by Liz Isaacson
Lindsey had said exactly what Zach had predicted she would, and he’d resorted to praying for the Lord to influence Celia enough to call him.
His more level-headed daughter, Abby, had texted every day, asking if he had a date with the woman he’d met at the wedding yet. Could he tell her later today that he did?
He strode over to the shelf and grabbed his phone. The number had a Wyoming area code, and his heart started tippity-tapping in his chest. No voicemail icon came up. Zach hesitated, his thoughts flinging themselves around inside his mind so quickly, he couldn’t grab onto one and make sense of it.
Tapping quickly, he sent a message to Abby. I think that woman may have called, and I missed it. Do I call her back?
He enjoyed the texting relationship he had with Abby. If he’d sent the same message to Lindsey, she’d call him. But Abby was deaf and couldn’t really talk on the phone much at all. So everything was a text, and giant letters appeared on the screen in the next moment.
DAD – YES CALL HER BACK RIGHT NOW.
Relief surged through Zach, and his fingers seemed to have brains of their own as they tapped and swiped and lifted the phone to his ear.
“Hello, Zach,” Celia’s cool voice said, and he had nothing to respond with. She made his heart sing with two simple words, and he simply enjoyed the vibrations of that music in his soul.
“Are you there?” she asked, a hint of confusion in her tone now.
“Yeah,” he blurted. “Yes. Yes, I’m here.” He cleared his throat, cursing himself for every sound he’d just made. All of them painted him as nervous, and he didn’t want her to know she made him nervous.
But oh, she did. Just the idea of going out with her had his pulse jackhammering in his chest, the same way it had when he’d sold his last parcel of real estate to a huge conglomerate for over three billion dollars.
“I was wondering what you’re doing for lunch today,” Celia asked. “The weather’s cleared up a little, and I think I could stand to leave the house today.”
Zach chuckled. “It’s been terrible, hasn’t it?” Of course, he still had to get out on the farm and get the chores done, but maybe she’d held off on calling him because she didn’t want to drive in the snow.
“I’m not sure why I still live here, to be honest.” Celia laughed, the high, twinkling sound making Zach’s blood heat even further.
“I’m free for lunch,” Zach said. He had no idea what he’d been doing when his phone rang, nor what chores he had left. But he knew he could get away for a couple of hours to eat with Celia. “Do you have a favorite spot?”
“I was thinking I’d come up there,” she said. “You live in Dog Valley, right?”
“That’s right,” he said, his mind zipping down the quaint Main Street in town. “There’s a pretty great diner here. They have a good salad bar on Fridays.”
“I do like a good salad bar…how did you know that?”
“Lucky guess,” he said with a smile. He couldn’t believe he was talking to a woman. And not any woman. Celia Abbot. Armstrong. Whatever. He remembered those beautiful eyes, and the way she took care of everyone and everything at the lodge.
Maybe she needed someone to take care of her.
“I can come pick you up,” he said. “Then you don’t have to drive.”
“Oh, that’s unnecessary,” she said. “You’d be in the car for hours today if you did that.”
“I don’t mind,” he said, hoping that didn’t give away how badly he wanted to see her again. Which was absolutely crazy.
“Is it the Dog Valley Diner?”
“Yeah,” he said with a chuckle, moving toward the loft in the barn. “We’re not great with creative names up here. Sometimes people call it the DVD.”
“DVD,” she repeated. “Like a movie.”
“I guess.” He cursed himself for this lame conversation. Someone his age should know how to talk to a woman by now, but he reminded himself that he’d lived alone for over fifteen years, and dogs didn’t care if he lacked wit.
“Noon?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said. “They’ll be hopping at noon, but we shouldn’t have to wait long.”
“Great,” she said. “I’ll see you then.” She carried a smile in her voice, and dang if Zach didn’t have a grin splitting his whole face.
“See you then,” he repeated, and they said good-bye. He let his hand holding the phone drop to his side, a sigh filling his whole chest before leaking out.
He turned in a full circle, as if just now realizing he stood in the barn. What had he been doing in here?
A few seconds passed before he remembered. “Hay,” he said out loud. “Get the cows fed. Get in the shower.”
With a new plan in mind, he got back to work, Celia never far from his thoughts.
Noon arrived, and with it Zach walked through the front door of the diner. A wall of noise met his ears, but the sight of Celia rising from the bench made everything silent again.
“Hey,” he said, his voice a bit breathless for reasons he couldn’t name. “I feel bad you had to drive all the way up here. Next time, let me come down to Coral Canyon.”
“Next time?” Celia’s eyebrows went up. “I seem to recall you saying we could walk away after this.”
Paralyzing fear struck Zach right behind the ribs. “Well, sure,” he somehow managed to say. “If we don’t think it’ll work out.”
“I don’t see how we could possibly know after one date if everything will work out.” She gave him a dazzling—flirtatious?—smile and stepped over to the hostess stand. “He’s here.”
“I’m ready for you then,” the woman there said. She glanced back to Zach, obviously recognizing him. “Hey. Right this way.”
Thankfully, Starla didn’t say anything else. Not that Zach had anything to be ashamed of. She placed menus on the table with, “Your server will be right over,” and Zach took a moment to settle himself on one side of the booth.
Celia took longer than that, and when she finally looked up at him, she wore all kinds of emotions in her gaze. Apprehension was the biggest one, and Zach wanted to wipe it right off her face.
“I want to just get something out there,” she said, folding her arms on the table as if this were a super-fancy restaurant.
“All right.” He glanced around for an anchor, something to hold while she confessed. A glass of water would’ve done nicely, but they had nothing.
“I haven’t dated since Brandon died.”
“Oh.” Zach blinked, dozens of memories assaulting him at the same time new emotions surged through him. “I’m so sorry about Brandon.”
Celia nodded. “He’s been gone a very long time.”
“Twenty years,” Zach said. “You’ve never gone out with anyone since?”
“You’d be the first.”
The pressure along Zach’s shoulders increased. “So you have a very high standard.” No way he’d meet it. He already had three strikes against him because of his last name. A second date with Celia felt impossible, and in fact, Zach wondered if he should get up and leave the diner now.
“I have no standard,” Celia said. “I just…I’m nervous, that’s all.” She swallowed, and Zach tracked the movement of her throat.
“My wife and I got divorced fifteen years ago,” he said. “I haven’t dated much since.”
“But you have dated,” she said.
“I went out with one woman, one time,” he said with a shrug. “If that counts as ‘dated,’ then I suppose I have.”
She nodded, glancing up when a waiter arrived with two glasses of water. Zach coached himself not to dive for his, but he reached for the straw very slowly.
“We haven’t even looked at the menu,” Zach said to the waiter, a man he knew pretty well, actually.
Harry smiled at them. “Take your time. I’ll circle back.” He left, and Zach picked up the menu to at least pretend like he could read in the presence of this pretty woman.
“What’s good
here?” she asked, looking at her menu too.
“Everything,” he said. “Are you going to go for the salad bar?”
“Probably,” she said. “And the BLT.” She put her menu down and met his gaze again, something new storming in hers already.
“What?” he asked.
“Brandon always said you were a good man.”
Zach’s throat narrowed, and he nodded. “He was too.”
“I don’t want to spend our time talking about him.”
“All right.” Zach focused on the menu again, trying to figure out what he wanted. The woman across from him. Everything. He needed all of life’s secrets right now, so he could know what to do, how to act, what to say to keep Celia at his side. Or across from him on dozens of dates.
The fact that his feelings for her were already that strong confused him further, and he wrinkled his eyebrows at the menu.
“Made a choice?” Harry asked, and Celia started rattling off what she wanted.
Zach had no idea. “Bacon cheeseburger and fries,” he finally said.
Harry collected the menus and said, “You can go to the salad bar anytime. Plates are over there.”
Celia flashed the trademark smile at him and followed the waiter, leaving Zach alone in the booth. He drew in a deep breath, hoping the extra oxygen would clear his head enough to continue this date—and get a second one.
She returned faster than he thought possible, and as she slid into the booth with a plate piled high with lettuce and all the salad toppings the bar held, she asked, “So, Zach. You look like you might have a confession for me too.”
“Do I?” He chuckled, sorting through the many things he could tell her. He’d already told her his pathetic dating history. They’d surely spend loads of time talking about their children.
“The only thing I can think of is that I used to be a real estate developer, but I started selling off the land I’ve had for decades when the market grew hot.”
“Ah.” She nodded, forking her salad around to get the dressing on everything evenly. “So you’re the reason we’ve got all this growth in the valley.” Her hazel eyes sparkled with mischief.
“Probably.” He grinned back at her. “I have plenty of money, and I run a very small farm here in town now. It’s a very boring life.”
“So your confession is that you’re boring?”
He shrugged again, liking this game they were playing. “And rich. Bored and rich. It can be a very dangerous combination sometimes.”
She laughed, and the sound of it filled Zach’s whole soul with joy. He just had to get a second date with her, but the twittering voice in the back of his head jabbering on about Owen and the rest of his family wouldn’t go away.
Chapter Five
Celia wished Zach wasn’t quite so charming. Quite so dashing and dreamy. From his deep voice to that dazzling smile, he was checking boxes for her left and right. And up and down.
“So you returned to farming,” she said. “Why didn’t you go back to your family’s farm?”
“Owen has a family of his own,” Zach said, as if that summed everything up. Maybe it did.
“And you?” she asked. “Do you have children?”
“Yes,” he said, his face taking on a glow now that Celia could appreciate. He obviously loved his kids, and he hadn’t spoken about them yet. “Two daughters and a son. Lindsey is the oldest. She just got accepted to medical school at the University of Washington. She’ll probably go there, but she’s waiting on something…maybe another school? I need to ask her.”
Celia almost felt stupid for eating while he didn’t have anything, but before she knew it, their food arrived too. He picked up the ketchup bottle and said, “Abby’s at the school for the deaf in Washington, D.C. She’s a junior there.”
Celia’s eyebrows mirrored her surprise, but Zach continued as if he hadn’t seen her reaction to finding out he had a deaf daughter.
“And my son is nineteen. Just finished high school last year, and he’s still in Boise with his mother.” He flashed her a smile then and picked up his hamburger. “You? Children? I think you and Brandon had two daughters.”
“Yes,” she said. “Just the two. Reagan just got engaged, actually. She and her fiancé are both graduating in the spring. And Ruth is a sophomore at the University of Wyoming too.” A flash of pride moved through Celia.
“You sound proud of them,” he said.
“I am.” Celia sipped her water. “They’re good girls.” She missed them terribly, but she wasn’t going to say that on this date. Probably not even the next one.
The next one.
In that moment, she realized she wanted there to be another date, and then another one. “I have another confession,” she said.
“Oh, boy.” He dunked a French fry in ketchup and ate it. Fire sparkled in his eyes, and Celia hadn’t been out with anyone else in a while, but she could recognize attraction when she saw it. At least she hoped she could.
“I wanted to come up here so no one in Coral Canyon would see us.”
Darkness entered Zach’s already dark brown eyes. “Is that so?”
“I just…my family doesn’t like your family. We should probably talk about that at some point.”
“I’m not interested in the feud between our families,” he said.
“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” Celia said, hoping she wasn’t about to ruin everything with him. Not that there was much to ruin. A blip of excitement at the wedding. Five days of nerves over calling him. And twenty minutes at lunch so far.
“How close are you to your brothers?”
“Close enough to see them at holidays and sometimes during the week. On my mother’s birthday, Mother’s Day….” The list could go on, but Celia let her voice die. “I don’t think this is something we just ignore, Zach.”
Saying his name felt intimate, and Celia liked how easily it moved across her vocal cords.
“I suppose not,” he said. “We moved up here to get away from my family.”
“You and your wife?”
“Yes, the drama wore on her. On me too.” The weariness rode right in his voice.
Celia wondered if maybe the solution could be so simple. “How often do you see your brothers?”
“Often enough that I can’t hide a relationship for very long.”
So this wasn’t going to be simple. Celia should’ve known that from the start. She did. She nodded and let the conversation move on. Zach told her about his small farm, and she asked him about Abby, and the conversation was easy and light.
“This was so fun,” Celia said with absolute truth in her soul. She squinted into the sun as she looked up at Zach.
He adjusted his cowboy hat to hide more of his face. “I had a good time too.” His hand landed on her lower back as he guided her down the sidewalk. “What did you think? Maybe we could do something like this again?”
“Well, I want the record to show that I don’t have everything worked out. I don’t know if it will work.”
“All right,” he said with a grin. “You’re going to tease me about that forever.”
“Probably.” She couldn’t help the joyful smile on her face. “And I’d love to go out with you again.” She slowed as she approached her car, almost wanting to prolong her time with him. “This is me.”
He paused and put one hand on the roof of the sedan. “In Coral Canyon? Or up here?”
“I don’t—”
“Because I’m fifty years old,” he said. “I’m not sure how old you are, but I remember you being older than Brandon. And I think maybe we should get to make our own decisions.”
Celia knew that sounded nice in theory. Looked good on paper. But the fact was, her decisions did impact other people, whether she wanted them to or not.
She felt torn right down the middle. Mack and Lennox would not be impressed with her choice of dates. After all this time, and all the men she could choose from…. They would definitely be upset.
“And maybe we should just do what we want and deal with them if we have to.”
“So you’re not going to tell Owen,” she said, not making it a question. “Or…I can’t remember your other brother’s names. Xander?”
“And Gene,” he said. “And no, I don’t think so.” He leaned closer, a flirtatious smile sitting right on that strong mouth now. “But you should know I’ve told my daughters about you, and they’ll probably want all the gory details of our lunch.”
Celia tipped her head back and laughed, thrilled when Zach joined his voice to hers. “Good to know,” she said. “And I told mine about you. So I’ll leave you to text them.”
“Oh, Lindsey will call,” Zach said. “I think the Good Lord knew I couldn’t handle two daughters who wanted to talk everything to death. So Abby’ll just text.” He beamed at her, and Celia’s heart raced with emotion for this man.
“Does she speak at all?”
“A little,” he said. “Yeah. She’ll want to video chat me so we can talk.”
“So you know sign language.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He put up two fingers on his right hand and moved them in front of his eyes. He pulled them away and said, “See you later.” His fingers moved into an L-shape, and he pointed them straight out in front of him.
Foolishness hit Celia full-on behind the ribs. Of course he knew sign language. How else had he communicated with his daughter while she grew up?
“Bye,” she said, wanting to repeat the sign to him, but feeling too self-conscious. She slipped into her car while he walked away, a loud sigh leaking from between her lips. “Thank you, Lord.”
The whisper of gratitude grew in her heart until a smile had covered her face. As far as first dates went, that one wasn’t so bad. Not so bad at all.
The weekend passed, and Celia sat in church with a row of friends. Amanda still wasn’t back from her honeymoon, and Celia hadn’t found the courage to start texting Zach. She’d told Reagan and Ruth about him, and they both seemed plenty happy that she was seeing someone again.