Page 42 of Worth the Trouble

“They’ll know it’s from the bakery,” he said.

“Then they’ll know I have good taste. But you still can’t bring it up.”

The door opened before he could knock. Rylee had a dish towel over one shoulder and flour on her cheek. She looked at the pies, and then at Cece, took one of the pies and put her free arm around Cece’s neck and pulled her inside. Jason came in behind them and shut the door on the chilly air.

Tate was at the stove with his back to the room. He turned around slow, wiped his hands on his jeans, and held one out.

“Cecelia.”

“Tate.”

They shook. It went on a beat too long, both of them measuring, and then Rylee said, “Nobody’s signing a treaty. Sit down,” and they sat.

The table was too small for all the food on it. Pot roast, potatoes, green beans, rolls in a basket under a towel. Rylee started asking questions before the bread had gone around the table.

Where had Cece grown up? Did she cook? Did she ride? What did her father do? Rylee asked that last question no differently than the others, and Cece answered it the same way. Tate looked at his plate, then looked up again.

“Cece runs her father’s public relations,” Jason said.

“I know what she does.” Tate passed the beans. “I did my reading in the summer.”

“Tate,” Rylee said.

“I’m passing vegetables so everyone can have some.”

Cece took them. “He’s allowed to have done his reading.”

That got a look out of Tate that Jason hadn’t expected, sideways and quick, the look he gave a horse that did the smart thing before he’d asked for it. He said nothing. He ate his roast. By the second helping he stopped being careful, and by the rolls he was telling her about the year the creek came up to the barn door. Apparently Jason had carried three goats across the yard one under each arm and one in his teeth.

“Not in my teeth.”

“Close enough.”

“It was a kid. It hardly weighed anything.”

“You had it by the scruff. I have a picture.”

“He doesn’t have a picture,” Jason told Cece.

“I do have a picture,” Tate said, and got up to find it.

Rylee shook her head. “Sit down, you don’t have a picture.”

He sat down and shrugged. “Wish I did have one, though.”

Cece laughed. Not the polite one. The real one. Rylee heard it too and looked at Jason over the rim of her glass and raised it half an inch.

Then the pig came in.

Nobody had shut the mudroom door. She came through it at a trot with her ears up, made straight for the dish towel Rylee had dropped over the back of a chair, took it in her mouth, and trotted back out.

The four of them looked at the empty chair.

“That’s one of the good towels,” Rylee said.

“It was,” Tate said.

Cece had both hands over her mouth. Tate was already out of his seat.