AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Eight
Jill didn’t care where Slate took her for lunch. She didn’t have to drive, and she didn’t have to think, and that was what she needed right now.
“You okay?” Slate asked, glancing at her. He was a completely different kind of cowboy with the cool Hollywood shades on, and Jill couldn’t help the fantasies that had started when she’d met him in front of the homestead. Her own happily-ever-after loomed before her, just like the women got in the romantic movies she watched.
“Yeah,” she said. “This morning’s camp was just a beast. There was a little girl who didn’t want to be there, and whose mother just drove away while she literally screamed for her to come back.”
“Oh, so that was that noise we could hear from the construction site.” He grinned at her.
Jill smiled back. “Might’ve been me screeching into a megaphone to be heard over her.”
“That too,” Slate said. “Since Luke and I haven’t been here for Camp Honeybee before, we weren’t sure what was going on.”
“Camp Honeybee.” Jill laughed, and that lightened her mood as well as the weight on her shoulders. Her mother had texted her that morning, and Jill could admit to herself that the message had contributed to her more contemplative mood.
I’m concerned about you dating someone who’s been in prison. Can we please talk more about Slate next time you come visit?
Jill couldn’t refuse having a simple conversation, though she knew there’d be nothing simple about it.
“Other than that, it went okay?” Slate asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Jill said, looking out the window at the fields flying by. “Another mother had stayed for her anxious daughter, and she helped the screaming girl. She calmed down, and things were okay.”
“I’m glad.” Slate drove with both hands on the steering wheel, his message absolutely clear—there would be no hand-holding while driving. He’d bought a newer truck since his release from prison, and it had bucket seats, so she couldn’t slide over and sit next to him on the bench either.
She’d grown up watching Haven, who was seven years older than her, go out with cute cowboys. When they’d come to the door and get her, Jill would admire them from the kitchen. She’d run to the front windows once Haven left for her date and watch as her teenage sister got in the truck and slidallthe way over to sit right next to the driver. One time, Jill could’ve sworn she’d sat on the lap of one of her boyfriends, right there in the front driveway.
Haven had been a big flirt too, and she’d still managed to find a cowboy to settle down with. Jill had to hold onto hope that she could too.
She cut a glance out of the corner of her eye to Slate, who seemed utterly at ease with everything. She wondered if that was a façade, or if he was really just chill about things. He hadn’t seemed to mind having her at his grandparents’ farm last night either, though he did get a little uptight when his granny said she’d tell his story.
“What are you smilin’ about?” he asked, a new smile on his face too.
“Am I?” Jill asked, just realizing it. “I was just thinking about your granny.”
“Here we go,” Slate said.
“What?”
“I suppose you want me to tell you the story, is that right?”
“Maybe,” she said. “I told my mother about you too.”
His eyebrows shot up underneath his cowboy hat. “You did?”
Jill sighed, and it sounded heavy to her own ears. “Yeah.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“My sister interrupted us, and my mom texted this morning. She wants to talk more about our relationship.”
“Why?”
“Um.” Jill didn’t know how to say what the issue was without hurting his feelings. “I don’t know. Just that we didn’t have much time for me to give her all the proper details.”
Slate’s fingers tightened and released on the steering wheel, and Jill’s guilt crept through her for not telling the complete truth. “Actually,” she said. “She’s worried about you being…about you…uh…”
“About me being an ex-con,” he said. “You can say it. I know what I am.”
