Page 77 of The One Who Saw Her: Boone

"I want to save this ranch because I love it," he said finally, like saying it out loud was a different thing than knowing it. "Because it's ours. Because it was theirs. Not because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't."

Eli reached into his back pocket and tossed a folded flyer across the room. Boone caught it.

“What’s this?"

"There’s a rodeo, two counties over," Eli said. "The prize is twenty grand. Enough to cover the foundation, the electrical, and every contractor you just sent home.”

Boone let out a low whistle. "You buried the lead on this one, brother."

"It's been a minute," Eli said.

"Springville is amateur hour and you know it," Boone said, a grin pulling at his mouth despite everything.

"Speaking of amateur hour," Eli said, leaning forward with a smirk that meant trouble. "You going to go in there and grovel until that pretty lady forgives your sorry ass?"

Boone looked down at the flyer. Twenty thousand dollars. Now that was a problem he knew how to solve.

And then he thought of Vivi, behind a closed door at the end of the hall. A problem he'd made with his own mouth and didn’t have a roadmap for. No amount of prize money could fix that.

CHAPTER 30

Vivi had seen train wrecks. Emotional ones, professional ones, the kind that involved crying in a public restroom and the kind that involved sending a work email with the word “ducking.” But nothing, nothing, had prepared her for watching Spud Buttons try to date.

Being that it was Tuesday, she sat two tables away at the Drunken Rooster, armed with a lukewarm martini and the small-town version of camouflage—sunglasses the size of satellite dishes—and watched as hope drained from Judy-the-Flight-Attendant's eyes like someone had pulled a plug.

This was supposed to be Spud's glow-up. Her dating bio Olympics. Instead, she was watching her champion trip over the starting line and face-plant directly into the track.

It wasn't Judy's fault. The woman was perfectly pleasant, smiling politely, nodding with professional-grade patience, wearing her I have been trapped in a plane with two hundred feral passengers before and I can handle anything expression. They were a match because they were both kind, faithful, salt-of-the-earth types with shared values and a shared church.

What Vivi had not accounted for was Spud's emotional faucet being cranked to full blast the moment he got nervous. The man was a runaway confession train barreling toward a woman who had absolutely not signed up to hear his entire romantic history before appetizers arrived.

Vivi winced as Spud gestured wildly, his face earnest and deeply unaware he was detonating his own date in real time.

Judy set down her water, smile wobbling. "So you were married twice?"

"Three times, actually. Twice to my Louise and once to her cousin. But as soon as we realized we were kind of kin, her cousin and I, we called things off."

"You married the same woman twice?"

Spud nodded with the unstoppable sincerity of a golden retriever who had found a very good stick. "Yep. Loved her both times. Love of my life. Well—she was before she passed."

Judy blinked. "Oh, wow."

Vivi waved her hands to catch Spud's attention, and when he blinked her way she did the wrap-it-up gesture. Instead of pivoting, he misunderstood and started talking faster.

"Cancer," Spud barreled on, leaning in way too close. "Terrible and so unexpected it broke me in half. Still kind of does sometimes. Like last night, actually⁠—"

Vivi silently pressed her forehead to the table.

Spud. Dear sweet Spud. I love you. But this is not how you impress someone. This is how you get escorted out by emotional TSA.

She scribbled furiously on her notepad, then held it up:

Ask her something funny about herself. Do NOT mention exes, church, or death. Keep it light.

Spud peeked at it, then looked at Judy. "Tell me something funny about yourself?"

Judy's eyes lit up like she'd been waiting for exactly that question. "Oh! Okay. So I went to a murder mystery party once. My job was to stand over the dead body of an heiress and announce that the family jewels had been stolen." Her voice dropped low and conspiratorial. "The family jewels was a diamond necklace. Simple enough, right? Except when I bent over—" She paused, cheeks going bright pink. "The slit in the back of my dress rode up. All the way up. I ended up flashing the entire room. The next day a few of the other participants were on my flight. It was so mortifying."