“Hi, hi, hi,” she said distractedly, picking up Bella and giving her a quick version of the loving that her kitten always got upon her arrival. Bella didn’t know what a rush she was in, and wasn’t about to take no for an answer. Her rusty purrs filled the cramp space and then she began enthusiastically grooming Carla’s face with her sandpaper tongue.

  “Thank you,” Carla said with a laugh. “Now, go behave yourself. I’ve got work to do!” She laid Bella down on the bed, hoping she’d take the hint and settle in there but of course, the playful kitten instantly bounded off the bed and wove herself between Carla’s feet, not content to sit on the sidelines when her momma was home.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” she murmured as she washed her face thoroughly and then began meticulously making herself up again. “I promise we’ll play tonight when I get home. I sure wish Leo would come up here and you two could be friends, but considering that Leo is four times your size and hates your guts, it’s probably a good thing he doesn’t come up here regularly and beat you up. The last thing I want is you two yowling at each other as you tear around above the heads of a bunch of customers.”

  She pulled her favorite dress off the hanger with a happy sigh. There weren’t many things that made her much-too-big-around figure look good, but this dress was one of them. Cobalt blue, it made her indecisive hazel eyes appear bright blue, and also emphasized her generous chest, which she figured was one of the few positives about her body. Hopefully Christian was a boobs guy, because she had boobs aplenty – enough for a dozen women.

  As she wiggled into the dress and zipped it up the back, she realized a fatal flaw in her plan – she had absolutely no idea where they were going on this date tonight. She was so rarely asked out, she’d forgotten to get even the most basic of information. What if Christian wanted them to go hiking or something? She pulled a face at herself in the mirror as she patted her hair back into place. She’d simply have to tell him that she’d have to change. This dress and these spiky heels were not hiking material.

  Just then, she heard a muffled knock on the front door of the store and only barely stifled back a scream of panic. She knew he was coming over. She knew he’d knock on the door. But the anticipation had only made the actual event just that much more nerve-wracking.

  After one more swipe of bright red lipstick, she made her way down the stairs much more carefully than she’d gone up them just 30 minutes earlier. She hadn’t been wearing heels before, and didn’t fancy breaking her neck on the way to her first date in years.

  Leo, the commotion of the knocking and Carla’s footsteps on the stairs wakening him from his evening nap, came wandering over to watch the proceedings and make sure to be given at least one round of pettings if at all possible. He was always up for a round of pettings, if not ten.

  Carla glimpsed Christian’s face through the window panes in the door and then flipped the deadlock back and swung it open.

  Oh.

  My.

  There was no way this man in front of her had meant to ask her out on a date. He’d swapped out his jeans and work shirt for a pair of khakis and a button-up shirt, the top two buttons undone, leaving a triangle of tanned skin that Carla very much wanted to explore with her tongue. His hair was gelled and combed off to the side – more formal than his normal look, but oh-so-handsome. He was tall for a guy who was Mexican, which was good because she didn’t aspire to towering over her date in her heels. Her mind flashed back to the party and she realized that as a whole, the Palacios family tended to the tall side. That was nice. Her family did too.

  And why on earth am I thinking about this right now?!

  “Hi!” she blurted out. He went to pull on the brim of his hat in greeting, realized he didn’t have one on, and dropped his hand back down by his side. This tiny crack in his self-possession made her grin.

  It’s possible he’s as nervous as me.

  Not likely, but possible.

  “Let me lock up and we can head out!” she said brightly, turning the key in the lock and then jiggling the handle to double-check that everything caught as it was supposed to. “I’ve never had anyone break into my shop,” she said as she followed him over to his pickup and he helped her inside. The feel of his calloused hand in hers had lightning shooting up her arm. As soon as he got in on the other side, she picked up right where she’d left off.

  “But just in case, I always lock up and put my money into a safe each night. Teenage boys. They are a magnet for trouble, and I like to help them choose to cause it elsewhere.”

  Silence. He still hadn’t said anything.

  If possible, her panic – and thus her mouth – kicked into yet a higher gear. Her mother had always said that she could talk the ear off a dead person, and this was a trait that only got immeasurably worse when she was nervous.

  So of course tonight, it was at catastrophic levels.

  “I’m not saying that all teenage boys are troublemakers, of course!” Shut up, Carla, shut uppp! “I’m sure there are some good ones among them. They just have that reputation, you know. I’d like to hire a teenage boy to work in the store – give him something to do that isn’t causing problems, but guys don’t seem to want to work with flowers.”

  She was about to dive headlong into a diatribe about how flowers weren’t just for women to enjoy when she realized they were pulling into the parking lot of the Old Horvath Mill.

  This stunned her so much, she actually managed to lapse into silence. The old mill? They were going to the old mill?

  She’d been here a few times on Saturday morning, attending the new Farmer’s Market that Penny and Troy Horvath had started up not too long ago, but it was Friday night, which was most definitely not Saturday morning.

  Clearly, Carla, you have a dizzying intellect.

  But not even a line from one of her favorite movies could calm her nerves at a time like this.

  He pulled into a parking spot and shut off the engine, hopping out and hurrying around to help her out of the truck. She was still mute, thank the heavens above, and completely confused. If she’d had to guess a hundred places that they’d go on their date tonight, the Old Horvath Mill was nowhere on that list.

  He slid back the giant wood door on its track and stood aside to let her through. One foot inside, her jaw dropped in shock.

  “What the…” She trailed off, hurrying forward and then spinning in circles, trying to take it all in. There was a huge projector’s screen hanging down from the ceiling. Elegant couches, and tables laden with food and drink, and flickering candles, and fairy lights strung everywhere,and…

  “You did this?” she whispered. “You did this for me?”

  “Well, I had a lot of friends’ help,” he said modestly. “You like it, then?”

  “Like it? Oh Christian, I love it.”

  This wasn’t a pity date. No one went through this kind of hard work and effort for a pity date. She’d almost convinced herself over the previous few days that this was a bet gone wrong. Or chivalry taken to an extreme. Or an overactive tendency towards pity. Or a penance prescribed by a priest. Or maybe even a wide masochistic streak.

  This, though, blew all of those theories out of the water.

  Which only left one…that he liked her.

  Which couldn’t be.

  She trailed along behind him to the buffet table, resolving to leave the mystery of why they were on this date for another time. Right now, she fully intended on enjoying herself, because God knew, with the averages she was batting at, it’d be a decade before she got to go on another one.

  They filled up their plates, Carla carefully taking tiny portions of each proffered dish. She couldn’t eat like she normally did in front of him. She’d simply pretend as if she ate like a bird at every meal, and then she’d eat again when she got home. He’d never like someone who had a “hearty appetite,” as her mother had always put it. And honestly, it wasn’t so inconvenient to cook another meal when she got home.

  Not if it meant getting another date sooner rather than later.

  Moving to the couch where TV trays had been set up, she did her best to settle into place and not spill her food everywhere, but the opening strains of the soundtrack to The Princess Bride made all decorum flee her mind.

  She gasped. “You love The Princess Bride too?!” she squealed, turning to Christian, her mouth agape. “I didn’t know you liked this movie! What’s your favorite line?”

  “I, um, haven’t watched it before.”

  She froze in place, staring at him, trying to comprehend, but failing. “Haven’t…watched…” she mumbled. “I…how? Okay, look, I’ll do my best not to recite every line in the movie as we watch it, but I promise nothing. Half the fun of this movie is saying the lines along with it. Hold on – if you haven’t watched this, why did you pick to watch it with me?”

  “Some very good advice,” was his cryptic answer.

  Which just reinforced her theory that this wasn’t a pity date. No one decorated an old mill to the nines and catered a meal and asked for advice so they could fulfill their part in a bet gone bad.

  “He’s gonna pinch my cheek. I hate that,” Fred Savage’s character said, and Carla giggled like she did every time she heard that line.

  Ugh. This was going to be impossible, not laughing and reciting every line in the movie, but Christian didn’t know yet what a freak she was, and she didn’t dare let him figure it out.

  “Buttercup was raised on a small farm in the country Florin,” Grandpa told his grandson in the movie.

  Carla settled back with a happy sigh. Food, cutest guy around, and best movie ever. If she managed to keep from annoying her date, this would end up the most perfect first date of all time.

  She just had to keep her mouth shut.

  She could do this.

  Chapter 9

  Christian

  I give you full marks for bravery.

  ~Prince Humperdinck in The Princess Bride

  Christian swung up into the cab of Stetson’s latest acquisition – a Case-International Magnum 400. It was so new, the leather seats were still (mostly) clean. He swiped at the light layer of dust and then settled in, letting out a happy sigh. Field work had become a hell of a lot nicer with this tractor around, now that his boss allowed him to play with the new toy too.

  Stetson had practically danced a jig when Jennifer had given him the go-ahead to sign the paperwork for it. Considering that Stetson and Jennifer had met because she’d been part of the bank’s team sent out to repossess the Miller Family Farm just a couple of years ago, Christian felt like this meant he could finally draw in a full breath. He knew finances were better with Jennifer in charge of them – Stetson had no head for numbers and was more likely to fly to the moon next week than balance a checkbook – but still, “better” wasn’t much of a measuring stick when you were starting out at “verge of bankruptcy.”

  They had to be doing much better if Jennifer said yes to buying a beast like this. Whistling softly, Christian started it up and put it into gear, heading back out to the north 40. It’d been off the pivot long enough that the ground would let him disc between the—

  His internal train of thought came to a screeching halt as he saw a figure out in the field, standing there patiently as if waiting for him to show up.

  He shielded his eyes from the early morning glare of the sun and squinted. That looked like…

  Carla?

  As he got closer, he could see her fine figure – curves in all the right places – and her thick brown hair blowing in the gentle morning breeze. Either it was Carla, or she had a twin.

  He pulled up to a stop next to her and he could see her lips moving as she tried to shout something up to him, but of course over the deep rumble of the diesel, she didn’t have a chance. He cut the engine.

  “—here!” she shouted, and then turned a bright pink at the sudden quiet.

  He opened the door and swung out, quickly taking the built-in steps to the ground.

  “Hi,” he said. He sounded a little breathless, which he decided he’d attribute to the stairs he’d just come down. His eyes skimmed over her features, drinking them in – her wide red lips that were ever ready to break into a smile; her large hazel eyes that constantly intrigued him. He never knew what to expect – dazzling blue with hints of green? Sparkling green eyes tinged with blue? This morning, in the field of lush green against a sky of brilliant blue, her eyes were a mix of the two, creating a color he swear he’d never seen before, and loved all the more for it.

  Also, he came from a family where it was sacrilege to leave the house without putting on makeup, and he could see that Carla was cut from the same cloth.

  He liked that.

  He liked that very much.

  After their spectacular date 10 days ago, he’d been at a complete loss as to what he should do. He’d wanted to ask her out again, of course – watching The Princess Bride with her was more fun than he’d had in the last year combined together – but he’d blown his wad. He had no idea what to do as Date #2. Turned out, he still didn’t own a jet or a tuxedo, and flying her to Paris was still out of the question. After watching The Princess Bride with her, he’d realized that Jennifer had been right: Carla wanted big. Carla wanted romantic.

  Christian didn’t do big or romantic.

  So, he did nothing. Well, except worry and stew about it.

  But, nothing productive.

  “Hi,” he said again, stupidly. “What are you doing here?”

  She nudged the basket at her feet, which he’d somehow missed until now. He blamed the shirt Carla was wearing, and more specifically, her tits inside of said shirt. Little things like oversized picnic baskets were easy to overlook with Carla around.

  “I brought you some breakfast,” she said with a brilliant smile. “I thought you might be hungry.”

  Breakfast? He didn’t eat breakfast – he never felt hungry first thing in the morning – so he always made up for it with a big lunch and an even larger dinner.

  He felt thick and stupid, staring at the basket on the ground and then up at her. Girls didn’t do this. Girls expected guys to sweep them off their feet.

  Which he was totally going to do with Carla. As soon as he found the right broom.

  Which was why, every time he’d seen Jennifer in the last week, he’d ducked out the back door and made a run for it. She would want to put together elaborate plans for the next date, and there was simply no way he could outdo the first one. He was going to wave the white flag of surrender.

  He was a failure.

  After that mega-star, Zane Risley, had set the bar stupidly high by renting out the most expensive restaurant in Franklin just to take his nanny out on a date, the men of Long Valley had been royally screwed. The way Christian figured it, he didn’t have a chance.

  But now Carla was standing there, a basket of food at her feet, and he still hadn’t said a word.

  Considering how he spoke two languages, it was amazing how both of them could desert him just when he needed them most.

  “One of my friends from high school talked about doing this with her husband,” Carla continued on, blessedly filling in the silence. “It’s called a tractor date. It’s simple, really. I sit up in the jump seat next to you and we plow the field together and then afterwards, we eat the breakfast that I packed.” She shrugged, and the pink began to steal back into her cheeks. “It’s not nearly as amazing as your date was—”

  “It’s perfect,” he cut her off. “Really…perfect.”

  No private chartered jets to France. No expensive meals that cost him a week’s wage. Just the two of them, riding in a tractor.

  If Carla could find romance in that, who was he to question it?

  He helped her up into the cab after they stashed the picnic basket in the shade, and after starting up the engine, he slowly let off the brake. They began rolling down the field, and just as easily started rolling into a conversation.

  Although they’d both grown up in Sawyer, only a year apart, they’d run in different circles, and he didn’t know nearly as much about her as he wanted to. But somehow, he still found himself talking about his life instead of hers.

  “I’m the only boy,” he confirmed, in answer to her question. “I have six sisters.”

  “Six sisters?!” she gasped, and then laughed. “I knew you had a lot of sisters, but six?!”

  “Yup, and every one of them is younger than me,” he said with a groan, making a tight turn and then heading back the way they came, a few dozen feet to the east. “I was that tyrannical older brother, so my sisters took turns hating me or loving me. It depended on if I was breaking some noses after a guy broke their heart, or running a guy off after he dared to kiss one of them in front of me. Bastards,” he said in disgust, and Carla let out a belly laugh.

  “Tyrannical is right,” she got out through her laughter. “I bet your sisters have some stories to tell.”

  Christian rolled his eyes at that – his sisters’ judgment was not to be trusted, and they should feel thankful he saved them from more than a few slimy bastards.

  “Mom stopped having kids after Rosa,” he said, ignoring Carla’s comment, “and everyone thought she was done, including her, when along comes Yesenia. Six years after Rosa. There she was, the baby of the family…right up until Nieves was born, another five years later. That time, the doctor tied her tubes while he was in giving her a cesarean. Said it was his duty as a doctor to save her life. She’d fought it tooth and nail beforehand – my mom’s a good Catholic, and birth control is off the table for her.” He shook his head dolefully. “I’m damn glad the doctor did it anyway. Nieves was the hardest pregnancy of all – my mom was flat on her back the whole time. The moment she got up and started moving around, she started bleeding.”

  “Oh my goodness,” Carla said softly, just audible over the rumble of the engine. “Your poor mom.”