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“You didn’t ask permission?” Gretchen asked. “William Iverson Cooper.” She giggled again, took a bite of her ice cream, and looked at Will with stars in her eyes.
He told himself not to fall in love with her in a single evening. He’d made that mistake before, and he’d been paying for it for a long time. He could hardly help himself, however, and he just shook his head and took another bite of his treat.
It didn’t take long to eat through a single scoop of ice cream, and he got to his feet. He extended his hand to Gretchen to help her up, and nothing had been right in the world without her fingers between his. Will gave her a shy smile and kept his gaze on the ground as he walked her the few paces back to her vehicle.
“Tuesday,” he said into the stillness around him.
Before she could answer, the night lit up with blue and red lights, and a police siren wentwhoop!-whoop!seemingly an inch from his ear. Will turned around to find two cop cars screeching to a halt only feet from him, and an officer jumped from one of them.
“Hold it right there,” he said.
“No!” Clarissa yelled from somewhere in the darkness. “I turned off the alert.”
More headlights joined the party in the small Shoppe lot, and Will’s countenance drooped to his toes as Daddy arrived in his big truck, then Lee in his.
“Alarms goin’ off at the house,” Daddy said, coming forward to see who the perpetrator was. “Will?”
“Sir, what’s going on?” the officer asked.
“Nothing,” Rissa said.
“It’s a spreadable cheese shop,” Will said into the chaos. “I had a key!” The only thing comforting him was Gretchen’s hand holding tightly to his.
“I’m so sorry, Will,” Rissa said, turning to face him with panic in her eyes. “I turned off the alert.”
Lee met Will’s eyes, and all he did was start to laugh. And laugh. And laugh.
“All right,” Daddy said. “False alarm. Pack it up everyone. Time to go home.” He gave Will a cocked left eyebrow that said he’d be in even more trouble if he kept going down his current path, then limped off to get back in his truck.
“Ma’am, are you okay?” an officer asked, and Will wanted to turn lion on him and roar that of course she was okay. He had a key, and they snuck two scoops of ice cream, for crying out loud!
“I’m fine,” Gretchen said, and she stood partially behind Will while everyone left.
With his head hanging down, he finally faced her. “Sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay.”
He looked up and into her eyes. She couldn’t possibly think what had just happened was okay. “I feel cursed with you,” he said, not quite sure why he let his mouth say things without consulting his brain first.
She flinched at his words. “Do you want to cancel for Tuesday night?”
“No,” he said, reaching up slowly to run his fingers down the side of her face. Their eyes locked, and Will leaned toward her. He brushed his lips against her cheek and straightened before he made a bigger fool of himself. “If you’re willing to put up with my mouth, and my insane family, and awkward exchanges every time we’re together, and apparently a few cops every now and then, I’d love to see you on Tuesday night.”
Gretchen smiled, nodded, and got in her minivan. Will stayed in the parking lot and watched her drive away. Then he looked up into the sky and blew out his breath. “Really, Lord? I had a key.”
* * *
Will growledas he strained against the wrench, trying with every muscle in his body to get the nut to move. It finally did, releasing all at once and sending his elbow into the side of the machine.
He swore, but there was no one around to hear him. Travis had pulled over three cowboys from the winter wheat planting to deal with the milking today, due to this machine going down over three hours ago. Not only that, but the rain had turned every single thing at Sweet Water Falls Farm into muck and mud.
Will carried a lot of it on his jeans and boots, and he didn’t think there was a shower on this earth that could get him clean enough to go out with Gretchen tonight. He sat up and rubbed his elbow, glancing at the analog clock on the wall in the milkshed.
Almost noon, and he didn’t see the work he had to do letting up in the next six hours. “You should cancel with her,” he said with a groan as he got to his feet. He reached for the package another of their cowboys had gone to town to get, and he got busy fixing the machine. Every cow they could get milked, rain or shine, needed to be done.
In this moment in time, Will hated every machine in the world. He installed the new pump and wrenched everything back together. After taking ten seconds to stretch his back, he walked toward the outer area of the shed, where the cows were chuted in to be milked.
“Try station seven now,” he yelled to no one in particular. Several men worked to get cows—Travis called them Berthas—into position, and someone went toward station seven. A cowboy fed a cow down to the station, and the suction hoses got hooked to her udders. A couple of moments later, milk sloshed into their canister.
