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“You and Sawyer seem to be getting along well.”
Josie kept cool, calm and collected as she shrugged. “Yeah, I really like him. It’s made the work go quick.”
“Well, that makes things easy,” Sandy said and wandered off into the house after the boys. Josie led Indy away to the barn, hoping that there was nothing deeper behind Sandy’s comments. Sometimes that woman saw far more than she ever let on. She and Sawyer would just have to keep things a little closer to their chests from now on.
CHAPTER 10
SAWYER
It was pretty dumb to drive all the way from the ranch into town just to go buy breakfast, especially when there were perfectly good ingredients for toast and eggs at the house, but Sawyer was willing to be pretty dumb this morning. He’d been called a bonehead football player his whole life; one more morning of being exactly that wasn’t going to hurt his reputation. He just wanted to get out of the house, to doanythingreally, and the best excuse he could come up with at seven in the morning was to go into Willow Ridge and buy something from the bakery for breakfast. He’d find something nice for Luke — and Sandy too. He knew she liked coffee cake. And Josie. He’d get something for Josie, something sweet.
The twenty-minute drive would give him time to think about Josie as well and whatever it was that they had fallen into together. It wasn’t a relationship, was it? It could be, though. Hewantedit to be. Like he had said in the barn, Luke would absolutely flip his lid. Sawyer knew it like he knew the sky was blue. Wanting to date his brother’s best friend since they were little kids? No way. Luke would think it was all some scam, that Sawyer was playing some sort of game to pit everyone againsteach other, because his brother seemed to forget that Sawyer had feelings too, that not everything had to be a hustle. Luke would say he was manipulating Josie even when she had a mind of her own and could do whatever she wanted. So… yeah. This couldn’t exactly be out in the open without giving at least two people stress-induced heart attacks.
God, this was already a mess and it had barely begun. It was made even more of a mess by the fact that Sawyer had no intention of stopping it. Not when Josie Moore was the best thing that had stumbled into his life in a long time.
Turns out thinking about Josie and how long it might take to count every individual freckle on her back, arms, and legs made the drive go by like a flash. Sawyer made sure to park the car in front of the bakery with supreme concentration, bringing himself back to reality so that he didn’t look like some lovestruck freshman running up onto the curb — even if that was kind of how he felt.
The main street of Willow Ridge was empty of cars this early, with most people driving to work or taking their kids to school. Only a few of the stores were open this early too, the diner being one and the bakery on the corner the other. Sawyer hadn’t been here in… twelve years? It couldn’t be that long, surely. But given the surprise on everyone’s faces when he walked in, staff and customers alike, a perfect remake of his night at the diner, yeah, it had definitely been that long. The staff fell over themselves to serve him and he got asked by a couple of the other customers in line for a photo, which he posed for. Usually attention like that stroked his ego, but today… it kind of just made him feel uncomfortable. Which was weird. Maybe he was coming down with something? That might explain this foggy mood that had been hanging over him since he’d woken up.
“Heard the ranch is ready for sale,” said a croaky voice by his shoulder. Sawyer looked down to find Mr. Mathers from the hardware store beside him — not a whole lot bigger than Josie — looking up at him with a gleam in his eye.
Well, that wasn’t going to help his mood. Mr. Mathers was known for overcharging and for gossip, neither of which Sawyer was looking to partake in this early in the morning. But the barista was still brewing the coffees he’d ordered for everyone, so Sawyer slapped on a fake smile and stumbled into the conversation with the old man.
“Where’d you hear that?” he said, keeping an eye on the employees behind the counter so that he could spring forward and escape the second his order was ready. But this was Willow Ridge. There wasn’t a morning rush so much as there was a morning dawdle.
“News on the grapevine,” said Mathers, tapping his ear as if he was tapped into an exclusive radio station that no one else had access to, which maybe he was. “Heard that there’s a buyer interested already.”
Sawyer bristled and tried not to show it. A buyer was a good thing. Right?
“You been talking to the realtor or something?”
Mathers laughed and flapped a hand at such a rookie method for getting information. “No, no. There’s a rich fella that moved here a while ago. Rich like forgot how many zeroes he has in his bank account kind of rich. Figured himself a farmer, so he moved here, ’cause you know how rich people are, right? Mad as a box of snakes.”
Sawyer suppressed a sigh and waited for Mathers to get to the point.
“Anyways, he was buying something in the store the other day and we get to talking, and he reckons a buddy of his is real interested in the place and now would be the perfect opportunity to snap it on up. Have someone else down here playing farmer.”
“Well, the repairs aren’t quite done yet, so…”
Sawyer had no idea what had just possessed him to say it, because it wasn’t true. They’d finished the major repairs and done a damn good job of them too.
“Is that so?” said Mathers, practically licking his lips with the promise of new information.
“Yeah…” said Sawyer, still going along with it even though it was all false. Like falling down a set of stairs, you had no choice but to let gravity take you. “You know, only so many hours in the day. That’s why I’m staying here longer than planned.”
Another lie, because he wasn’t quite sure why he was staying longer; he hadn’t quite figured that out.
Anotherlie. He knew exactly why… Spending his days with Josie on the ranch had made him happier than he’d been in a very long time. Hearing that someone was seriously thinking about buying it, taking it away forever, had sent an ice-cold stabbing sensation through his chest. Pure panic.
“Good to know,” said Mathers, a little too innocently, which meant that news that the Butler Ranch wasn’t ready for sale, that it was still too broken down, would spread like wildfire through the small-town gossip mill.
Feeling like he might actually spontaneously combust, Sawyer nearly fell onto his knees in gratitude as his order was pronounced ready and he could flee from the bakery like a criminal on the run.
The drive home went as slow as a glacier compared to the drive to town, thinking of why he’d straight up lied and said that they weren’t done, that it wasn’t ready. And why was all of this cushioned by the feeling of relief in the middle of his chest at the thought that maybe it would stay theirs just a little bit longer?
Sawyer opened the windows for some fresh air and tried to snap himself out of it before he got back to the house. Maybe he really was just some dumb, boneheaded football player, because all of this thinking was starting to make him crazy.
In the city, any city, advertising a property for sale was a whole affair in itself. You could drive past billboards advertising new apartment buildings, while suburban houses would have giant signs planted in the yard with glamorous photos of their interiors on show. Things were still a little old-fashioned in the country, though.
