Page 34 of The Cowboy Who Came Home

“It means you’re really smart, and you’re right. You’re going to make me tell you everything, even things I don’t want to tell you.”

“Day by day,” he said. “And tonight, all I want to do is find something sweet and eat a lot of it.” He led her across the street, where shops all connected together in old buildings lined the sidewalk. “Now, you said ice cream, but I know you want a brownie.”

“I’d take both,” Edith said. “Would you buy me both, Finny?”

“I’ll get you whatever you want, sweetheart.” He pressed a kiss to Edith’s forehead, and her pulse boomed for the moment when she might be able to actually kiss him. But for tonight, she’d take that brownie and maybe some cherry chocolate ice cream and holding Finn Ackerman’s hand.

The following morning, Edith pulled on her knee-high waders and headed out of the kitchen. The sun had come up, because June would arrive in only a couple more days, and it was hard to rise before the Texas sun in the summer.

Edith paused at the bottom of the steps beyond the deck and took a deep breath. She needed a moment to feel the sun on her bare shoulders. She needed to smell the grass that had come back with a vengeance after all the rain, and the dirt on the paths that led further onto the ranch, and the simple goodness of the air here.

“I miss you, Levi,” she said, barely loud enough for her own ears to hear. “But not as much as before, so I’m okay.” She squinted up into the sky. “Okay, baby? I’m okay.”

Feeling better than ever, she headed into the stables to get the horses taken care of for the day. She put them out to pasture and mucked out the stalls, her dachshunds with her every step of the way. The collies went with Alex, and he hadn’t been in the kitchen that morning.

The coffee had been made, so he was obviously up, and Edith would catch up with him later. She let her imagination run wild while she worked, because she hadn’t worked on her book in several days, and she could feel the scenes piling up on top of one another.

After they’d gotten brownies, cookies, and ice cream in waffle cones, the conversation had been easy and light. He’d told her stories about Washington D.C., which wasn’t that far from New York City, where she’d been living.

She’d learned that he’d dated—”seriously dated” in his own words—four women in the past several years. He’d never been in love, and he’d told her that his last girlfriend in Germany was a story for another date.

And they did have another date, something that still made Edith giddy and shocked at the same time. He hadn’t kissed her when he’d dropped her off last night, but neither of them seemed to be able to stop touching the other.

Edith knew she was touch starved, which was why she had two small dogs and a meowing cat to stroke whenever she needed to. But dogs and cats didn’t compare to the delicious touch of a kind, generous, good-looking man.

Her phone chimed with Alex’s notification, and Edith wiped her brow, feeling dirty and sweaty and like God had put her exactly where she needed to be. She picked up her phone from the shelf where she’d set it and saw his HELP easily.

She turned quickly from the bags of feed she’d been cataloguing, swiped her phone into her hand, and left the barn. “Alex,” she called.

He spent more time dealing with the herd, checking fences, and making sure their fields didn’t have pests and kept growing. All of that meant they stayed in business, could pay their bills, and had food on the table.

But he could be anywhere on the ranch, and he hadn’t exactly dropped her a pin. “Alex!” She half-jogged toward the equipment shed where Alex kept a small office among all their machinery. The door stood open, but that wasn’t that unusual.

The sound of her own breath and the hammering of her heart clouded her hearing, but she heard something that made her blood turn into icy shards.

Her brother cursing. Alex never did that.

“Alex?”

“We’ve got sinkholes,” he called, and Edith rounded the corner to head out past the equipment shed.

“Sinkholes?” She found him out in the middle of a field, taking pictures on his phone. As she neared, she could definitely see that they didn’t stand on the same level, that he stood down several feet. “Well—what—wh—what are we going to do about sinkholes?”

Edith had no idea what to do—she wasn’t even sure what a sinkhole was—and by the look on Alex’s face when he looked up at her said he didn’t either. “I’m going to call Finn.”

“Good idea,” he said when she’d expected him to argue with her.

Edith pressed against the desperation building beneath her ribs, and she tapped aggressively on her phone. “Dear Lord,” she said. “Sinkholes? Really?”

Finn’s line rang, but she had no idea where he was or what he might be doing. Three Rivers Ranch spanned at least ten times as large as Coyote Pass, which was why they had ten times the personnel working it.

“Edith, my beauty,” he said in the middle of the fourth ring. “What can I do for you?”

Edith exhaled, mostly to try to find the right thing to say. “Sinkholes,” came blurting out of her mouth. “We have sinkholes on our ranch. What in the world do you do with a sinkhole? Just mow around it? Hope the land shifts and comes back up?” She threw her free hand up in to the air. “Why do sinkholes even exist? What purpose could they possibly have?”

“Edith,” Finn said.

“Like, why did God create sinkholes? To torture those of us who’ve already had massive flooding on our ranches?” She shook her head, the sunshine hot and bright overhead.

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