Page 41 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

Carson would recognize charity before I could disguise it. She would reject pity even if doing so cost her more than she could afford.

But a fair repair was different.

So was returning a favor owed to a man who was no longer alive to collect it.

“I’ll figure it out,” I said.

Dad nodded once, satisfied. Then he walked back toward the house, leaving me with the photograph and the strange sense that fixing James Rome’s truck might become more complicated than replacing a water pump.

Not because of the vehicle.

Because the woman determined to keep it and everything else Pops had left behind, was running on sheer will.

Chapter

Six

CARSON

The ride home with Beau should have felt awkward.

There were plenty of things I should have been thinking about.

Instead, I kept noticing Beau Jones.

It was irritating.

He drove with one hand resting loosely at the top of the steering wheel and the other near the shifter, completely at ease despite the rain still coming down hard enough that his wipers struggled to keep up. He’d washed most of the grease from his hands before we left the shop, but a dark streak remained along the side of his wrist, and another had somehow ended up near his temple.

He treated me like a woman who had made a stupid decision by walking through a storm, not a woman who had survived something terrible five years ago.

There was something freeing about that.

It also made me aware of him in ways I would have preferred not to be.

Beau was handsome and irritating all at once.

By the time I showered, removed my prosthetic, cleaned the irritated skin around my residual limb, and changed into soft pajama pants, Meme had dinner waiting.

She didn’t ask about my leg.

Not immediately.

That was how I knew she was worried.

Meme believed concern was best served alongside food. Tonight, that meant roast chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and an apple pie cooling on the counter despite there only being two of us.

She still cooked like Pops might walk through the door hungry.

Sometimes I thought neither of us knew how to stop expecting him.

I sat across from her at the old farmhouse table with one leg tucked beneath me, a full belly, and pushed the remaining piece of pie around my plate.

“Did you hear me, sweetie?”

I looked up.

Meme pointed toward the small bowl near my elbow. “Pass the puddin’.”