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“Not that I’ve noticed,” he said. “Even you had to be strong-armed into admitting this was a date.”
She removed her hand from his to make the turn, and only a few hundred yards later, she parked the car in a spot in the trailhead parking lot. She looked at him, the words she wanted to say filling her throat. “Maybe the women around here just need more time getting used to the idea of saying personal things out loud.”
Gina reached for her thermos and got out of the car, Blake scrambling to do the same beside her. “We used to tell each other everything,” he said over the top of the car. “Even when I finally got up the nerve to tell you I didn’t want to be just friends.”
She met his eye, that same current moving between them. “Got up the nerve? That suggests that you didn’t justtell me everything.” She opened the door, the hinges squealing, and pulled her pack from the car. “I have breakfast.”
He shouldered his pack and came around the back of the car, his eyes trained on hers. “I don’t want to be just friends.” He reached up and adjusted his ball cap. “In fact, I don’t even know how to be just friends with you, Gina.”
Her heart thundered through her chest, hanging there and rumbling around her ribs the way it did in the Texas skies during a summer storm. She searched his face, disliking how unsettled he looked.
“Say something,” he said, the frustration right there in his voice.
She wanted to ask him what he wanted her to say, but she already knew what. She wasn’t sixteen years old anymore, and she didn’t need to play games. “I brought your favorite sausage and egg English muffins,” she said. “With that dill mayo? Because I really want you to be happy, and I want this to be an amazing date, because.” She swallowed. “I don’t want to be just friends either.”
There. She’d said it. Bounced that ball right back into his court, and if the smile spreading across his face meant anything, he’d caught the ball and was ready to play.
CHAPTERTEN
Rebecca Stewart turned toward her front door as it opened. Holly entered with a huge box in her hands, talking to someone over her shoulder. That would be her sister, Sierra, and sure enough, the youngest of the Stewarts entered carrying Becks’s wedding dress.
“…on his way to get Aunt Thea, and you need to go get Mama.” Holly faced Becks, who lifted her coffee mug to her lips. She’d eaten breakfast at the lodge with all of the guests currently staying at Longhorn Ranch, the way she usually did. Luke had been there too, as neither of them believed in any of the traditions of not seeing the bride before the wedding on the wedding day.
Her heart did a nosedive toward her toes, because she was getting married today.
“Good morning,” she said, wishing she had more lazy days like this one. She usually showed up at the lodge in her professional clothes, ready for work. She ate her breakfast—fruit and scrambled eggs—and went down the hall to the administrative wing of the lodge. Since the lodge didn’t serve lunch, she usually met Luke at one of the tables down the second hall from her office, or they met at one of their cabins.
They ate dinner together at the lodge most nights, except for when he took her to town for something at one of her favorite restaurants or to visit her parents and choke down some of her mom’s overcooked meat.
Holly beamed at her, her naturally wavy hair already perfectly styled into an elegant up-do. Her makeup hadn’t been done yet, and she wore the same thing Becks usually saw her in around the ranch—jeans and a tank top. “Morning,” she said, her personality strong and gentle at the same time.
She ran the lodge in the evenings, and she could charm guests, horses, dogs, and snakes alike. In fact, all of Becks’s dogs—all five of them—perked up at the sound of Holly’s voice. The younger two—the puppies—went scrambling toward her from their mass bed, where all five of them crammed in to sleep.
“Oh, look at you,” Holly cooed just as she set the box on the kitchen counter. She bent down to scrub the puppies, one named Chestnut and the other named Arrow. Becks’s other three dogs were all older, adult rescues, but they loved Holly too.
“Go on, you old geezer,” Becks said to Harold, the oldest of the rescues she hadn’t been able to leave at Chestnut Ranch. Luke had forbidden her to go see Seth’s Canine Encounters again, as he was going to be moving into her more secluded family cabin come tomorrow.
After the wedding, at least. He hadn’t brought by a single box yet, but he’d also moved here in a single day, with a single load in the back of his truck, when he’d shown up from Chestnut Ranch a year ago.
A year, she thought. She couldn’t believe it had been a year since he’d shown up to tell her that he’d left his best friend behind, talked to Becks’s cousin, and gotten a job here. He loved her, and he wanted to be with her, wherever she was.
Even now, warmth filled her as Sierra folded the garment bag over the back of the couch. “Thanks for the help with the dresses.” She shot Holly a glare and shook out her arms. “Those things areheavy.” She switched her gaze to Becks, and everything about Sierra softened. “Happy Wedding Day.”
“Thank you,” Becks said, giggling. Sierra had been putting a heavy red in her hair for years, and her coppery curls looked like metallic ringlets. She shone like a lucky penny when she was around family and familiar people and friends, but she wasn’t the most people-y of people otherwise. All of those genes had gone to her only sister, Holly, and that had landed Sierra on the ranch side of the family business.
It suited her, and she loved working with Todd and the other cowboys and cowgirls who labored outside with animals, the land, or with anything agricultural. Becks swore, if a meteor hit the earth and obliterated all of the foliage on the earth, it would be Sierra who could cultivate everything back to life. Her green thumb was incredible, and she was the only reason Becks’s plants hadn’t died yet.
“I’m going to get Mama,” she said as she rounded the counter and engulfed Becks in a hug. “But we’ll be right back, and then we’re going to get everyone all dolled up and perfect for this wedding.”
“I just got a text from Nash,” Holly said. “He said Starla is on track for the one-thirty meal-time.”
“Great,” Becks said. She hadn’t doubted Starla Masters for a moment. Gina had texted her pictures of the cake over the past couple of days, because apparently it took more than a few hours to make a wedding cake.
Gina had mixed up the batter on Friday night after work, and she’d baked all of the tiers. Then she’d frozen them over night, crumb-coated them in the morning, and put them back in a huge freezer in her parents’ garage.
A squeeze of gratitude moved through her for all of the people working to make her wedding so perfect. Gina herself was under a lot of stress, as she’d found an apartment and would be moving in a week or so. When she’d told Becks, they’d celebrated together, and then Becks’s guilt had descended upon her like a load of bricks.
“We’ll be on our honeymoon,” she said. “Luke and I won’t be able to help.”
