Page 208 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

Then our conversation wandered.

She told me about her favorite seasonal candy.

We argued over Halloween movies and whether haunted houses were fun or just paying strangers to scream in your face.

Carson told me Pops once made a haunted hayride so terrifying that three children cried and Meme banned him from using chainsaws the following year.

“That sounds interesting.”

“They weren’t even running.” She wheezed out a laugh at the memory.

Eventually her answers became slower.

“Carson?”

“Mhm?”

“Are you falling asleep?”

“No.” There was silence long enough to prove otherwise.

“Sweetheart.”

“I’m awake.”

“Sure.”

Another minute later and her breathing changed. Apparently, I’d become the kind of man who lay in bed listening to a woman sleep over the phone.

I stared toward the ceiling.

I could have said it then.

Three words into the darkness while Carson slept twenty miles away.

It would’ve been easy.

She wouldn’t have heard me.

Maybe that was exactly why I didn’t.

Carson had spent too much of her life having important things happen without getting any say in them.

When I told her I loved her, I wanted her awake.

I wanted those green eyes on mine.

More importantly, I wanted her to know there wasn’t a damn thing I expected her to say back.

Chapter 27

CARSON

Monday morning was the first time Marigold Ranch had been quiet in two days, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.

For the entire weekend, there had been something happening everywhere I looked. Children running between pumpkins. Hay wagons groaning beneath the weight of families. Music carrying from the vendor field. People called my name from opposite ends of the property while I tried to remember whether I’d eaten anything more substantial than half a cinnamon roll and three bites of a sandwich Beau had practically forced into my hand.

Now, shortly after eight am, the last traces of fog were lifting from the lower pasture, and the ranch had returned to the familiar sounds I’d known most of my life.