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“I guess,” Eleanor said, wishing she could think of an excuse not to help. She had a very bad feeling about this.
“Eleanor!”
Eleanor almost sighed in relief as she heard Sunday calling her.
She turned, with maybe a bigger smile on her face than absolutely necessary. “Sunday! How are you enjoying your first barn dance?”
“I’m having a great time,” Sunday said, but she nodded her head across the floor. “But Ryan has been stuck in a corner all night. I wish I could think of a way to get him out.” Sunday looked over at Sally. “Do you think you might go ask him to dance?”
“I’m sorry. I’m busy. But maybe later, after I get this...thing done that I need to do.” She gave Eleanor a look that Eleanor interpreted easily. She wasn’t to breathe a word about what Sally was about to do.
Sally didn’t have to worry about that. Eleanor didn’t want to have anything to do with it at all. Nothing.
In fact, she was so eager to get away that she almost offered to dance with her brother herself. Unfortunately, that would only embarrass both of them. So she walked off with Sunday as they tried to brainstorm a way to get Ryan out of his corner and enjoying life in Strawberry Sands. It was obvious that he missed the rodeo, or...maybe there was someone on the rodeo circuit he missed.
Eleanor tucked that information in the back of her head and followed her sister. Maybe she could do a little digging and see if there might be something she could do to help Ryan, something that didn’t involve kidnapping anyone.
Chapter 4
“She’s having so muchtrouble having her kittens, and I just needed you to help me. I knew that you could do it. Since you’re a farmer.” Sally knew she sounded ridiculous, but she blinked her big blue eyes up at Peter, hoping that he would fall to her charm—the charm of her blue eyes and blonde hair and the innocent, childish expression that she often was told she had.
It wasn’t that she was a terrible, calculating person. It was just that once a person had been told that they look so sweet and innocent so many times, they started to believe it. Or maybe...they figured out a way to use it to their benefit, instead of always being annoyed about it.
She was almost thirty. But she was still being mistaken for an eighteen-year-old and had just been carded when she tried to buy cough syrup for goodness’ sake. And the last time she tried to buy a pocketknife, she’d been denied permission, because she forgot her purse and couldn’t produce her driver’s license.
It was annoying.
Except for now, when hopefully her baby blues were doing what they were supposed to do.
Peter looked down at her from underneath his cowboy hat. His blue button-down contrasted nicely with the dark brown of his eyes. She hadn’t seen too many people wear a cowboy hat and glasses at the same time, but Peter pulled the look off.
“So I put on a cowboy hat, and everybody thinks I know everything there is to know about animals?”
“Please. I don’t want to bother anyone else. Strawberry Sands doesn’t have too many fun times, and this is the biggest thing that’s ever happened in our town. I hate to drag anyone else off. But...”
“I was standing in the corner and didn’t look like I had anything else better to do?” Peter finished her sentence for her when she paused.
