twice in one sentence. His mind screamed at him to say that of course he’d been stung by a wasp. The biggest, nastiest, most poisonous wasp in the whole world, so he’d jumped behind the wheel of his truck and driven to the pharmacy…alone.

  His conscience wouldn’t let him do it. “Not exactly,” he said. “Daddy, listen, I’ll be back in two shakes, okay? I just needed to do something.”

  “What?”

  Apologize to a woman ran through his mind, and Will let it come on out of his mouth.

  Daddy made a grunt or a scoff, or maybe he was just breathing out. No matter what, Will had stunned him. He’d also done something Will thought impossible. He’d calmed his father’s bark for long enough for the man to think before he spoke.

  “All right,” he said with resignation in his tone. “But make it snappy, son. We have work going on out here.”

  “I’m aware,” Will snapped back. He wanted snappy? Will could give Daddy snappy.

  “Son.”

  “I’ll be back in a half-hour,” Will said, already reaching to disconnect the call. He wasn’t sure if he did or Daddy did first, but there were no goodbyes. The GPS map roared back to life, and Will squinted at it.

  “Shoulda told Daddy I needed glasses,” he muttered to himself. “That wouldn’t’ve been a lie.” He got the truck moving again, finding the quaint and quiet farmhouse just two more down the lane.

  He turned down the driveway, easily spotting a dark minivan that must be Gretchen’s. At the same time, she totally didn’t seem like a minivan type of woman. She didn’t have kids—at least that he knew of.

  The grass grew in between the tire tracks in the driveway, and a huge oak tree stood guard in the front yard. Off to the side and on the way around to the back to Will’s left sat a willow, and he could take a moment and breathe here.

  If he didn’t get out of the truck soon, he wouldn’t, and Will unbuckled his belt and slid from the truck. Only the whispers of wind and the sound of a tractor growling in the distance met his ears, and this place reminded him so much of his family farm.

  He did love working the family operation. Of course he did. He’d never wanted for anything different, the way Clarissa had. She’d gone off to culinary school, and then she’d tried to get a job in the city at a fancy restaurant.

  Cherry had done the same, graduating in educational counseling, and she worked at a college in San Antonio now. Will knew the most about that, and while no one in the family had asked in a long while, being on the cruise together had brought up some renewed questions about how Cherry could stay away when Mama was so sick.

  Will kept his mouth shut. He’d learned that was the best way to survive in the Cooper family. At least when it came to personal things, he didn’t say much. If there was a problem with a cowboy or cowgirl, he could yell with the best of them. But matters of the heart? He shut right down.

  Which was probably why his pulse banged against his ribs, begging him to get back in the truck and get on home. No one came out onto the porch or down the front steps to greet him, and the house had no sidewalk leading up to it. It had to be about a hundred years old, but it seemed to be smiling at him as he made his way across the lawn. Someone obviously took care of the yard, as the lawn wasn’t overgrown, and the trees had neat and clean beds around their trunks. The house had been painted recently, in Will’s estimation, and he could appreciate someone taking care of their property.

  He’d just put his foot on the first step to go knock on the door when he heard a voice. “…fine, Daddy,” the woman said.

  Will froze. Gretchen.

  “I don’t mind doing the yard work. I’ll just check out the front and then come do those weeds in the back.” She came bustling around the corner, her eyes sweeping the street and then the driveway. She froze, her hands halfway into a pair of gardening gloves.

  Will swept his cowboy hat from his head, because he was a right fool. The motion caught Gretchen’s attention, and her eyes locked onto his. He expected his nerves to riot, but for some unknown reason, they…calmed.

  “Howdy,” he said, taking a slow step toward her.

  The heat of the day thawed her—or maybe his voice, though Will told himself not to be arrogant and not to assume that this woman felt anything for him. Just because he couldn’t stop thinking about her didn’t mean she felt anything for him. Anything but loathing.

  She came toward him too, finishing the job of putting on her gloves. “Good morning,” she said professionally. She stopped a good distance from him too, her eyebrows up in a silent question of Well? Your sixty seconds starts…now!

  “Listen,” he said, clearing his throat afterward. “I just wanted to apologize about last night.” He wrung the brim of his hat like it was full of water and he needed every drop to come out. “Of course it’s not your fault I put that stu—apple in my truck and then sat in it.”

  Gretchen’s features softened. She held out a pair of gardening gloves. “Want to help me with the weeds in the back?”

  “Oh, uh, sure.” Will said nothing about his promise to be back at Sweet Water Falls Farm in a half-hour. He took the gloves and put them on, finding them too small and snug but saying nothing.

  “Good, because my daddy is driving me crazy,” Gretchen said. “Maybe if you’re here, he’ll behave.” She started back toward the corner of the house she’d hurried around a moment ago. “You didn’t have to drive all the way out here to apologize.”

  “I did,” Will said. “I couldn’t sleep last night. I was a real—I was mean. I was just frustrated at myself for not remembering I’d put the apple on the seat.”

  “I get it.”

  “And that I couldn’t eat it later,” he said.