Clarissa held up the caramel apple Trav had brought home from the Fall Ball last night. “That’s my Oreo caramel apple,” he said. “There was this great place at the Ball. Sweet Water Taffy? We all got a free apple as part of our admission ticket.”

  “Did you bring it to tease us all?” his sister asked.

  “Yeah,” he said dryly. “I’m going to wave it around in front of all of you and then eat it myself.” He rolled his eyes at her again. “I wanted you to see it. You love stuff like that. Number two, I thought I’d slice it up and we can all have a piece.”

  He had a sweet tooth like any Texan, but a whole caramel apple was too much for him. It was the havoc it wreaked on his dental work he couldn’t stand. A slice or two was fine. A whole apple? He didn’t want to lose a crown.

  “I’ll slice it,” she said.

  “I’ll go start the grill,” Will said.

  “These buns are frozen,” Lee said. “I’ve got some at my place. I’ll go grab them and be right back.”

  “Thanks, Lee,” Travis said, and he threw a look at Daddy. He still stood in the kitchen, in front of the open fridge, seemingly trying to figure out how he’d forgotten about the roast.

  “Daddy,” Trav said. “I was just talkin’ to Mama about my girlfriend.”

  Rissa sucked in a breath, and Daddy turned from the fridge. His eyebrows went up. “Shayla?”

  Praise the Lord, Trav thought. At least someone listened when he spoke at family dinners.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I was askin’ her if it would be relationship-suicide to bring her out here for dinner one night.” He tossed a look to Spencer. “I mean, Rissa brings Spence.”

  “It’s a deal-breaker almost every time,” Spencer said with a grin. He was clearly teasing, his eyes shining with laughter.

  “Only when there’s mud and grease,” Rissa clarified. “We’re free of both of those today.”

  “It’s the not-knowing if something will come up,” Spence said. “That you have to watch out for.” He met Rissa’s eyes and looked back at Travis. “We just went and got pizza that night. It wasn’t a complete waste.”

  “Shayla’s your girlfriend now?” Rissa asked, taking up a seat at the bar. “The Ball must’ve gone well.”

  “The Ball went very well,” Trav confirmed, finishing with the burgers. He turned with the plate of perfectly seasoned meat in his hand, only to be blocked by his father. “Daddy, for Pete’s sake. Close the fridge and go sit by Mama.”

  He toed the fridge closed and stepped past his dad.

  “You don’t have to kick it,” Daddy said. “I’m right here.”

  “I didn’t kick it,” Trav said, his voice taking on a tone of insubordination too. “It’s fine. We’ll have hamburgers.”

  “I put together a salad too, dear,” Mama said, and Trav gave her a smile.

  “That’s right,” he said to her. “Hamburgers and salad.” And if he was still hungry later, he had plenty of food at his cabin.

  Later that night, he and Will sat out on their front patio, facing the pond. The water lapped leisurely at itself and the shore, and Trav sighed as he put another bite of ice cream in his mouth. Rissa needed to get rid of all the cherry chocolate crunch, and Trav was more than happy to oblige.

  She made new flavors every couple of months, and he never complained when she brought a huge vat of leftover ice cream about to go bad to his cabin.

  “I don’t like this stuff,” Will said distastefully.

  Trav watched as he put another bite of the rich, dark chocolate ice cream into his mouth. He grinned and shook his head. “Then why are you eating it?”

  Will looked at him with a blank expression. “It’s going to go bad.”

  Trav burst out laughing. “So what?” he said between all the chuckles. “You don’t have to eat it.”

  Will put his spoon back in his bowl, and his bowl on the little table between them. “Why can’t she ever have extra of the good stuff? Like banana brownie or something?”

  Travis just shook his head and admired the sun as it set over the pond. “If you tell her what you want, she’ll make it just for you.”

  “That sounds like something you would do.”

  “She’d do it for you too.” Travis gave his brother a look out of the side of his eye, but Will refused to look at him. “She doesn’t leave you out on purpose.”

  “That’s what you keep tellin’ me.”

  “We don’t,” Trav said. “Cherry doesn’t live here. She doesn’t talk to any of us. And Lee⁠—”

  “Lee is a fun-killer,” Will said darkly. “He works too much and never even thinks that we might want to have a life outside of dairy cows and daily schedules.”

  Travis stuck another bite of ice cream in his mouth and stared at his brother. “Wow.”

  “Wow what?”

  “I thought you liked Lee.”

  “I like everyone.”

  “That is so not true.” Travis scoffed, quickly turning it into a laugh. Will did not reciprocate, and Travis realized then that this storm inside him was deep and real. He cleared his throat. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “I maybe mentioned something about us backing down on signing so many big clients, and he flipped a switch. This was last week or last month or something. Then I said I wanted to have a little time off this year around the holidays. He acted like I was getting out a bone saw and wanted his entire right leg.”

  Will huffed and folded his arms. Travis wasn’t sure he’d heard Will put together that many words in a while. The brothers usually spoke in short sentences—they always had to get in what they wanted to say around what everyone else was yelling.

  He didn’t know what to do or say right now. He looked out over the water, glad he had this serene spot to think. He’d come here often in the past several months as he tried to figure out what he really wanted his life to be.

  Thirty-seven, single on paper but married to the farm, childless… That wasn’t what he wanted. He’d been out with a few women this year already, but none of them had stuck.

  Not like Shayla, he thought, quickly shelving her for now.

  “What were you two talkin’ about with the harvest today?” he asked, deciding to take the plunge and go all-in.

  “He wants to buy new equipment in the off-season for next year,” Will said. “I’ve been waiting for six months—six solid months, Trav—to get a new barn built. We can’t have both.”

  Travis nodded, once again letting both sides of the argument sink into his head. It was his natural inclination to agree with Will. They lived together. They were closer in age. He got along better with Will.

  In truth, it was Travis who got along the best with everyone. He was the most laid-back, even when he said things he should’ve thought about first.

  “We’ll talk about it,” Trav said at the same time Will said, “Forget it, Trav. I don’t need you fighting my battles for me.” He got to his feet, his frustration rolling off him like a sound wave. He took a couple of steps past Travis and then came to a complete stop.

  “I’m not going to fight anything for you,” Trav said. “I just meant we’ll have a farm meeting and talk about it. Just because Lee will take over doesn’t mean he gets to make unilateral decisions.”

  Will said nothing, and Trav looked up at the back of his head. “Real mature, Will. I was just trying to help you.”

  Will twisted back and looked over his shoulder at Travis. “Uh, Trav, your girlfriend is here.”

  “What?” Travis jumped to his feet, which earned him a protest from his lower back, and looked toward the house. It didn’t take a magnifying glass to see Shayla walking down the steps toward him.

  Their eyes met across the thirty-foot distance, and Travis handed Will his half-eaten bowl of cherry chocolate ice cream. “She doesn’t look happy,” he murmured.

  “No, she does not,” Will whispered.

  Travis started toward her, hoping and praying with everything inside him that he wasn’t the reason for her unhappiness.

  10

  Shayla’s nerves shouted at her to turn around and get back to her truck. She could hide everything from Travis there. Never mind that the windows were see-through.

  “Hey,” he said, arriving in front of her, and her opportunity to hide disappeared. She told herself she didn’t want to hide from him. She’d come here and stopped at the charming farmhouse to find out where he lived. Then, she’d trundled down the dirt road past a couple of other cabins to this one.

  “Hey.” She breathed in the cottony, clean scent of his shirt as he folded her into a hug.

  “You look like you’re about to throw up.” He stepped back, his eyes all-seeing.

  “Thanks,” she said dryly, though he wasn’t far off. There was that mouth again, saying whatever it wanted.

  “What’s goin’ on?”

  Shayla took in a breath and gazed around. The cabin looked like it had come from a children’s storybook. Made of logs, with the perfectly pointed roof and pristine rain gutters. The walk she’d come down to reach him was made of stones, not cement, and they had red, orange, and brown lines running through them.

  The patio here extended from the one underneath the second-story deck that extended from the back of the house. Two wooden Adirondack chairs sat on the stones, with a little table between them, and she could see herself and her sister sitting here, sipping lemonade while they talked about Claudia’s upcoming delivery for her first child.

  In fact, she’d spent most of the afternoon doing that sans chairs, pond, and luxury stones beneath her feet. Exhaustion punched her behind the eyes, and Shayla looked from the quaint cabin to Travis.

  “Come sit down,” he said, tugging on her hand to get her to move toward the chairs. He and Will had been sitting there when she’d arrived, and she didn’t want to take his brother’s chair. Her feet dragged, and Travis noticed the resistance.

  He released her hand and picked up the bowl on the table, turning to hand it to Will. “Will was just leaving.”

  “Was I?” Will asked, clearly challenging his brother.

  “Yes,” Travis barked. “You’re on dish duty tonight. Go on now. Get.”

  “Get?” Will cocked his eyebrows at his brother and looked at Shayla.

  “This is William,” Travis said, the tone darkening with every syllable. “Will, this is Shayla Nelson.”

  “I’ve heard so much about you,” he said, his voice as smooth as still water that had been buttered. He extended his hand toward Shayla while simultaneously ignoring the half-full bowl of melting ice cream.

  Travis growled in the back of his throat and said, “Shay, this is my nosy brother, Will.”

  “I am not nosy.”

  “You’re always poking yourself into conversations where you don’t belong,” Travis said. “You were totally leaving. You don’t even like the ice cream, and you’ve been complaining about the mosquitoes for a solid twenty minutes.”

  Will’s jaw clenched, and Shayla smiled at him as she shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.” She could definitely see how these ginger-haired cowboys could be labeled gods. Will’s hair was lighter—almost in the blond realm—than Trav’s, and his eyes darker. He wore a full beard that grew in redder in some patches and blonder in others. There might have even been a little bit of gray in there.

  He was handsome, that was for sure, though she preferred the non-washed-out version of him who stood only a couple of feet away. Travis was vibrant and in living color, and Shayla realized in that moment how dull her life had been.

  “Mm.” Will pulled his fingers back, his glare still fixed on his brother. “Don’t tell me to get. I’m not a dog.” With that, he turned and started up the wide steps that led to the front of the house.

  Shayla watched him go, not sure how she felt about the exchange. Travis didn’t seem all that troubled by it, and she remembered that he said not many meals went by without shouting and slamming of things. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “He’s just grumpy about Lee wantin’ to buy new equipment instead of building the barn Will’s been asking for.” Trav moved over to the chairs and collapsed into one. “This is a great spot to just unwind. Come sit.”

  She had the feeling he was commanding her like a dog now, and she got why Will wasn’t fond of it. She still went to sit in the other chair, glad when Travis took her hand in his. “Do you want to talk? Or do you just want to see if any fish will jump?”

  Shayla relaxed, the tension in her muscles realized and then eradicated. “Trav, I… The factory that sews my tents emailed today. They said there was a…situation that had come up, and they wouldn’t be able to get me the three hundred tents I’d ordered for my big launch.”

  He said nothing, and he wasn’t stupid. He knew where she was driving. She just had to keep both hands on the wheel.

  “I called them, and⁠—”

  “You called them on a Sunday?’

  “They emailed me on a Sunday,” she said, her defenses shooting right up. “So yes. Apparently, the nylon they received from the supplier isn’t right. But my guy out of Louisiana says it is. So I have to get down there.”

  “You can’t go hiking in the morning.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve got a six-fifteen flight out of San Antonio. Elaine is taking me, and we have to leave at three-thirty.”

  “All right,” he said, his voice already drifting away from her. The wind rustled through the trees and kicked up the fresh scent of woods and water. Shayla could easily live out here and be the happiest she’d ever been. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slowed down enough to truly enjoy nature. She was always running through it. Analyzing the performance of her shoes or her shorts. Her mind racing ahead to what she had to accomplish that day, and if she could do it.

  She needed to slow down. Country slow. Travis slow.

  She squeezed his fingers. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be gone long. A couple of days.”

  “Okay,” he said, glancing over to her with a kind smile. “What else is eatin’ at you?”

  She looked away quickly. “Nothing.”

  “Right,” he said with plenty of sarcasm.

  “I don’t appreciate the tone,” she said, wondering if she really could “call him on” the behavior she didn’t like.

  “I don’t like being lied to,” he shot back.

  Shayla pressed her teeth together, then her lips. “I just want to sit and watch for fish now.” She’d already told him plenty about her mom. “I don’t want to say something I’ll regret.”

  Travis let a few beats of silence into their conversation. “Okay.” His fingers around hers tightened. “I’m sorry about the tone. I’d help you if I could.”

  “I know that.” Such a thing was very nice to hear, because while Shayla could call on Elaine and Jadyn any time she needed help, his offer was different. It didn’t come out of obligation or overtime he could earn. It came from his heart.

  Shayla had once wondered if the man even had a heart, but sitting with him beside the pond, she accepted that he did. The seconds turned into minutes, and she didn’t want to leave. Eventually, she sighed and released his hand. “I should get home to Sweetie.”

  “Who’s gonna take her for you while you’re gone?” he asked, following suit and standing too. “I could do it.”

  Shayla looked at him finding absolute sincerity on his face. “Thank you.” She stepped into his arms without being invited, and he held her close. Within the circle of his arms, it didn’t matter that her mom had been “disappointed” in Shayla’s drive. It didn’t matter that Travis had questioned her the same way her mother had.

  You called them on a Sunday?

  He’d comforted her afterward, and he’d apologized for his tone of voice. Her mother had never apologized to her, for anything.

  “Text me all the details about your big launch,” Travis said, stepping back and running his hand through his hair. She realized then that he wasn’t wearing a cowboy hat, and she saw him as so human in that moment. “I’d love to hear more about it.”

  “It’s my huge holiday family camping event,” she said. “I can’t do it without the new family-sized tents.” The load of bricks in her mind refused to budge, despite his kindness and his growing smile.

  “One thing my mama taught me,” he said as he took her hand and started up the stone steps to her truck. “Is that things usually work out.”

  “Yes, I think all Texan mothers teach their children that,” Shayla said.

  Travis laughed, and she really wanted to end the night on a high note. They had last night too, but he hadn’t kissed her. She wondered if she could kiss him tonight, before her flight. Before her stressful week began. Before she lost her nerve, lost herself to her job, and lost him.

  Fear bolted through her. She better not kiss him, just in case she did make a huge mess of things. She had a suspicion that kissing Travis Cooper would change her life, and when they broke up, she’d be devastated.

  Better not, she told herself over and over until they arrived at her truck. He opened the driver’s door for her and gazed down into her eyes. “You travel safe, ya’hear?” His voice had lost its commanding edge, and his eyes blazed with an energy she could only label as desire.

  “Yes, sir,” she murmured. Before she knew it, she’d tipped up onto her toes and swept her lips across his slightly scruffy cheek. Her fingers twitched to trace down his day-old growth, but she balled them into a fist to keep them from betraying her.

  Travis kept one hand on her hip as she got into the truck, as if he couldn’t quite part with her yet. He finally removed it and closed her door, and she started up the behemoth of a vehicle. She rolled the window down, and Travis stayed right beside the vehicle.

  “Let’s get together when you get back,” he said, one hand touching his hair again. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, smiling. Then, with every ounce of willpower she possessed, she put the truck in reverse and backed away from the picturesque cabin in the woods. At least she had something to look forward to once she returned from Louisiana.