With that, Gretchen stared as Will got behind the wheel of his truck, took a second to buckle his seatbelt, and then backed right on out of her driveway.

  Right on out of her life.

  The next morning, Gretchen’s face felt as crusty and as swollen has it had the morning after the fire at Sweet Water Taffy. She hadn’t been able to find the courage to text or call Will last night, and foolishly, she searched the crowd who’d gathered in the front parking lot for him instead.

  He wasn’t there, at least not that she could see. He wore such a blindingly white cowboy hat, she didn’t think she could miss him. Truck after truck pulled in, and then people started parking down the road.

  Gretchen clutched her notecards, her stomach trying to claw its way into her brain.

  “Gretchen,” Jon said, and she blinked away from the sea of faces. He looked like he’d been trying to get her attention for more than a moment, and she gave him a quick smile.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m ready.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask that.” He nodded to someone to her left, and she looked that way, an insane amount of hope shooting to the back of her throat. Of course Will wouldn’t stay away from this, one of the most important events of her life.

  She found a tall Cooper man standing over that way, but it wasn’t Will. By the look on Travis Cooper’s face, his brother wasn’t coming.

  Gretchen’s emotions shook and shattered, and then Jon stepped in front of the mic and said, “Welcome everyone. We won’t waste your time this morning. I give you the tireless and fearless owner of Sweet Water Taffy, Gretchen Bellows!” He looked at her with a perfectly charming smile on his face, the one he used for all the customers.

  She could see the urgency in his eyes too, telling her to dwell on Will later. Re-open the shop now.

  So she glued a smile on her lips and stepped over to him. “Thank you, Jon,” she said, taking a moment to arrange her notecards on the podium in front of her.

  Her next thought was, Why is there a podium here? It’s a candy shop.

  Rattled, she looked up from her notes, utterly lost.

  Then she met a pair of eyes she’d know anywhere. They followed her into her dreams, and she knew exactly what they looked like when he smiled, when he was fixing to kiss her, and when he wanted to rage about waiting too long for pizza.

  Will had come.

  She wanted to run to him, but the crowd shifted, and she lost sight of those pretty ocean-colored eyes she wanted to dive into and swim around in for the rest of her life.

  The woman I love.

  She wanted to question him further about what he’d said last night, but her bravery had failed her once again. She wasn’t perfect either, and she hated that she made him feel like he had to be in order to be with her.

  “Gretchen,” Jon hissed out of the corner of his smile.

  She looked down at her notecards and took a great, big breath. “Wow,” she said as she looked up. “Thank you so much for coming out to support our grand re-opening. I sure hope we have enough caramels inside…”

  23

  Travis Cooper adjusted the jacket over his shoulders, knowing it didn’t quite lay right. He left the dressing room anyway, the three men waiting for him out in front of all the mirrors looking his way the moment he did.

  Lee’s eyes scanned down to Trav’s boots, as if it mattered what the jacket looked like with these jeans. He’d worn these to urge Berthas into the milking chutes this morning, along with the boots. He’d literally run back to his cabin, put on a bunch more deodorant and a different shirt, and hopped in Lee’s truck ten seconds after that.

  Will kept his eyes on the jacket, but Trav couldn’t tell if his brother liked it or not. Will glared at everything these days. Positively everything, as Trav had caught him eyeing Mama with daggers when she’d asked about Gretchen’s grand reopening.

  That event was a week old, and Will still hadn’t gone to get his girlfriend back in his life. If Trav had been living with him, he was sure Will would be just as sighy and just as slammy as Trav had been after he’d broken up with Shayla.

  The salesman who’d helped Travis find this jacket nodded appreciatively and approached first. “We can let it out in the shoulder,” he said, brushing his hand along the offending part of the jacket. “But this looks great with the hat.”

  Travis had found his wedding cowboy hat first. He wanted his tux to match it, and that was the purpose of today’s visit. Shay had told him if he didn’t get to town to order his tux today, she’d call off the wedding. She’d agreed to be married on his family farm, but she would not allow him to show up in jeans and a plaid shirt.

  He’d demanded to know what was wrong with his clothes, and then she’d started kissing him, so he’d forgotten everything after that. She sure knew how to get what she wanted.

  “Guys?” Travis asked, throwing his arms straight out to his sides. “What do you think?”

  “Looks great,” Will said disinterestedly. Honestly, Travis wasn’t sure why he’d brought him along. He hadn’t cared where they’d gone to lunch either. It was like the usually-opinionated-and-didn’t-hold-back Will had disappeared.

  With a jolt, Travis realized he had. “Will,” he said. “Really. What do you think?”

  Will looked up from his phone again, his eyes dark with irritation. Travis didn’t care; he’d weathered darker looks than this. “I think it matches the hat really well,” he said.

  “Me too,” Lee said, and that was that. Trav knew he wouldn’t get much more from his brothers.

  “You guys said you wanted to come,” he said, frustrated with them.

  “You said you’d buy my lunch,” Will said, an attempt at a smile touching his face.

  “Like you can’t afford your own lunch,” Trav shot back at him.

  “I had to drive to town to get Ford from his birthday party,” Lee said, and he sank back into the luxurious red recliners outside the men’s dressing rooms.

  Travis heaved a great big sigh and looked at the attendant. “I think this is the only one I need to try on. I do want the shoulders wider, and I need more room in my underarm.”

  “Yes.” The man whipped out his tape measure like it was a sword and started taking down numbers.

  Travis stared at his brothers, one standing and one sitting. Neither of them seemed to care about his laser glare. It probably wasn’t as strong as theirs.

  “Can you make the pants into shorts?” he asked, not removing his eyes from his brothers. Neither of them moved or even looked at him. Lee looked like he’d passed out in two seconds flat, which he probably had.

  “Shorts, sir?” the salesman repeated, looking up with surprise.

  “Yeah,” Travis said, raising his voice. “I saw these really hip shorts on a guy online. They went all the way down to his knee, and he wore the usual attire up top. I’m thinking I want to wear shorts at my wedding.”

  At least the yelling got Will to look up. He blinked and asked, “What?”

  “Not a good idea,” Lee said, opening his eyes.

  “Shay will murder you in front of everyone,” Will added. He shook his head, no smile in sight. “He’s kidding. He doesn’t want shorts for his wedding.”

  “What’s with you guys?” Travis asked. He shook his head at the salesman. No, he didn’t want to upset Shay at the wedding. He’d totally wear shorts to get married. Maybe he wasn’t as hip as the couple he’d seen online, but he’d still do it.

  Shay would fillet him if he did; Will was right about that.

  “Nothing,” Lee said.

  “Let me go check on the alteration schedule,” the salesman said, glancing at Will and Lee in distaste before he nodded at Travis. “You can give me that.”

  Travis shrugged out of the jacket and handed it to the man, who couldn’t seem to get away from them fast enough. That was probably a good thing, as Travis was about to lose his mind.

  “You know what?” Lee asked. “I take that back. I know what’s wrong with me, and that’s that I don’t want to go to this stupid wedding—no offense, Trav—alone.” He looked from Travis to Will. “I need a date.”

  Will put away his phone and exchanged a look with Travis that comprised a whole conversation. “Yeah? Who are you going to ask?”

  “I don’t know,” Lee mumbled, but his face grew redder every half-second.

  Travis’s first inclination was to tease him, but he bit that back when he saw Will shake his head just once. “You can bring someone,” he said instead. “I won’t tell Shay you said the wedding was stupid.”

  Lee flashed a smile. “You know what I mean. I don’t really think it’s stupid. I’m the stupid one who’s thinking about it every second, and it’s not for two more months.”

  Six weeks, but Travis wasn’t going to correct him.

  “Someone on the app?” Will asked, his voice much cooler than Trav’s would’ve been.

  “No,” Lee barked, getting to his feet and looking around like the three of them were planning to rob this tuxedo shop. “I’m not using the app anymore.”

  Will frowned. “Who’d you meet then?”

  Travis waited silently, because it was an excellent question. Lee left the farm less than Will, who hadn’t been off of it in a week.

  Lee cleared his throat. “I think you should talk to Gretchen.”

  “Yes,” Travis said, jumping in to agree. “I think that’s an excellent idea.”

  “How did this get on me so fast?” Will asked. “You’re just deflecting, because you don’t want to tell us who you’re sweet on.”

  “I’m not sweet on her,” Lee said with plenty of disgust, as if liking a woman was the worst thing a man could do. “I’ve only met her once, that’s all.”

  “Bet you can’t stop thinking about her,” Travis said, shooting a look at Will. He started to open his mouth, but Travis cut him off with, “Just like Will can’t sleep, because he lays awake in bed, thinking about Gretchen.”

  Will turned his blue-green daggers toward Travis.

  “Or how he hasn’t gone running one day this week,” Travis said, deciding if he was going to die today, it better happen at the hands of one of his brothers as he called them out. “Because even running with everything he has doesn’t drive Gretchen from his mind.”

  “Stop it,” Will growled.

  “He’s right,” Lee said. “I haven’t seen you running.”

  “I’m just taking a break,” Will said. “I’ve already got the alarm set for Monday morning.”

  “Show me,” Travis demanded, and Will gripped his phone tighter.

  “Listen,” he said, his face turning pale a moment later. “I mean—this is none of your business.”

  “Yeah, like when you sold me out in front of everyone about my behavior when me and Shay were split.”

  “This is different,” Will said. “You had a misunderstanding. Gretchen doesn’t—she can’t—she…I’m not good enough for her.”

  “You saw her at the re-opening,” Travis said. “I know you did, and how much she brightened when she saw you.”

  Will leaned forward, anger streaming from him. “I’m not talking about this here,” he hissed, his voice so menacing that Travis shrank back.

  Will straightened and looked left and right. He seemed to gather himself back together and smooth the emotion from his face. “Let’s help Lee. I’m beyond help.”

  “You are not,” Lee said. “I saw her last Saturday too, Will.” His voice came out much gentler. “She looked at you the way—” He went mute and cut a look at Travis.

  “Go on,” Travis said, because he really wanted to know what Lee would say too.

  “Yeah,” Will said slowly. “Go on.”

  “She looked at you—however briefly, because you scampered away—the way Shay looks at Trav. The way Mama looks at Daddy. She loves you too, Will.”

  “I’m not in love with her,” Will said, but the words came out flat and without life.

  “Liar,” Lee and Travis said together, and a grin spread across Travis’s face. This was how the Cooper brothers talked. They didn’t let each other get away with anything.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Will said, most of the fight leaving him. “I’m not going to talk to her, so unless she shows up at the farm begging me to be with her, it’s over.” He cleared his throat and looked at Lee. “Who’s got you sighing and flustered?”

  Lee narrowed his eyes and looked between Travis and Will. Travis pressed his palms together and batted his eyelashes. “I won’t tease you.”

  “I met this woman at Ford’s math night,” he said. “Rosalie Reynolds?” He mumbled the name, and Travis looked at Will.

  “Did you get that?”

  “I did not,” Will said.

  “Rosalie Reynolds,” Lee barked. “She’s this super-smart, super-attractive, way-out-of-my-league game developer. There’s no way I can ask her. We don’t run in the same circles at all.”

  Travis’s mind spit all kinds of ideas at him, but it was Will who said, “This is easy, Lee. She was at Ford’s math night? Why?”

  “She did a demo on this math facts video game.”

  “Did you buy the game for Ford?” Will asked.

  “No,” Lee said. “It was—” His brain obviously caught up to his mouth, because he once again cut off, his eyebrows flying toward the ceiling.

  “Buy the game for Ford,” Will said. “Then, you’ll have a reason to contact her. Next thing you know, you have the woman’s number.”

  “Then you’ll ask her to the wedding,” Travis said, grinning at Lee.

  “This isn’t that easy,” Lee said, but the wheels were obviously spinning in his mind.

  “All right,” Travis said, plucking Will’s phone from his hand as he had it out again. “Now, let’s talk about how you’re going to make up with Gretchen…”

  “Travis,” Will growled. “I was texting with one of our cowboys about his vacation days.”

  “Come on, bro,” Travis said. “This is way more important than that.”

  “I agree with Trav,” Lee said. “You shouldn’t walk away from her just because a few things got hard while she rebuilt her shop.”

  “That’s not why I walked away,” Will said.

  “You’re who she wants,” Lee said, and when he spoke in his older-brother, caring tone, Travis usually sat up and listened.

  Will did too, and he looked past Travis as they arrived at the check-out counter to order his tuxedo. “You think so?”

  “I know so,” Lee said. “You’re just like Trav—you get too far inside your head. You’ve invented all these reasons you can’t be together, none of which Gretchen has actually said.”

  Travis nodded in an overdramatic way, and Will sighed. “Fine,” he said. “So how do I get her back?”

  Travis took his credit card back from the salesman. “I have a few ideas,” he said. “Actually, these come from Shay, but she’s going to be so proud of me for finding a way to suggest them today.” He beamed at his brothers, but for some reason, they didn’t smile back.

  24

  Lee couldn’t sleep, and he spent a good thirty minutes tossing from left to right before he got up. He paused in the doorway of his son’s bedroom, the silver moonlight falling across the floor but not touching the boy.

  Ford meant the world to him, and Lee questioned whether he should try to bring another woman into either of their lives. He had Martha, his mother, and she didn’t seem to worry about dating or the men she introduced into Ford’s life.

  He leaned into the doorway, the chill of the air conditioning kissing his bare chest. Lee had never felt so torn in his life. He’d always known he’d inherit Sweet Water Falls Farm and the accompany dairy operation, Cooper & Co. Always, and he’d always wanted it.

  He loved working outside, loved cows and horses and dogs and goats and chickens, and he couldn’t remember a day he didn’t love putting on his cowboy boots and hat, finishing his coffee, and heading out into the dawn of a new day.

  When he’d married Martha, he’d not had a single second thought. When she’d filed for divorce only a couple of years later, he’d been expecting it. He even paid her back for the fee to do so. Lee never doubted what he felt or what the next step should be.

  Until now.

  Ford was almost nine years old. He’d be moving into the fourth grade this year, and he understood things Lee didn’t want to explain to him. At the same time, Lee could admit he was lonely—only to himself—and he wanted to try to tame the temper-tantrum-beast inside him and find someone he could kiss in the evenings. Someone who would bring him hot tea when he didn’t feel well, and who’d curl into him when he tossed and whispered that she was right there and everything was okay.

  Sighing, he turned away from Ford’s bedroom and padded down the hall in only his boxer shorts. He wanted to be someone’s soft place to fall too. He wanted to hold his wife while she cried and reassure her that he was right there, and he’d make sure whatever had upset her, he’d fix.

  Right now, in his dark kitchen, he opened the fridge and flooded his retinas with light. Squinting, he pulled out an energy drink and popped the tab. If he was lucky, he’d get down a few swallows, find his cowboy courage, and get Ford’s backpack from the boy’s bedroom.

  Lee drank a lot of coffee during the day, but his energy drinks had twice as much caffeine, and he felt it infusing him with strength to get this job done. Travis’s wedding sat on the calendar, almost like a death date to Lee. A noose around his neck he felt tightening centimeter by centimeter.

  He took another swallow of the grape-flavored drink and slammed the can on the countertop. A bit splashed out and hit his hand, but he just wiped it on his shorts as he strode back toward the back of the cabin. Ford slept like the dead, and it wasn’t hard for Lee to step into the bedroom, cross it to the corner desk, and lift the backpack from the floor.