Gretchen glanced at him as he finally caught up to her. They walked side-by-side for a moment. “Is that right?”

  “Which part?”

  “That you would’ve eaten it later?”

  “Of course,” he said, glad she hadn’t asked him why he couldn’t sleep. Since he was going with all honesty today, he might have told her she’d been plaguing his dreams—night and day—for weeks now. Months maybe, except there was no maybe about it.

  “Why do you find that hard to believe?” he asked.

  “You don’t seem to like sweets,” she said. “That’s all.”

  “I do,” he said, focusing forward as they reached the back yard. Pure paradise opened up before him, right along with a bubbling stream. “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “My mother loved to garden.”

  Will glanced at her, the sadness pouring from her so obvious to him. “How long has she been gone?”

  Gretchen yanked her attention away from the bushes and flowers and trees and blinked as she stared at Will. “How did you know she was gone?”

  He shrugged, his heart shredding along the edges. “My own mama isn’t well,” he said. “I think I could just hear it in your voice.” He surveyed the land again. “Is all of this yours? All the way back to that fence?” A white fence sat in the distance, with a great pasture beyond that. Will could see horses back there, and he’d dreamt of a place like this for himself.

  He had the small house out in the country, but no room for horses of his own, and the landscaping around the farm was for function, not beauty. Her mother had created this to be enjoyed and Will took a few seconds to do just that.

  “Beyond,” Gretchen said. “My parents had horses in the past.”

  “But no more,” he said, not asking.

  “My dad is on oxygen all the time now,” she said quietly. “Come on. You might as well meet him while you’re here.”

  “If I’m going to be doing the man’s yard work, I suppose I should.” Will grinned at her, and to his great surprise, she smiled back.

  “You owe me, Mister Cooper,” she said, and Will hadn’t been out with anyone in a while, but even he recognized when he was being flirted with. He stared after Gretchen as she started walking again, and he didn’t get going fast enough before she noticed.

  She turned back to him. “You comin’?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, jogging to catch her. She ducked her head and smiled, waited for him to catch her, and they shared something when he did. Will wasn’t entirely sure what it was, and he didn’t have someone at the farm to ask.

  He did have a long drive home, and maybe Cherry wouldn’t be working today. Of course she wouldn’t, because it was New Year’s Day, and she had a normal job with normal vacation days.

  It was only cowboys who worked every day of the year. And nurses and doctors, Will told himself. Pilots, truck drivers, Mother Nature, and the Good Lord Himself.

  They walked along a fence with flowers spilling from baskets along the top, and Will’s stomach clenched as an idea formed in his mind. “Gretchen,” he said as they reached the corner of the fence and even more of the yard opened up before them.

  She looked at him expectantly.

  He just had to say it. Ask her. The words foamed in his gut, rolling upward and out of his mouth. “Would you go out with me?”

  Pure shock covered her expression, and her eyes widened. “Like, on a date?”

  “That’s usually what a man means when he asks a woman out,” a woman said, and Will whipped around and backed up at the same time, as if he might need to protect Gretchen from the hag who’d appeared out of nowhere.

  An older woman leaned against what wasn’t a fence, but a railing, a smile made of pure glee on her face.

  Gretchen moved out from behind his weak protective stance and to his side. “My aunt Patty,” she said. “Aunt Patty, this is William Cooper.”

  “William Cooper?” a man practically yelled, and Will thought he’d fit in real nicely at the farm. A thumping, rolling sound came across the deck, and an older gentleman appeared at Aunt Patty’s side. He was obviously Gretchen’s father, though he wore a line of disapproval between his eyebrows right now.

  “Ain’t no daughter of mine goin’ out with a man with a name like that.”

  4

  “Daddy,” Gretchen said, exasperation exploding through her. It seemed to multiply with every half-second that passed. “My daddy,” she said, throwing a look in Will’s direction. She couldn’t look at him, so she looked past him. “Reginald Bellows.”

  “Pleasure to meet you both,” Will said diplomatically.

  “I knew a guy named Will once,” Daddy shouted, and Gretchen pressed her eyes closed in a long blink. She could say the next part. Served with him in Korea.

  “Served with him in Korea,” Daddy said, mimicking her thoughts. “He had a fake leg, that one. He’d hide things in it. Up to no good.” He slid his eyes down to Will’s legs, and Gretchen wanted the ground to swallow them both right into a hole that went all the way to Korea. “Do you have a fake leg, son?”

  “No, sir,” Will said, a smile in his voice. Gretchen dared to peek at him, and sure enough, he wore a smile on his face. That so wasn’t fair, because he was already stunningly good-looking while growling about his sticky shirt or griping about sitting in chocolate and caramel. Why did he have to be blessed with perfectly straight, white teeth too?

  Will held up his hands, the ridiculously flowered gloves plain to see. “I just came to see about some weeds back here.”

  “Sounds suspicious,” Daddy said. “Beth didn’t mind the weeds. She said it gave the garden character.”

  “These weeds are choking out her strawberries,” Gretchen said, doing her best not to roll her eyes. “Come on, Will. Let’s get it done.”

  “Wait,” Aunt Patty said, and Gretchen might just leave her here. She glared at her aunt, but she really needed to work on heating her gaze, because Aunt Patty didn’t care at all. She continued with, “I want to hear how Gretchen’s going to answer your question.”

  All eyes landed on her then, including Will’s and Howl’s. Gretchen heated from head to toe. She had no good reason to be attracted to Will, other than his physical looks. The man was a god, and he had to know it. He was single, and he had asked her out, and Gretchen would need a very good reason to say no.

  He’d been helpful at the tent event at Sweetspot, and at some point during all of their interactions, she’d caught glimpses of sweetness behind all of his rougher exterior.

  “It’s fine,” he mumbled, dropping his eyes to the ground. “It’s no big⁠—”

  “Yes,” she said over him. He raised his eyes back to hers, and Gretchen saw the hope and desire swimming there. “I’ll go out with you.” Her own surprise mingled with his, and they smiled together.

  “Great.” He cleared his throat. He looked from her to Daddy and Aunt Patty, then back to her. “I’ll go start on the weeds.” He walked away, leaving Gretchen with her family.

  All three of them watched him walk away, his hatted head held high. Gretchen sighed and said, “Not a word, either of you.”

  “I’m surprised you said yes,” Aunt Patty said. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “Yeah, well, me either,” Gretchen said, tugging her gloves on a little tighter. She tore her eyes from Will’s back and faced her daddy and his sister. “Please, try not to burn the house down while I weed your strawberry patch.”

  “Oh, go on now,” Daddy said with a hint of gruffness in his voice. “We’ll be fine here.” He turned away, dragging his oxygen tank with him.

  Aunt Patty shot stars out of her eyes, and Gretchen did let her eyes roll then. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m not talking about this on the way home. If you’re going to do that, I’m not taking you.”

  “You wouldn’t dare leave me here with Reginald.” Aunt Patty’s glee dropped ten notches as her fingers tightened on the top of the railing.

  Gretchen took a step. “I would, Aunt Patty,” she said over her shoulder. “I totally would.” After all, she’d just said yes to a date with a man she hardly knew. A cowboy she’d never really had a good interaction with. A handsome cowboy she also couldn’t stop thinking about, despite the hiccups between them.

  Maybe she had something to smile about too.

  The following evening, the bell on the door rang at the sweet shop just as Gretchen slid another tray of double chocolate brownies into the case. She wasn’t working the counter for the nightly sweet tooth rush, and she turned to head back into the kitchen. She could monitor the status of trays from there.

  She happened to glance up, catching sight of the cowboy hats who’d just entered. Just about every man in Sweet Water Falls wore a cowboy hat, but somehow, Gretchen recognized one of them.

  The man wearing it was Will Cooper. That cowboy seemed to have only North Pole magnets in his body, and they were all attracting her South Pole ones.

  She stalled, and their eyes met. He reached up and touched the brim of his hat. Gretchen smiled at him, her feet carrying her further behind the candy counter, right to the very end. “Howdy, Will,” she said, her gaze stuck on his. “Travis.”

  “Ma’am,” Travis said, but she didn’t even look at him. She jolted, realizing how very much she was giving away, and she dragged her eyes over to Will’s brother. He grinned like he’d just found out he held the winning lottery ticket, and Gretchen’s face heated.

  He indicated himself and Will, who hadn’t said hello yet. “We heard you had some new treats in the store today. Grasshoppers?” He scanned the trays of candy in the case between them.

  “Yes,” Gretchen said as professionally as she could. “Those are Jon’s creation. He has them over there, on demo, today.” She nodded toward the other half of the store, where Jon had a small group of people around him.

  Mostly women, but Gretchen wasn’t going to tease Jon about his charm. If it brought in customers—male or female—and his candy was delicious, Gretchen didn’t care why the people came.

  Travis turned and said, “Thanks” over his shoulder as he walked away.

  Will leaned against the candy counter, his eyes on his brother’s back. “He has a real sweet tooth.”

  “Mm. But you don’t.”

  The cowboy looked at her, his teal eyes blazing and bright. “I did, once,” he said. “Got right addicted to sugar, and I had to make some serious adjustments when the doctor told me I had pre-diabetes.”

  Gretchen’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tease you.”

  Will grinned at her. “Sure you did.” He looked back over to his brother, who held up a small package of grasshoppers and then a big one. “He’s going to kill me one day.” Will chuckled and pushed away from the counter. “Real good to see you, Gretchen.”

  He took a step away and then another one, and Gretchen couldn’t believe he was going to go. Just like that? They hadn’t made plans for their date. He didn’t even have her number, as far as she knew.

  “Will,” she blurted, and he turned back to her.

  Travis came up behind him. “The big one or the small? What do you think for dessert tonight?”

  “I’m not going to eat any,” Will said, his expression darkening. “I don’t care.”

  “You’re the one who wanted to stop here,” Travis said, his voice as black as Will’s usually bright eyes. “Did you not get her number?” He looked over to Gretchen, and she wasn’t standing behind a steel wall, but a chest-high case made of glass.

  “Travis,” Will hissed out of the corner of his mouth.

  Gretchen reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “He didn’t get my number,” she said, deciding to lean into the humiliation. It came often enough that she might as well. “Because he didn’t ask.”

  “You were supposed to ask,” Travis said. “Hurry up. We have to get back before Lee figures out we’re gone.” He bustled off toward the register, and Will watched him for a breath of time.

  “Better get the big one,” he called. “To appease Lee.” He turned back to Gretchen, his smile timid and a bit trembly on his lips. “I wanted to text you last night about our, uh, date.” He cleared his throat. “But I don’t have your number, so…”

  “So…can I have your number, Gretchen?” she asked, flirting with him. He didn’t seem to get that she was, and she could admit she’d never been great at letting a man know she was interested in him.

  “Yes,” he said with a chuckle. “I’d love to have your number, Gretchen.”

  Only if you say my name like that again, she thought, but thankfully she didn’t have to go into full-blow mortification mode as she didn’t say it out loud. Instead, she read off her number, and Will put it in his phone. Their eyes met again, and the world did that thing where it stopped.

  At least until Travis said, “Stop staring at her like that. It’s creepy. And we have to go.” He nudged Will, and the trance broke.

  Air rushed into Gretchen’s lungs, and she dropped her chin, sure her face was a flaming red ball of fire.

  “I swear, Trav,” Will bit out. “You’re the worst brother ever.” He started for the door without saying goodbye. Yesterday, as he’d left her father’s house, their goodbye had been stilted and strange, but it was better than not getting one at all.

  “I’m the worst brother?” Travis called after him. “I drove you here to get your girlfriend’s number, because your back hurts. How am I the worst bro—?” The door closed behind them as they exited the shop, and Gretchen could only blink into the silence left in their wake.

  “Girlfriend?” Gretchen asked only herself, and the refrigeration unit that kept the candy from melting in the Texas heat kicked on as her answer.

  That evening, Gretchen paced in her house, Elvis watching her from the top of the couch. “I’m just going to tell him when he texts that I can’t go,” she said, looking at the gray tabby cat for approval. “Whatever night he suggests, I’ll be busy.”

  She’d been thinking about Will for hours—nothing new—but this time, her thoughts had taken her down a more dangerous path. She didn’t know the man. He didn’t say goodbye to her. She wasn’t even sure they’d get along for longer than ten minutes.

  Every interaction she had with him seemed to get interrupted or ruined somehow, from her father and aunt overhearing him as he asked her out, to a strange half-hug goodbye while she still wore muddy gloves, to him storming out of the shop while his brother continued to spill secrets.

  “Meow,” Elvis said, and Gretchen went into the kitchen. She worked in a frenzy to get the cat fed, chopping up last night’s leftover salmon and mixing it with some wet cat food and some dry kibble.

  She added a couple of cherry tomatoes and put the bowl on the floor. “Here you go, sweetie.” Elvis jumped down and joined her in the kitchen, his tail held high. She slumped down the cabinets next to the cat as he started noshing on his dinner, wishing she could calm her racing mind.

  “You’re right,” she said to the feline. “He was probably just embarrassed at the pharmacy that one day. Then a little awkward at the mall, because Travis said he was particular about his shirt.”

  Her brain started to quiet. “He was frustrated at the Beach Bash, and maybe he blurts some things out sometimes. He didn’t know Aunt Patty and Daddy were going to be right there, eavesdropping.”

  In all honesty, she should’ve warned him that her aunt had such a tendency. “And his back hurts, so he asked his brother to bring him to the shop to get my number.” She sighed then, because it was romantic that Will wanted her number.

  She closed her eyes. “Maybe he hasn’t dated in a while. He’s just out of practice when it comes to saying goodbye.” Heaven knew Gretchen wasn’t great at anything when it came to men, and she had plenty of stories to tell too. Elvis had heard them all already, and she was pretty sure the only reason the tabby stuck around was for the salmon bowl Gretchen had just made for him.

  Her eyes flew open. “Oh, no.” She moaned as she got to her feet. “What if his back hurts because of the weeding?”

  Elvis didn’t even look up from his bowl, the glutton. Gretchen reached for her phone next to the cutting board to call Will and demand to know why his back hurt. She couldn’t be responsible for that.

  As she stared at her device, she realized she didn’t have his number. He only had hers, and he hadn’t used it yet.

  “He will,” she said, refusing to remove her eyes from her phone. “He’ll text or call any second now.” Her stomach grumbled, and she should make herself some sort of salmon bowl out of the leftovers, but she didn’t.

  Darkness had started to fall, so surely Will couldn’t still be at work. He’d text or call any minute now…

  5

  Will stole out to the back deck the moment Travis said he was going to go shower. His phone lit up the night, and he cursed the fact that he’d been at the farmhouse for dinner for so long.

  Everyone wanted to hear about those grasshoppers, and not a single one of them didn’t get claimed. Lee had given Travis a cock-eyed look and said, “Is that where you two went earlier today?”

  Travis had simply grinned at their oldest brother and shrugged one shoulder with a mouthful of crispy rice, caramel, and chocolate in his mouth. Lee’s pretend ire had disappeared the moment he’d taken a bite of the treat too.

  None of that had helped get Will away from the family dinner sooner, and he didn’t want to call more attention to himself than had already been done. Travis knew of his insane crush on Gretchen Bellows, but no one but Cherry knew he’d asked her on a date.

  “You’re not going,” he told himself as he lifted his eyes from his phone. He couldn’t see anything now, as the bright rectangle imprinted on the backs of his eyelids every time he blinked. The war that had been raging inside him since he’d left the cute little house in Short Tail yesterday continued.

  He’d never had a normal interaction with Gretchen. Just when he thought he might be able to pull that off, something happened to twist things sideways. Yesterday, he’d acted like an idiot when it was time to say goodbye. Instead of just saying the word and waving like a normal person, he’d done some weird lunge at her to hug her. She’d patted him on the back, which might have been fine had she not been wearing muddy gloves.