Page 155 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

Maybe intimacy didn’t happen that way.

Maybe it was smaller.

A question not pushed.

A limp noticed but not overanalyzed.

A joke arriving on exactly the wrong morning and somehow making it better.

I wasn’t ready to tell Beau Jones about my leg today… But maybe I would be soon.

Chapter

Twenty-One

CARSON

It was two weeks until the festival started. Marigold Ranch stopped looking like a place recovering from neglect and started looking like the ranch I grew up on.

The difference was subtle at first.

New fence posts replaced the worst of the leaning ones along the south pasture. The old hay wagons sat outside the equipment barn with fresh boards where the wood had rotted through. Extension cords, temporary lighting, and bundles of orange string lights had begun appearing in organized piles instead of tangled bins. The old festival sign had been sanded down, but not repainted yet because I still couldn’t decide whether I wanted the original lettering restored or something new entirely.

Everywhere I looked, there was evidence that the ranch was changing.

So was I.

Though, that part was harder to admit.

I had gone from avoiding Willow Creek unless a delivery required it to knowing which days Clover worked the bakery counter, when Rosie took her dinner break at the tavern, and exactly what time Beau usually arrived at Marigold if he was coming after closing the garage.

I knew he drank his coffee black if he was working and with cream if we were sitting somewhere long enough for him to enjoy it.

I knew he hated pickles but would eat them if they came on a burger because he thought asking a waitress to remove them was, “too much work.”

I knew he listened to music too loudly when he was working alone.

I knew he always checked the locks on the equipment barn before leaving even though I had never asked.

And I knew, with an increasingly uncomfortable amount of certainty, that I was falling for him.

My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter. I knew who it was before looking.

Beau

Tell your cow I expect an apology.

A picture loaded beneath the message.

One of our cows stood behind the fence with her nose pushed through the boards. Beau’s work glove hung from her mouth.

I laughed.

Carson

She has excellent judgment.

Three dots appeared.