Page 103 of Roping Her In

Shiloh and Brett were planning to live in the cabin that Brandon and Dawson had once lived in, and April and Louis had moved in with their grandparents, who needed a lot of help now that they were in their eighties.

Only Sunny lived in the house where Smiles had grown up, and Uncle Cactus and Aunt Willa also lived there with his momma and daddy. A cabin had opened up on the lower part of the ranch, and Pearl Jo and Caleb were planning to move in there once they got married.

And the last Smiles had heard, Fawn was going to be moving off the ranch as well, as Stuart was looking for a hobby farm of his own.

No, Smiles wasn’t dating anyone, and even if he started seeing Bev right now, they wouldn’t be married for at least a year. He supposed it might take that long to find the right piece of land at Shiloh Ridge and hire a contractor to come build him a house. After all, Trap and Lila Mae had been hoping to be in their house much sooner than they’d been, as he’d gone to help them move in just last weekend.

His phone chimed, and Smiles had assigned this pixie-dust-twinkle to Bev, so he automatically reached for his phone in the cup holder and looked at it.

We can see you sitting out back on the security cameras, she said.

Are you going to come in or what?

I brought Hawaiian barbecue, he said. Do you have a couple of minutes to eat with me?

I was hoping you’d have something delicious. Come on in.

Smiles couldn’t stall any longer. He reached across the console and picked up the bag of food before heading inside. Sure enough, one of the vet technicians worked in the back room where Smiles entered, and she said, “Bev just went into her office.”

“Thank you, Patty.” Smiles smiled at her and continued down the hall to Bev’s office. Boone’s before it sat in the dark, and as he paused in the doorway and took in Bev standing behind her desk, he asked, “Is Boone out today?”

She looked up and paused in her shuffling of folders. “Yes, June marked the first month of his semi-retirement,” she said. “For the next six months, he’s phasing himself out.”

Smiles grinned at her, his heart thumping harder and harder as she returned the gesture. He entered the office and toed the door closed behind him. It operated on a spring, so he didn’t have to push it all the way shut, and it didn’t slam as he arrived at her desk and set down the Styrofoam containers of Hawaiian barbecue.

“I got you just what you said, Bevvy.” He pulled hers out and handed her a black plastic fork to go with.

“You’re the best, Stetson.”

She still wouldn’t call him Smiles, and he chuckled as he shook his head.

“I’m still working on it,” she said, clearly understanding why he’d started chuckling. She sank into her office chair with a sigh and popped the top on her lunch.

Smiles hadn’t moved, and Bev looked up at him with raised eyebrows. “What’s eatin’ at you?” she asked.

He took a breath and figured he might as well just spew everything out. “I have this idea. I’m…pitching an idea.” He cleared his throat. “Making a proposal.”

Bev’s eyebrows shot up, and Smiles realized what he’d said.

Horror snaked through him, and he covered it with a grin and a laugh. “Not like that.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s consider it a presentation.”

Bev watching him warily and waved her plastic fork. “Present away.”

“Yeah,” Smiles said. “Yes, so I’m sure you’re aware of the many weddings coming up in my family. There are four already scheduled in the next few months.” He watched as her eyes widened, so perhaps she wasn’t as plugged into the small-town gossip—or the Glover family drama—as he supposed.

Not only that, but Smiles expected Betty and Castle to get engaged before the end of the summer. She’d literally told her parents as much, and Hailey and Jake were well on their way toward nuptials too.

That would be six weddings in the next oh, probably six months that he needed to weather. He couldn’t do it. Not alone, at least.

“I don’t want to face four—or more—weddings alone,” he said. “And I don’t want to answer five hundred questions about who I’m bringing, if I’m bringing someone, blah blah blah.”

Smiles’s head hurt just thinking about it. “So I’m wondering if you’ll just be my date for all of them.” His stomach lurched, but he kept going. “As my friend. Then, I can explain it to my momma as such—we’re friends, and I don’t want to get a different date for every wedding, and no one in town interests me, so I just asked Bev. She’s still new to town, and this way, she can meet more people and…yeah.”

He cleared his throat, hoping Bev would jump in and say something. A “Yes, absolutely,” would be great. He’d even take, “Sure, I can do that,” with a wary side-eye.

She said nothing.

“That’s it,” he said. “That’s the pitch. The idea. The presentation.”