Page 29 of The Cowboy Who Came Home

“You’d know better than me.” He opened the freezer and stuck his face inside. “I’m so hot.”

Edith rolled her eyes, because she’d seen her father act this same way when he got the slightest sniffle. “I’ll get you some fever reducers. Lay down and sleep until I get back.”

“I haven’t eaten either.”

“I’ll get us something in town.” Edith didn’t have much energy left, but she suddenly did want to be away from this place, in a car by herself, where she could think through how to talk to Finn tomorrow night.

By evening the following day, Edith suspected she’d started to come down with her brother’s cold. They’d had thirty men and women at Coyote Pass that day, and everything that could be set right had been.

All their fences had been rebuilt, checked, or strengthened. Their chicken coop rebuilt. A temporary irrigation system put in place to move the water out of their fields and back to the river downstream.

It continued to get smaller and smaller as the hot Texas sun shone on the land, and Alex had met with Ward Glover and Paul Marshall, both trained in agriculture, to get their fields replanted or beefed up after the loss from the flood.

Debris had been raked into a couple of piles, one for smaller twigs and branches, and one for the bigger logs from their fences that couldn’t be reused. Alex would do a planned burn once things had dried even more, and one of the cowboys from Seven Sons had even mowed their grass.

Finn had said he’d run home to shower, and Edith had done the same. She took a couple of pain killers and one nasal decongestant and finished clipping her hair back on the sides. She put on her favorite lipstick, a shade called Pretty Peony that made her mouth have any color at all.

She lined her eyes with black and put on mascara only to make her fair features stand out. And with that done, she pulled on a pair of white shorts she’d bleached clean last night, and then pulled a blue flowered blouse over her shoulders and did up the buttons. The blue would bring out her eyes and make her blonde hair shine, and Edith did know how to make herself look good.

She didn’t always do it, but this was her first date with Finn Ackerman, and she had some hard things to tell him. Hard for her, at least.

The doorbell rang, and Edith froze. She’d told Alex that they didn’t need the house after all, and he’d said he wanted to answer the door when Finn came over. Edith had rolled her eyes, but she’d let her brother have his fun.

She moved to the edge of the doorway, the guest bedroom right across the hall. The pictures of Levi sat on the shelf just inside the door, and Edith glanced down the hall as she heard male voices.

They didn’t come closer, and Edith darted across the hall. She picked up the picture of her and Levi, noting the pure happiness in both of their faces. Levi, with his dark hair and those shining London fog eyes. He was so handsome, and he’d been so charming. So smart. So perfect for her.

“Can there be another man for me, Lord?” she asked. “Or does every person just get that one glove that fits so well, and no one else will do?”

Levi had been her glove. Everything about him had agreed with her, and Edith felt like she’d already had the fairy tale love story. Too bad her tale hadn’t turned out with a happily-ever-after.

“Edee?” Alex called. “You ready?”

She kept her eyes on Levi’s face for another moment, and then she said, “I’m going out with someone else, Levi. It might be a nightmare, but I’m even more worried that it won’t be….” She trailed off, because she had no idea what the next two hours looked like or felt like.

Go on, she heard in her mind, but it wasn’t Levi’s voice. He’d been gone too long for her to hear him anymore. But she felt prompted to put down the picture and go see if this date with Finn would be the start of something amazing or the end of her dating experiences for good.

“I’m coming,” she said as she replaced the picture on the shelf. She went down the hall and past her brother. She could only see Finn in all his cowboy glory.

He wore jeans and cowboy boots, but they were a step up—probably four or five—from the working ones he’d worn an hour ago. His shirt was orange, navy, and white in a sexy plaid pattern, and as she neared, he reached up and tipped his dark, deep, rich brown cowboy hat.

“Ma’am,” he said. “Don’t you look like a million bucks?”

“You look incredible,” she said.

“He wore that hat earlier,” Alex said in a deadpan.

“It’s actually a different one,” Finn said. “I borrowed it from my uncle. He said it’s what he wears on date night every week. He says it never fails.”

Edith smiled at him and laced all ten of her fingers through his. That touch felt so intimate and so perfect, and they hadn’t even left the farmhouse yet. She twisted and looked over her shoulder. “You’re okay here, Alex?”

“I know where the pills are,” he said. “And we have extra sandwiches from lunch.”

“Okay.” She faced Finn again, a sudden bout of shyness pulling through her. She fought against ducking her head and tucking her hair, because she always did that, and it told Finn how she felt.

Seeing as how Edith couldn’t really categorize her feelings as more than sheer desire and attraction, she didn’t want him to know that.

“Should we go?” she asked.

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