Page 26 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

Her gaze shifted toward me, surprise briefly softening her features. “You’re giving up?”

“For now.”

“That sounds threatening.”

“It’s meant to.”

She rolled her eyes, but the silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable.

Rain drummed against the roof while an old country song played quietly through the speakers. Willow Creek blurred beyond the windows in shades of gray and orange. Every porch along the county road had been decorated overnight with pumpkins, corn stalks, mums, or some combination of all three.

Even the gas station had tied orange ribbon around its pumps.

Carson noticed it too.

Her eyes followed the decorations as we approached town, but whatever amusement I expected to see never came. Her expression tightened instead.

“You don’t decorate the ranch anymore,” I said before deciding whether I should.

She stared forward. “No.”

“I remember it being covered in pumpkins.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Your Pops used to make us unload hay bales for the festival.”

“Only because you and Jax broke two of them jumping out of the loft.”

My hands tightened around the steering wheel as the memory surfaced. “You remember that?”

“I remember Pops complaining about the Jones boys for three days. I just didn’t know it was you.”

“I thought you weren’t around that summer.”

“I wasn’t around much. I was traveling for rodeos, but I came home between events.” She paused, then added, “Pops talked about you.”

“Hopefully nothing incriminating.”

“He said you worked hard when someone managed to keep you focused.”

“That sounds like him.”

“He said Jax was the one most likely to end up in jail.”

“That also sounds like him.”

Her laugh was quiet, but this time she didn’t hide it.

For the first time since she entered the garage, I could see the woman she might have been before grief taught her to keep everything contained. The change was subtle. A little light behind her eyes. A softness around her mouth. It disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived, but not before I wondered what it would take to bring it back.

Not because I wanted anything from her. I barely knew her. But James Rome had once taken a restless seventeen-year-old boy and treated him like his time mattered. He had trusted me with expensive equipment, corrected me without humiliating me, and paid me more than the work was worth because he knew Dad was making Jax and me save for technical school.

Seeing his granddaughter carrying so much of that same stubborn pride made me curious.

That was all.

Curious.