“How do you decide who gets one and who doesn’t? Or do the puppies simply go to the first six applicants?”
“No, they go to the most suitable applicants, taking into consideration both the family’s habits and environment and the animal’s needs.”
“Are any of the farm animals available for adoption?” he asked.
“Not publicly,” she said. “But again, we try to ensure the best environment for each animal. Only a few months after we’d opened, we found a Babydoll lamb tied up at the gate. We cared for him as best we could, but immediately started searching for a suitable adopter who already had one or more Babydolls, because they have a very strong flocking instinct and don’t do well on their own. Thankfully, we managed to find a local farmer who was willing to add him to his flock.”
“How are the garlic knots?” Gerald asked, when he returned to their table.
“Gone,” Evan said.
“But they were delicious,” Daphne assured the server.
“Are you ready, then, to order your main courses?” he asked.
“I think we are,” Evan said, and gestured for his date to do so.
Daphne opted for the harvest salad bowl and Evan ordered a rib eye steak with a fully loaded baked potato.
“You’re not one of those women who thinks a woman shouldn’t eat on a date, are you?” he asked when Gerald had gone.
“Did you not see me scarf down three of those garlic knots?”
“So you’re telling me that you filled up on bread?”
She sipped her wine and mentally braced herself for his reaction when she said, “I’m telling you that I don’t eat meat.”
Chapter Five
Evan set his beer glass down on the paper coaster. “You’re a vegetarian?”
Daphne nodded. “Yes, I am.”
“And I brought you to a restaurant known for its barbecue.”
“It’s the hottest ticket in town,” she acknowledged, hoping he wouldn’t make a big deal out of her revelation.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked.
“Because you seemed happy that you’d managed to snag a reservation and, having been here before, I knew there were some decent vegetarian options on the menu. Plus—” she shrugged “—I didn’t want you to think I was a freak.”
“Why would I think you were a freak?”
“Because I’m a vegetarian whose father owns the biggest cattle ranch in town.” She kept her tone light so that he wouldn’t know how much it hurt her to be at odds with her family.
“I’m guessing that’s a source of conflict between you?”
“One of many,” she confirmed.
“Well, I think it takes a lot of courage to march to the tune of your own drummer, especially when the rest of the band is moving in the opposite direction.”
“Thank you... I think.”
“It was a compliment,” he assured her as he pushed his chair away from the table. “Excuse me for a minute. I see someone that I need to talk to.”
Daphne sipped her wine, relieved that he didn’t seem put off by her revelation.
And really, why should he be? Why should he care? The choice to eat or not eat meat was her own—except to hear her father tell it. To Cornelius Taylor, it was a sign of disrespect, a personal affront to who he was and everything he’d given to her. And every time she sat down to a meal with him, he made a point of saying so.
“Do you want another glass of wine?” Evan asked as he returned to his seat.
“Maybe with dinner,” she said. “If I have another one now, I might be asleep at the table before our food comes.”
“Living on a farm, your mornings must start pretty early,” he noted.
“It’s not a working farm, so I don’t actually have to be up with the sun, but Reggie makes sure that I am.”
She’d introduced him to the dark Brahma rooster when she gave him the tour of the farm. Although the average lifespan of a rooster was five to eight years, twelve-year-old Reggie was still going strong.
Gerald returned then, setting a bowl in front of Daphne and a plate in front of Evan. “Enjoy.”
Daphne frowned at Evan’s meal. Instead of the steak and baked potato that he’d ordered, the plate held a burger with hand-cut fries and coleslaw.
“I think they brought you someone else’s order.”
“No, they didn’t,” he said. “I changed my rib eye to a veggie burger.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” she protested. “I’ve lived my whole life with other people judging me for my choices, so I try really hard not to judge others.”
“Which isn’t actually the same as not judging them,” he noted.
“But I try really hard,” she said again, making him laugh.
Then his expression grew serious as he studied her across the table while nibbling on a fry. “You know, you’re not at all what I expected, Daphne Taylor.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know,” he confided. “But I didn’t expect to find myself so instantly and thoroughly...captivated.”
He made the admission reluctantly—and not entirely happily.
“Maybe it was fate that brought you to Happy Hearts last week,” she suggested.
“I don’t believe in fate,” he said.
“You prefer to believe you have control over your destiny?” she asked, dipping her fork into her bowl.
“I’d definitely rather be a driver than a passenger,” he confirmed.
“But if your attention is always focused on the road ahead, you might miss other things happening around you,” she pointed out.
“I’d still rather drive.”
“Fair enough,” she decided. “Now tell me how a man with such a pragmatic streak got into the ghost tour business.”
“Happenstance, really,” he told her. “A few weeks after my college graduation, I was in the library when I heard a couple of teenagers in the stacks talking about how the old building was supposedly haunted.”
“Is it?” Daphne asked curiously.
“There are rumors,” he said. “But I suspect he was just trying to get her to go down to the basement with him to make out.”
“The only reason anyone ever went down to the basement of the library,” she noted with amusement.
“Which might be why they now keep the door locked,” he said. “In any event, our hopeful Romeo was unsuccessful in luring his Juliet to a subterranean rendezvous, because she said the cold spot in the basement gave her the creeps.
“Even when he pointed out that all basements were cold, she adamantly refused to go down there, claiming it wasn’t just chilly but haunted.”
“Did he laugh?”
“He did,” Evan confirmed. “Because he was clearly too young and stupid to realize that laughing at a girl you’re hoping to get to second base with is pretty much a guarantee of striking out.”
Daphne couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Obviously you are older and wiser.”
“I like to think so,” he agreed when he’d finished chewing a mouthful of burger. “And while he was teasing her for believing in ghosts, she told him, in a very matter-of-fact tone, that there are haunted sites in almost every town around the world but most people don’t realize it—or don’t want to admit it. Then she proceeded to tell him about a trip she’d taken the previous summer, to visit a great-aunt who lives in Niagara-on-the-Lake, apparently the most haunted town in Canada.”
“What makes it the most haunted town in Canada?” Daphne wondered.
“I’m not sure, but it might have something to do with the fact that there was a lot of bloodshed there during the War of 1812. Whether the haunted reputation is deserved or not, Juliet mentioned that she and her family had gone on a ghost walk there—a well-attended, apparently very successful gho
st walk—and suggested that it would be really cool if there was something like that in Bronco.”
“So you stole her idea?”
“She didn’t have any plans to start a tour company herself. She just wanted someone to show her the sites. Although she did apply for a job with Bronco Ghost Tours the first summer we were in operation.”
“How did you know it was her?” she asked curiously.
“She mentioned the ghost walk in Niagara-on-the-Lake as ‘relevant experience.’”
“Did you hire her?”
He nodded. “I did. I figured I owed her that much. But she quit after three weeks, saying it was too scary.”
Daphne wasn’t surprised. Even she hadn’t been immune to the story he’d told about the fire at Whispering Willows, and she’d heard most of it before. But somehow his telling of the tale had created a chill in her bones...and evoked a sadness in her soul similar to what she felt whenever she heard Alice crying.
But she shook off the feeling now and focused on Evan. “You do know how to create atmosphere in your stories.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“So how many of your stories do you believe are true?”
“All of the accounts are based on reports of eyewitnesses who believe they’ve seen or heard whatever it is they’re reporting.”
She sipped her water as she tried to read between the lines of what he was saying. “If you ever want to change your career path, you could go into politics, because that was a perfectly evasive answer.”
“Thanks, but I’d rather deal with ghosts than politicians any day.” He picked up a fry and gestured with it toward her bowl. “How’s your dinner?”
“Really good,” she said. “And yours?”
“Better than I expected.”
“But definitely not a rib eye.”
He shrugged. “I don’t always have to have meat and potatoes,” he said, then grinned. “Sometimes I have rice instead of potatoes.”
“Did anyone leave room for dessert?” Gerald asked, when he came by a little later to clear away their empty plates.
“There’s always room for dessert,” Daphne said.
“My sentiments exactly,” the server agreed, winking as he retrieved a printed dessert menu from the pocket of his apron and set it on the table between them.
“The berry cobbler sounds good to me,” Daphne decided. “With a cup of decaf coffee.”
“I’m going to go for the Mile-High Mud Pie,” Evan said. “And regular coffee.”
“So how many supposedly haunted places are there in Bronco? And how do you decide which ones to include on your tour?” she asked, picking up the conversation again while they waited for their last course to be delivered.
“We do a walking tour in the summer, so we stick to the downtown area and usually visit the courthouse, the cemetery and the library, then we walk over the old train bridge to Easterbrook House.”
“I’ve heard that some people claim to hear the creaking of the wood gallows outside the courthouse, which used to be the site of public executions,” Daphne said. “But tell me about the cemetery.”
“It’s where they bury dead people.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not that a plot of land filled with skeletons isn’t scary enough, but why is it part of your tour?”
“Rumor has it that a grave robber buried himself alive there after being haunted by the deceased victim of his crime.”
She shivered. “Maybe we should talk about something else.”
“You don’t want to know about Easterbrook House?”
“Wasn’t John Easterbrook the politician whose wife and daughter were killed during a home invasion while he was at a council meeting?”
Evan nodded. “It’s said that he resigned his position on the council after that night and never left the house again—not even after his death.”
“A politician and a ghost,” she mused.
“That’s the story,” he said.
The server brought their desserts with two spoons on each plate. “In case you want to share.”
Of course Daphne wanted to share, and she wasn’t shy about digging into his mud pie with as much enthusiasm as she showed her cobbler.
“This—” she pointed her spoon toward the melting pie “—is why I could never go vegan.”
“Mud pie?”
“I was actually referring to dessert in general,” she said. “Most cakes and pies include dairy and eggs, and while a lot of restaurants now have vegan options, it’s usually some kind of berry sorbet.”
“But you like berries.”
“I love berries—especially with ice cream. Or whipped cream.”
He chuckled.
“At home, I buy my dairy products from a local farmer who subscribes to humane practices.”
“I’m not judging,” he promised.
“I know, but sometimes I judge myself for not doing more.”
“I ate a veggie burger instead of a steak tonight—does that do anything to help balance the scales?”
“Maybe it does,” she decided.
“So when and why did you decide to become a vegetarian?” he asked curiously.
“I think I was eight or nine,” she said. “My older brothers were outside, watching the branding and castrating of the new calves, but I was expected to stay in the house to help my stepmother with my little brothers.”
“I’m guessing that you didn’t stay in the house.”
“I hated being treated differently from Jordan and Brandon just because I was a girl. So no, I didn’t stay in the house.”
But later, she would wish she had, because the sight of those poor baby calves being pinned to the ground and the sound of their desperate bawling had haunted her dreams for far too many years afterward.
“And when I saw what was happening, I flew at my father, fists flailing, screaming for him to stop.” She pushed her empty plate away. “He was furious—and probably embarrassed that I would make such a big scene over what was, in his opinion, nothing more than a day in the life of a rancher.
“We had roast for dinner that night, but I refused to touch it. So I went to bed hungry, because if I wasn’t going to eat the food that he worked hard to put on the table, then I wasn’t going to eat at all.”
“So you’ve been a vegetarian since then?”
She shook her head. “No, it took a few more years for me to realize that he couldn’t actually force me to eat meat—though he still hasn’t given up trying. Our battle of wills continues to this day, whenever we’re in close enough proximity to argue.”
“I’m picturing some awkward family get-togethers.”
“You have no idea,” she told him, thinking again of the confrontation with her father over the Thanksgiving menu. “Which is why I prefer to avoid those events whenever possible.”
Gerald discreetly left the check on the corner of the table.
Daphne wanted to split the bill, but Evan was old-fashioned enough to believe that when a man invited a woman out for dinner, he should pay. Still, he appreciated the offer.
After he’d settled up, he helped her with her coat and took her arm as they left the restaurant, in case there were icy patches on the ground. And maybe because it gave him an excuse to touch her.
“Look,” she said, tipping her head back to peer up at the night sky. “It’s snowing.”
“A rare sight in Montana this time of year,” he remarked dryly.
She laughed. “You’re not a fan of snow?”
He shook his head. “Not when I have to shovel it.”
“I’ll have to do that in the morning,” she acknowledged. “Tonight, I’m just going to enjoy it.”
They chatted easily on the drive back to Happy Hearts, though the closer they got to home, the more flutters she felt in her
tummy as the butterflies awakened again in anticipation of another kiss.
He pulled right up to the house, so she wouldn’t have to walk too far across the slippery ground, and he took her arm again to hold her steady. The security lights turned on automatically as they approached the short flight of stairs that led up to the wraparound porch.
Daphne pulled her keys out of her pocket as they neared the door. She was tempted to invite Evan inside for a drink, but she suspected that if she did, the evening wouldn’t end with a drink. And though there was no denying that she was powerfully attracted to him, she wasn’t ready to take that next step.
Instead, she simply said, “Thank you for dinner.”
“It was my pleasure.”
Then he lowered his head to brush his lips against hers.
He tasted of berries and chocolate and man—and the mixture of flavors was more intoxicating than the wine she’d drunk at dinner. And the heat that surged through her veins made her forget that it was only twenty degrees outside. She also forgot that she was holding her keys in her hand, until they slipped through her fingers and dropped onto the porch.
Evan smiled against her mouth, and she knew that he was well aware of the effect he had on her.
Of course he was aware. A guy who kissed like he did obviously had some experience.
Daphne pushed the thought aside to focus on the kiss, but he was already pulling back.
He reached down to scoop up her keys. “You’re going to want these,” he said, pressing them into her hand.
“So...” She took a moment to catch her breath and gather her thoughts. “I guess I’ll see you next Friday?”
He smiled. “You’ll see me next Friday.”
“Or...maybe before?” she suggested.
“Do you have anything specific in mind?”
“It occurred to me, since you didn’t have any trouble choking down that veggie burger, that you might be willing to try some homemade vegetarian cooking.”
“Are you offering to make me dinner?”
“I am,” she said. “If you’re interested and—”
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