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“I’m not a little kid anymore,” Cody said firmly.
Dani’s smile was bittersweet “That’s what worries me.” She watched her son as he rationed out the grain for the cattle. His body was changing; he was growing up faster than she wanted him to. “I’ll check the water and you can sweep the floor, okay?”
“Okay,” Cody grumbled.
Dani walked from the barn and into the bright morning sunlight. Stuffing her gloves into the back pocket of her jeans, she began filling each of the troughs near the barn with fresh water. As she waited for the troughs to fill, listening to the cool sound of rushing water pounding against the old metal tubs, she chanced looking at Chase again.
He wasn’t leaning on the dump truck any longer. Instead he was shoveling mud from the bottom of the creek and supervising the planting of several trees near the deep hole he was creating. The morning sun caught in his blond hair and gleamed on the sweat of his back. His back and shoulder muscles, tanned and glistening in the sun, stretched fluidly as he worked.
“Hey, Mom, watch what you’re doing!” Cody yelled as he walked out of the barn.
Shocked out of her wandering thoughts, Dani noticed that the trough was overflowing; precious water was swirling in the tub before running down the hillside in a wild stream.
“For crying out loud,” she chastised herself as she turned off the water and looked over her shoulder to the other trough where Cody was furiously twisting the handle of the spigot.
Frowning, he wiped his hands on his jeans as he approached. “You’ve got the hots for that guy, don’t you?”
“Cody!”
He shrugged and pouted. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you about him.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Dani remarked. “Hey . . . wait a minute. You’re warning me? What do you know about ‘the hots’?”
Knowing he’d managed to goad his mother, Cody looked slyly over his shoulder before saying, “Isabelle Reece says her pa—”
“I’m not sure I’m ready to hear this—”
“Just kidding, Mom,” he said, a grin growing from one side of his boyish face to the other before he sobered again. “But . . .”
“But what?”
“You haven’t forgotten about Dad, have you? He is coming home.”
Not wanting to cause her son any further pain or confusion, Dani had trouble finding the courage to tell him the truth and burst his bubble of hope. “When your dad gets here, we’ll talk. All of us.”
Cody visibly brightened.
“But you have to understand that we don’t love each other anymore; not the way a man and wife love each other.”
Doubts filled his eyes. “But you were married!”
“Unfortunately people change.”
“Or give up,” he accused, his small jaw tight, his dark brows pulled together and his eyes bright with challenge.
“Or give up,” she agreed. “I’m not saying I was right—”
“You weren’t! You should have stayed married to him!”
“Believe me, I tried.”
“Not hard enough!”
“Cody—”
Tears filled his eyes and he tried to swallow them back. “Can I go fishin’?”
“Now?”
