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“I brought double chocolate chip cookies,” Spencer said. “I made them myself, so you’ll probably not want to eat them.”
“I’m sure they’re better than that disgusting lava cake the other night.”
“Hey, that was good,” Spencer said. “I think I will put them under the broiler next time, like you said. They’ll be hotandcrispy then.”
“All right, well you two kids have a good night.” Travis’s boots came toward her, and he bent over her. “Love you, Rissy. Feel better fast.” He grinned at her, a gesture that said he knew she was faking but he wasn’t going to call her on it in front of Spencer. He pressed a kiss to her forehead and left in a flash, before she could even say good-bye to him.
“I won’t stay,” Spencer said, coming into her line of sight at the end of the couch. “You’ve built yourself a little nest here, and there’s food. You know where to find me if you need something.” He gave her a plastic smile, touched the top of his cowboy hat, and started for the door at a slower clip than Travis had.
“Do you ever just feel useless?” she asked, and he paused. “That’s how I feel today. Useless, and like everything I’ve done here over the past eight years doesn’t mean anything.”
Spencer walked over to the recliner and eased into it. “Yeah, I think I know what that feels like.” He didn’t smile this time. “Did I make you feel like that?”
“No,” she said miserably. She sat up and ran her hands through her hair. She’d washed it that morning, but it felt greasy and limp to her. She exhaled and lifted her head again. “Watching you make the spreadable cheeses was amazing. You’re very good at it, and I suppose it just made me realize…I’m not needed here.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.”
“It’s not you,” she said. “It’s just…this. Everything. Daddy doesn’t need me to pull the product pick-ups. He and the boys can do it. He doesn’t need me to open the shoppe at ten. You’ll do it at noon. He doesn’t need me to make the cheeses or the ice cream. I’m just…useless.”
“You are not,” Spencer said, his voice quiet but powerful. “You’ve developed all of those recipes, Clarissa. Without you, there is no shoppe. There are no cheeses getting made. Heck, I didn’t even know cream cheese was something a personcouldmake. I thought it just came in those little bricks at the store.”
She appreciated the sentiments, as well as the intensity in his eyes, but she looked away anyway. “I just need…I don’t know what I need. It’s not soup, though. Not when it’s so hot outside.”
“You do have your blanket out,” he said, and she caught a grin on his face when she looked at him again.
“It comforts me.” She didn’t want to tell him what else comforted her, though she had a whole freezer full of chocolate chip cookies that usually did the trick.
He met her gaze. “Maybe the soup will too.”
“I like dessert first.”
Without a word, he got up and collected the plate of cookies he’d brought. He joined her on the couch this time, and he held the paper plate toward her. She picked up a cookie and sniffed it. “Smells normal.”
“Well, arsenic is odorless.”
Clarissa blinked at him, and he burst out laughing. He picked up one of the cookies and took a bite of it. Half the cookie disappeared, and he held up the other half in a sort of toast before eating it too. “That was a joke, obviously,” he said, still chuckling.
She took a dainty bite of the fresh cookie he’d brought, expecting to find it extremely salty or something. But it tasted…amazing, with milk and semi-sweet chocolate chips in the same dough. “This is good,” she said.
“I never cease to amaze,” he quipped, and Clarissa felt herself slipping a little further in love with him.
Perhaps her third mistake of the week when it came to Spencer Rust. After this afternoon’s think session on the couch, she was more determined than ever to leave Sweet Water Falls Farm in her rearview mirror and strike out into the restaurant business in Texas.
She had to. Her life would not be defined by pimento cheese spread that anyone could make. Oh, no, it would not.
* * *
The scentof smoke and meat grilling filled Clarissa’s nose as she got out of Spencer’s white truck. The vehicle had seen better days, but the engine purred like a kitten and the seats inside didn’t have a scratch on them. It couldn’t go over fifty-five, but Spencer didn’t seem to care. He drove with one hand on the wheel and the other in hers, about five under the speed limit the whole way from Sweet Water Falls to Hope Eternal.
He said nothing to her as he met her at the hood and took her hand in his. He led her through an opening in the fence that didn’t have a gate, and down the sidewalk toward a house that had been connected to another one by a three-car garage.
“I used to live over in the Annex,” he said, nodding to the right. “That’s where all the cowboys live. Ginger, the owner and boss, lived over here in the West Wing.” He spoke with fondness, and Clarissa was glad he had these friends here. Maybe when she left, he wouldn’t completely alone.
If you’re still leaving, why are you even here?
The question ran through her mind, and she needed to address it sooner rather than later. Right now wouldn’t work, so she filed it away, just like she’d been doing every day this week.
Spencer took them through the garage to a long, big back yard, where several more cabins took up the space in front of the back fence. People had started to gather around an enormous cauldron of fire, where a man worked with long leather gloves on and the biggest pair of tongs Clarissa had ever seen.
