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14
“Will,” Gretchen said, giggling as she tipped her head back. Will kissed her neck, and she enjoyed the feel of his hair through her fingers. He’d shown up with a couple of bags of food and wearing a cowboy hat, but she had no idea where either was at the moment. “My lunchtime is almost over.”
“Is it?” he murmured, his lips coming back to hers. She could honestly kiss him forever, and she’d much rather do that than eat any day. She’d experienced several moments of doubt over the past eight days.
She’d gone through some hard things at work, with one of her best out-front employees putting in her two weeks’ notice. Her family life felt like someone had put it in a salad spinner and just kept pumping that mechanism on top to make everything mix up more and more, faster and faster.
She’d wanted to tell Will about her brother deciding not to bring the kids to the area for the long weekend they’d just had, but Will had problems of his own.
You still should’ve, a voice inside her head whispered, and Will seemed to hear it, because he pulled away. He didn’t back up, and she couldn’t move away from the wall just around the corner from the sink, nor could she avoid his gaze.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, finally able to look up and into those dazzling eyes. He wore compassion and desire there, one warring with the other. A vein of doubt seeped into her expression, and she gave him a smile. “Really.”
“How’s your daddy?” he asked, finally giving her an inch of breathing room. She quickly closed it between them again, not quite ready to let him go. He’d said he couldn’t stay long, and they’d been kissing for a good twenty minutes.
“He’s…fine,” she said.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“And say what?” she challenged. “That he’s telling the same stories over and over? That he keeps saying he’s not going to go down without a fight? Which, by the way, I’ve heard five thousand times, and if I have to hear it again…” Gretchen shook her head, partly angry and mostly frustrated. Dejected. Hopeless.
She drew in a breath and sniffed back her tears. “I’m fine. How’s your mama?”
Will gazed at her, his eyes still full of energy, full of life, full of disbelief. “Gretchen, it’s okay to not be fine.”
“Is it though?” she challenged him again. “Who’s going to run the shop if I break down? You?”
“Yes,” he spat back at her. “I could come help.”
“When? Is that before or after you work sixteen hours on the farm?” Her chest heaved, and she couldn’t breathe in here. This wasn’t how lunch was supposed to go. She tried to move past him, but Will wouldn’t let her.
“Hey, wait,” he said, and his voice was so soft and so unchallenging that she waited. “Do you wanna know why I called you this morning close to six a.m.?”
She searched his face, but the man possessed incredible shutters. He never let anyone see what he didn’t want them to, even her. “Yes,” she whispered.
“I’d stopped by my parents’ house on my run, because I’m just so tired. Daddy came into the kitchen and said Mama needed help to get to the bathroom. So I go do that, and it’s horrible.” He sighed and looked down at the ground, showing her the top of his head, where he had blond, brown, red, and even gray hair growing. She wanted to lift his face, lift his countenance, and lift his spirits.
He did that himself, a new type of blaze entering his expression. An angry, fiery blaze in those aqua eyes. “So I get her in the bathroom, and she’s panting because it’s so hard to walk the fifteen steps from the bed. I close the door, and I just stand there, and I want to cry.” His voice broke on the last word, and that cracked everything inside Gretchen.
She took his face in one palm and slid her other along his waist. “Did you cry?”
“Maybe for a second,” he admitted. “And all I could think about was you. I wanted to hear your voice, and I wanted to see you, and I absolutely couldn’t let another day go by where we just texted or you called me on your drive home from Short Tail.”
He leaned into her touch, and then turned his head and placed a kiss against her wrist. “I’m sorry life is hard for you right now. I will carry any burden for you that I can.”
“It’s not like you’re just watching parades and enjoying the sunshine.”
Will’s anger dissolved into a smile. “True, but I did only run three miles this morning.”
“Heaven forbid,” Gretchen teased. “How will you look yourself in the eyes come this evening?” She giggled, and he chuckled, and when he kissed her this time, it was with new energy, new passion, and Gretchen wanted everything Will had to offer her. She could only hope she had something to offer him.
“…find her,” someone said in the back recesses of her mind. By the time she registered Jon’s voice saying, “There you are,” she’d been caught kissing Will.
He backed up in a hurry then, stooping to grab his fallen cowboy hat and smash it on his head. He looked at Jon and then Gretchen, a delicious blush creeping into his face.
Jon glared with the power of four suns. “There’s a customer out here asking about a custom cake.”
