Yes, I am, she thought as she hung on to him in her dizzy state.
“Hey, now.” He draped an arm around her shoulders. “I’m not bein’ romantic here, darlin’. I need a little help getting into the house. This foot is killin’ me, but I was determined to wear my boots today. Now it’s swollen up and I’m goin’ to have to ask for help to get my boot off.”
“Why would I want to go out with a limpin’ old cowboy who can’t even stay on a bull’s back eight seconds?” She paced her steps so he wouldn’t have to go too fast. “You shouldn’t have picked her up or me either and carried on like you weren’t hurt.”
“Didn’t think,” he groaned.
“You’ve probably set yourself back a week,” she scolded.
“And it was worth every minute. I’ll be ready for our date on Friday night, though, I promise,” he said as he limped up the stairs and into the house.
“I didn’t ask you for a date.”
“Well, we’re goin’ on one. I’ve asked Mama to keep Tilly. She’s goin’ to invite Maribel and take the girls to get their toenails done.” He made his way to the recliner and stuck up a boot. “Please.”
Carlene straddled his leg, cupped the boot heel in one hand, and got a firm grip on the toe with the other. It wasn’t her first rodeo when it came to taking off Jace’s boots but no matter how hard she battled, the damn boot would not budge.
“You didn’t ask me if she could do all that and I’m her mother.” She gave it another tug but it was firmly stuck. “One more try and then I’m getting the scissors. Why didn’t you just wear sneakers?” She got a firm grip and he put his other foot on her butt. When she pulled, he pushed and both Carlene and the boot went flying across the room.
The boot landed about a few inches from where Jasmine had been stalking one of her toys. She jumped three feet straight up and a black-and-white flash of fur turned around midair and headed toward the kitchen, wadding a throw rug up in a ball as she tried to get traction.
Carlene wound up on the sofa, muttering swear words under her breath that would blister the paint off the wall. She came up shaking her finger at Jace. “Next time I’m cutting it off, I swear. So you better think twice before putting them on again while that ankle is still healing.”
“How am I going to two-step with you on Friday night if I can’t wear boots?” he asked.
“I guess you aren’t. Not unless you want to wait until the next Friday night.” She righted herself and crossed one leg over the other. “By then you might be able to wear boots.”
“It’s a date, then. We’ll just go to dinner and maybe to the canyon to look at the stars this Friday. We used to spend some quality time parked in the canyon, remember?”
“I’m changing the subject,” she said as heat traveled from her neck to settle in her cheeks. “We’re havin’ chili for supper. You want it as a chili pie, on top of a plate of nachos, or with crackers or corn bread?”
“A bowlful with corn bread and a plate of nachos on the side and a cold beer. I smelled it cooking when I got home a while ago and my stomach has been whining,” he told her. “Thanks for getting the boot off, darlin’.”
“Like I said, scissors next time.”
Jace was restless after Valerie and Tilly left. Not even reruns of bull riding entertained him and with ice packs on his swollen foot, he couldn’t very well pace the floor. There were things that needed to be said and he’d never been too good with serious words. He could tease or flirt any hour of any day, but to really expose his deep-down feelings wasn’t easy—not when he’d grown up in a world where men were tough, both inside and out.
He was still deep in thought when Carlene came to get the ice pack and put it back in the freezer until right before bedtime when she’d make him be still for another twenty minutes.
“Let’s go for a drive. I’ll even sit in the passenger’s seat and let you have the wheel if you’ll get me out of this house,” he said.
“Where do you want to go?” she asked.
“Down in the canyon,” he told her. “To our old parking spot so we can talk.”
“About?”
“Us.” He popped the recliner’s footrest down and got to his feet. “See, most of the swelling has gone down and I promise I’ll wear shoes tomorrow instead of boots.”
“I’m not pregnant,” she said bluntly. “So we don’t really have to talk.”
Jace tried to ignore the twinge of disappointment in his belly. “Well, I still have some things to say and I’d really like to go for a drive.”
“Even though it’s chilly, the stars are out. Do we need to take a blanket or…” She let the sentence hang.
“Our quilt is in the toolbox.” He limped toward the coat rack and helped her get into hers before putting his on.
“And how many other women have you taken to our spot and told them how special they were since that quilt was made by your great-grandmother?” she asked on the way outside.
“Honey, that’s our quilt. No other woman has ever touched it or been to our spot, either. Those are sacred things and I don’t share them.” He settled into the passenger side and tossed the keys over onto the driver’s seat.
“For real?” She started the engine and drove down the lane.
“Absolutely.” He turned on the radio to the old classic country music station. “This okay?”
“Tilly and I love the old artists.” She kept time with her thumbs on the steering wheel as George Jones sang “A Picture of Me Without You.”
“That song pretty much says it all,” Jace whispered.
“Yep, it does, but—”
He laid two fingers over her lips. “No buts. Let’s just listen to the songs and let the words sink in until we get to our spot.”
“Are you breakin’ up with me before we even go on our first real date?” she asked.
“We’ve been on dozens and dozens of dates. We even attended two proms together,” he said.
“But that was ten years ago. We haven’t been on a date this time around,” she argued.
“Then the answer is no, ma’am, I am not breaking up with you. I’m lookin’ forward to an evening of two-steppin’ with you in a real bar instead of in a barn or out in a pasture,” he said.
“Hey, now! I love that barn and all the fun we had out in the pasture. Nothing in a bar could be a bit sexier than dancin’ under the stars to ‘Good Directions.’”
He turned off the radio and started hummin’ the song. “I bet you did think that this was where rednecks came from when you landed here from the big California city.”
“Kind of.” She agreed. “But Lila and all y’all took me right in and pretty soon I was wearin’ cutoff jean shorts and cowboy boots with everyone else.”
“And lookin’ downright cute in them.” He reached across the console and laid a hand on her shoulder. “You still got a pair that you could wear for me this summer?”
“Got the shorts but not the boots.”
“Honey, that can be fixed real easy.”
“As if.” She pointed toward the radio. “I remember this song. It’s Sara Evans and we danced to it at the springs right after we went skinny-dippin’ the week after graduation. We were naked and it was a hot night,” she said.
“The lyrics talk about loving the way you wore those worn-out jeans and how the skies were blue and would never turn into rain. Who would have thought they could be so wrong?”
“Rain nothing,” she said as the road started down a steep incline into the canyon. “I believe what I faced was a full-fledged storm.”
“Me, too, when I figured out that you were gone and I’d never see you again.” He laid his head back and shut his eyes. Even after the song ended, it played through his head a couple more times before he opened his eyes and started to recognize familiar landmarks. The tall formation rose up like an enormous chimney; its rusty red color visible in the moonlight was the first thing he noticed. Then they passed the sign telling them they’d passed ove
r a fork of the Red River but there was no water, just a dusty river bottom that might have a trickle when the spring rains came around.
“Any of this bring back memories?” he asked.
“Every single bit. We climbed to the top of that chimney thing one night and made out under the stars,” she said as she made a sharp right and brought the truck to a stop in front of a locked gate.
“You remembered,” he said.
She killed the engine and turned around in the seat. “You said you wanted to go to our spot, so here we are.”
“No, let’s get the quilt out and crawl into the bed of the truck like we used to,” he said.
“It’s your party.” She opened the door.
By the time he got around the truck, she’d already pulled the tailgate down and was opening the toolbox. She brought out the familiar old quilt and pulled it up over her body as she braced her back against the cab. The moonlight lit up her blond hair and half her face, leaving the rest in shadows. He’d dreamed of her just like that way too many times to ever count on his fingers and toes.
Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he pulled her close enough that their bodies were plastered together and he used the quilt to form a cocoon just big enough for two people.
“So when are we going to have this big talk?” she asked.
“I’m not good at this, so bear with me,” he said. “I knew I’d be sad when you moved away, but I wasn’t prepared for the emptiness or the pain. You’d become such a part of my life that I felt like half my heart was gone. I figured I’d get over it at college but I didn’t. I learned to live with it and thought maybe love wasn’t meant for me. I’d be the uncle who spoiled Kasey’s kids and then when Lila came home and Brody…well, you know that story. Anyway, I thought I’d just add their kids to my list of nieces and nephews to love.” He stopped and buried his face into her hair, inhaling deeply. It smelled like coconut and something slightly vanilla just like he remembered from all those years ago.
“And how about now that you have a daughter? How has that changed your outlook?” she asked.
“I’m gettin’ to that,” he said. “I was nervous about you coming back to Happy. I didn’t know if you were married and I couldn’t imagine living in a town this small and maybe having to see you with another man in church.”
“I couldn’t believe that you weren’t married. I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t fall off that bull before now or one of the women in the panhandle would have lassoed you for sure,” she teased.
“What’s falling got to do with anything?” he asked.
“With your bum ankle, you couldn’t run away as fast. They’d catch you for sure.” She nudged him gently on the shoulder.
“I don’t think so.” He tucked her hand into his. “In order to give my heart to another woman, you would have to have given it back to me first.”
“Is that why you brought me out here? To ask for your heart?”
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed the knuckles. “No, darlin’, it’s to try to make you understand that I’ve fallen in love with Tilly. I want her to have my name. I want to go to the courthouse and make her a Dawson like she should’ve been all along.”
She started to say something, but he shook his head. “Let me finish. I adore our child. I can’t imagine loving a little kid more than I’ve learned to love her. It wasn’t an instant thing, either. I didn’t look at her in Rosalie’s house and have sudden fatherly instincts rush over me. It was shock and anger all mixed together. But the shock and the anger went away and something else started. All I can do is explain it like this. She giggled and a little seed was planted in my soul. It’s been growing really fast and now it’s tall as corn on the Fourth of July in these parts.”
Everything stood still at night in the canyon but somewhere off in the distance a coyote howled and another one answered him in the opposite direction. Other than that, it was so quiet that collecting his thoughts for the hardest part of what he had to say came fairly easy. After all, he was talking to Carlene, the woman who really knew him better than anybody in the world.
“Is that all?” she asked.
“No, it’s not. That was the easy part. Carlene, if you didn’t have Tilly, I’d still want a relationship with you. She’s just the icing on the pretty cupcake. I know you think that if we’d married young it would have been a mistake and if we married now it would only be because I feel guilty because of her but that’s not true. I loved you then even though I was too young to really know what love was. I loved you when I thought you were gone forever and that love only brought me misery and left me with good memories. And I still love you now that you are back in my life. I’m not askin’ you to say it back to me but I want you to know how I feel and to give our relationship a chance.”
“Who told you that you weren’t good with words?” She shifted her position until she was sitting in his lap. “Whoever it was is crazy.”
He dropped her hand and looked deeply into her dark brown eyes. “Then you’ll give us a chance?”
“Yes, Jace Dawson, I will,” she whispered as their lips met in a kiss that lit up the sky far more than all the sparkling stars in the universe.
Chapter Twenty-Two
January 24. Carlene didn’t need to mark it on her calendar because it was branded right into her brain. She might remember it in future days even more than any other day in the year because it was the night Jace said that he loved her, just the way she was, and always would. Sitting in the canyon wrapped up in an old quilt with frayed edges wasn’t what some love stories would consider romantic. But his words and the emotion in his voice when he’d said them were more important than wine, roses, and a fancy place.
But…there always seemed to be a few buts in life. Number one but: She still needed her own space and time to build this new relationship. Number two but: Even though he’d only asked her to give them a chance, if he had asked her to dash off to the courthouse to apply for a marriage license, she would have said no. And last but not least, number three but: She wanted him to be sure about giving up his favorite-uncle role and make time to really contemplate being a full-time daddy.
Now it was two days later and Carlene still hadn’t sorted out all the buts plaguing her. Tilly was at her grandmother’s house for the night and most likely half the day on Saturday. Carlene had dressed in six different outfits for her date with Jace and found something wrong with every one of them. Even though she’d spent most of the night on Wednesday and Thursday in his bed, barely making it to her own room before Tilly awoke, she was as nervous as a hooker in a church revival.
He was ready because she’d heard him going from his room downstairs. From the sound, he wasn’t wearing boots and he was still limping. She checked the clock and sank down to the floor in front of the closet doors. Why was this so difficult? He’d seen her in ratty pajamas. He’d seen her naked. He’d seen her in church clothes and what she wore to school, so why was tonight such an issue?
“Because it’s a date,” she mumbled as she dressed in the very first outfit she’d tried on—skinny jeans, knee boots with a three-inch heel, a bright blue sweater, and a clunky gold necklace with multicolored stones. She checked her reflection in the mirror. Her makeup was perfect and the curls in her hair hadn’t fallen out, so she took a long breath as she shut the door behind her.
When she was halfway down the stairs, he stepped into sight. His jeans were creased and stacked up on his boots perfectly. The black pearl-snap shirt hugged his body as if it had been tailor made just for him.
When her feet hit the bottom step, he drew her into his arms and held her tightly.
“You are simply stunning tonight, darlin’,” he said.
“And you are simply sexy,” she whispered. “But cowboy boots?”
“These are a size too big. They belonged to my dad and it was a joke that neither Brody nor I could ever fill his boots,” he said.
“Guess all it takes is a sprained ankle,”
she said.
“Yep.” He reached for her coat and helped her into it. “I’m thinkin’ about a steak house in Amarillo and then we could go see that new Western movie that’s just come out.”
“I’m thinkin’ about a good rib eye and then comin’ back home to make our own Western movie.” She smiled up at him.
“You got a video camera?” he teased.
“No, but I can prop up my phone and take videos with it…”
“You’re killing me, woman,” he groaned.
There’s something to be said about riding half an hour with someone you are so comfortable with that you don’t need to fill the airspace with words. That’s what Belinda said once upon a time about one of her boyfriends and Carlene could say a hearty amen to the quote that evening.
When they reached the restaurant, she waited for Jace to open the door for her. He’d called ahead for reservations, so the waitress led them straight to a little table for two in a back corner. A jar candle lit up the table but the lights in the rest of the place were dim.
“Oh, Jace, this is so romantic,” she said.
He removed her coat and handed it along with his to the waitress. “We’ll have two sweet teas and an appetizer tray with fried pickles and pepper poppers to start with.”
“Be right back with those.” She disappeared into the shadows.
He pulled out a chair for Carlene and kissed her softly on the forehead when she was seated. “I never thought this night would be possible. Thank you for giving it to me, Carlene.”
“You are so welcome, but, darlin’, I’m sharing it with you, not giving it to you,” she said.
“And that is the beauty of our relationship, isn’t it?” He reached across the table and took both her hands in his. “I love this place where we are right now, Carlene.”
“Me too.”
The waitress returned with their drinks. “Would y’all like a sample of our famous red wine?”
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