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“Nothing. Get back in the truck.” My voice is steady. I don’t want her to see this part of me, but I’m not sure I have a choice now.
I pull the keys from the ignition of both trucks. Of course, they both left their radios running, so they were easy to find. Not sure why they needed simultaneous stations at once, but they aren’t that smart, so I give them a pass.
“How are they going to get home?” Lark asks as I drop their keys into my glove box.
“I’ll call my buddy at the police station and tell him what’s going on. He’ll pick the keys up and decide what he wants to do with them.”
“You beat those guys up. Won’t you get into trouble?” Her face is red and her lips are parted.
“Those assholes nearly hit a pedestrian in town last week. An eighty-year-old man. They were going twenty over the speed limit through a crosswalk. They shouldn’t even be driving right now. The cops will thank me.” I glance toward her and put the truck in drive. “I’m sorry you had to see that and deal with all this tonight.”
“Me too.” She sighs. “I’m totally shocked Bobby did that. It’s like the whole good boy thing was an act.”
“You okay? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“No. He’s… just a mess.” She lowers her eyes. “I heard what those guys said. You didn’t have to do that.”
I hate that she heard anything that happened out there. “I needed to do that.”
She shrugs. “No, you didn’t. I am fat. It’s a thing. I’m okay with it.”
“But they said it like it was negative. It’s not. You’re beautiful.”
She glances up at me and then away. “No, I’m not.”
“Are you kidding?”
She shakes her head. “No, and I think I’m done with dating. There are more jerks than nice guys these days, and I’m over it all.”
I’m desperate to tell her that older guys do it better. Tell her that she’s been messing with kids, and that’s why she’s seeing recess results, but I bite my tongue. “You wanna go home or do you still want to see that meteor shower? I know a place.”
She glances toward me. “Anywhere but home. I don’t want another lecture on how I can’t keep a boyfriend.”
“Your parents giving you a hard time?”
“Apparently, my mom was already engaged and pregnant with me by twenty-two, so that should be my life too.”
“What do you want? Not for work, but for your life?”
She blows out a heavy breath. “My life? I don’t know.”
“You never thought about having a family or who you’d marry?”
“Oh.” She bites back a smile. “Yeah, I think about that kind of stuff. I want two kids, a little ranch house where I can keep a barn full of horses, and maybe a few dogs.” She smiles wider. “I guess in the fantasy there’s a guy… somewhere.”
“Okay, that’s a plan. Let’s say you have all that, do you still work?”
She nods. “I’d want to stay home until the kids were a little older, then I’d go back to work, and maybe start my own farm clinic. The big part is being with the kids when they are little.” Her eyes light up as she says, “When I was a kid, my mom spent so much time with us, and I loved that she’d bake cookies and listen to all our problems. That’s such an important time to spend together.”
“Then you should have that.” I stare at her, wondering how she feels so right. “Tell me more. What are you naming these kids?”
“No way. You tell me something. Why aren’t you remarried?”
“Remarried? I was never married the first time.”
“But Cody…”
“Had him after high school out of wedlock.”
