Page 105 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

Two days ago, I’d thought the ranch was falling apart because Carson couldn’t keep up with it. I was wrong. Marigold Ranch was still standing because, somehow, she did.

“You gonna stare at the barn all day or help me with this?”

I looked at Jax. He’d positioned the auger where we’d marked the next hole.

“I wasn’t staring.”

“You’ve looked over there about twelve times.”

“Maybe I’m making sure nobody runs you over with a tractor,” I sassed.

“That would solve your free labor problem.”

“Mom would kill me.”

“Mom would blame you.”

“Exactly.”

Jax started the auger. The noise killed the conversation. Probably for the best. My brother had known me too long. There wasn’t much I could hide from him when he decided to pay attention, and the last thing I needed was Jax deciding Carson had become interesting enough to torment me over.

Because she had.

Carson was beautiful, and I wasn’t blind.

I’d been attracted to plenty of women. Usually that was where it started and ended. A few dates. Sometimes a few months if we got along particularly well. Eventually one of us realized it wasn’t going anywhere, and life moved on.

I’d never been heartbroken over it.

Never sat around wondering whether I’d lost the woman I was supposed to spend my life with.

The older I got, the more I wondered whether that should bother me.

It didn’t.

At least, it hadn’t before.

I wasn’t looking for a wife every time I bought a woman dinner, and I wasn’t interested in forcing something because everyone around me seemed to be settling into lives of their own.

But Carson interested me in a way attraction usually didn’t.

I wanted to know things.

I wanted to know why she could talk about barrel racing with enough confidence to correct me six times, but couldn’t answer whether she’d ever ride Blueberry again. I wanted to know why she’d spent five years protecting a festival barn she refused to enter. Why she acted like accepting a favor put her into debt. Why she seemed more comfortable surrounded by cows than people who had known her most of her life. Why she’d looked at that old orange bandanna yesterday like she’d found something she’d thought was dead.

That was the dangerous kind of interest. Physical attraction could burn itself out. Curiosity had a habit of digging deeper.

The auger stopped. “Next post.” Jax kicked loose dirt away from the hole while I grabbed a post from the truck. We worked for another hour, and by the time we reached the end of the section Carson had marked as the priority, sweat had soaked through the back of my shirt and my stomach had started reminding me that coffee and half a breakfast sandwich at six in the morning had been a poor nutritional decision.

Jax dropped his gloves onto the tailgate. “If lunch isn’t worth at least fifty dollars, I’m sending her an invoice.”

“You weren’t part of the lunch agreement.”

“I am doing half the work.”

“You owe me.”

“For what?” He exclaimed.