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Kaylee looked down at herself as if just noticing the shirt she had on. It was a faded blue concert T-shirt with the white outline of a cowboy hat on the front and the name of one of the country singer’s road tours from several years ago on the back. “Oh, I’ve never actually been to a Chase Dalton concert. But my sister has. She’s been to a million concerts, and she almost always brings me back a shirt. It’s just a thing she does.”
“Like my family went on a cool vacation and all they brought me back was this crummy T-shirt?” Luke asked, his lips curving into a smirk.
“Something like that.” She stared down at the table as she ran the tip of her finger over an old scratch in the top. “My sister, Juliette, she’s the adventurous one. She’s got this great zest for life. If she hears of something fun or cool to do, she just throws some stuff in a bag and hops in the car or on a plane and off she goes. I swear an idea can hit her and she can be packed and out the door in thirty minutes.”
“And you can’t?”
“Oh, gosh no. Packing for me takeshours. It took me two trips to the store, four checklists, and three days to pack just to come here.”
He pulled his head back. “You’re kidding. Checklists? I think the last time I went anywhere, I was packed in about three minutes. All I need is a couple of fresh shirts, my toothbrush, and a stick of deodorant. What takes you so long?”
She rubbed at the scratch on the table as if she might be able to buff it away. “Because I like to be prepared. And I want to make sure I have on hand everything I might need.”
“Yeah, but it seems to me that if you forget something, you can always buy it when you get there. Don’t they have stores where you go on vacation?”
She huffed out a laugh. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t really evergoon vacation. In fact, this is the closest thing I’ve had to one in years.”
Dang.Thiswas her vacation. Now he really felt guilty for making her muck out stalls and eat fried bologna for lunch.
He raised an eyebrow. “Does my sister work you that hard?”
That got a smile out of her.
“No, not at all. She’s always telling me I need to take ‘self-care’ breaks.”
“Sounds like Faye.”
“She’s hard to argue with, though. The last vacation I took was at her insistence. Your sister made me take two entire weeks off.”
“Cool. Where did you go?” He tried to picture if she was more of a beach person or a cabin in the mountains type. He figured the cabin. He could just imagine her showing up with four suitcases and a first aid kit.
“Go? I didn’tgoanywhere.” She tilted her head. “Wait, I did take Gladys for a couple of walks in the park, and I went to the market a few times.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a vacation.”
“It was to me. It was just more of astaycation. I spent the whole two weeks deep cleaning my apartment and purging my closet. And I took a couple of days where I stayed in my pajamas all day and binged on junk food while watching every season ofDownton Abbeyand having aHarry Pottermovie marathon.”
“Ugh. Now that sounds like torture to me. Not the pajamas and junk food, but spending two weeks cleaning doesn’t seem like much of a vacation. Didn’t you have any adventures that you wanted to take?”
“Not really. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of adventures. I just like to enjoy other people’s from the safety of my living room on the television screen or in the pages of a book.”
He nodded. He hadn’t been very adventurous since he’d lost Beth.
She looked sad. Her words said that she enjoyed adventures on the pages of a book, but the wistful look in her eyes made him feel like maybe sometimes she longed for a little bit more.
He shook his head. When did he get so philosophical? “Well, speaking of going to the market, I never got a chance to thank you for bringing me a box of Lucky Charms. How did you know I was out of cereal?”
“Marnie told me. The woman at the grocery store where I stopped to get the cake. She said you were out and that it was your favorite.” Her cheeks flushed, and she couldn’t seem to look at him again.
What was that about? Why would a box of cereal make her embarrassed?
“Ah. She must’ve noticed when she was here the other day.”
“She seems nice.”
“She is. We’ve known each other a long time. We went to school together.”
“So…” she paused, as if on the verge of asking him something else about Marnie or the cereal, then looked as if she changed her mind and forced a smile. “So, what’s on the schedule for this afternoon?”
