Page 44 of Overdue for a Cowboy

She nodded slowly then pulled her hand from his. “Good night, Dodge. Thanks again. I mean it. You’ve been a great friend.” She pushed up on her toes and pressed a soft kiss to the side of his cheek before turning around, stepping inside the house, and closing the door behind her.

Chapter Twenty

That Wednesday, Maisie spent most of the morning in her office fielding calls from her insurance company and the mechanic about her car and trying to figure out how she was going to get up the mountain to her bookmobile kids that afternoon. She’d filled a tote with books and had been trying to find a car to borrow.

Her wrist was still sore, but most of the bruising had faded, and she wasn’t going to let the fatigue or the soreness in her body stop her from getting books to her kids.

Dodge must have taken her spouting off about only being together in the present to heart, because she hadn’t heard from him the past few days. Not that she had time to worry about him—things were crazy at the library with plans for an astrology program that was happening the following night and the Tuesday morning mom’s group that had been there the day before.

Oh, who was she kidding? Of course she had time to think about him. And she checked her phone constantly to make sure she hadn’t missed a text or a call.

To be fair, hehadtried to call her Monday morning. She’d been in the shower so hadn’t been able to pick up, then he’d texted her with an offer to drive her to work and had asked how she was feeling. She’d wanted to call him back, but after the way they’d left things the night before, and since he’d already messaged her, she texted him back that she was feeling better and planned to walk to and from work that day.

He’d texted back to call or message him if she needed him.

If she did that, she’d be messaging him all day, because she needed him like crazy. But he’d made it clear that he wasn’t interested in a relationship. So, she did her best to leave him alone and focus on her work at the library. He knew how to find her if he needed her.

Stop worrying about Dodge and start figuring out how to get these books up the mountain.

Natalie, her favorite library volunteer, came into her office with a form she needed to sign. “How are you feeling?” she asked as Maisie scribbled her signature on the page. “Is your wrist bothering you?”

Natalie Wilson had been volunteering at the library for the last year. She was a single mom, an aspiring writer, and a voracious reader who loved talking about books and plotting future stories. She and Maisie were around the same age, early thirties, and occasionally grabbed lunch on the days Natalie volunteered, but they didn’t get together outside of work or library events.

But Maisie really liked the woman. Natalie loved hiking and enjoying the mountains and had a sunny personality that Maisie just enjoyed being around.

“My wrist is fine. I’m more worried about how I’m going to manage getting these books up the mountain to my bookmobile kids. I was just getting ready to call my neighbor, Gertie, to see if I could borrow her car.” She’d already asked if Natalie could drive her, but the volunteer had made an excuse about how she’d walked to work that day too.

“Before you do that, I think you should come out to the lobby. There’s something I think you should see,” Natalie told her.

“I’m sorry. I really don’t have time,” she said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “I’ve really got to figure this out. I need to be heading up the mountain in the next thirty minutes.”

“It will just take a second,” Natalie assured her, pausing in the doorway of her office. “I promise. Then I’ll help you find a ride.”

Maisie sighed as she followed Natalie through the library then froze as she came around the Nonfiction Diet and Exercise bookshelf and saw a tall cowboy standing next to the front door, his cowboy hat held loosely in his hands.

“Dodge,” she said, finally finding her voice as she forced her feet to move toward him. He was so damn hot, it took her breath away. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought you might need a ride up the mountain,” he said.

“Oh my gosh, how did you remember?” She wanted to throw her arms around his neck and hug him, but the fact that they’d left things a bit awkwardly the last time she’d seen him, and that she only had one good arm, stopped her from doing so. Plus, there were several people standing in the lobby watching them. Whywaseveryone watching them?

It didn’t matter. All that mattered right now was getting the books up to her farm kids.

“Give me a minute to grab my tote of books,” she told him.

He shook his head as he pushed open the door. “You don’t need them,” he said, gesturing for her to follow him outside. “I’ve got something to show you.”

She stepped outside and raised her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. Dodge’s truck was parked at the curb with what looked like an old horse trailer hitched to the back.

“Come on.” He took her hand and led her to the back of the trailer. “I haven’t had much time to call you or stop by the last few days because I’ve been working on this. I knew it was important to you to have a way to get your books up to the farm kids today, and we haven’t used this old horse trailer for years, so I washed it out and have been fixing it up. It’s not perfect by any means, but I hope it will do.”

She could barely process all the things he’d just told her—she caught that he remembered today was the day she saw the kids and that he’d been working on something to help her—but she didn’t understand what this old trailer had to do with anything. Then he lifted the latch and opened the back doors, and she let out a gasp of surprise and delight.

The inside of the trailer, instead of holding what she imagined would be moldy straw and maybe some old horse bridles and reins, had been freshly painted white and floor-to-roof bookshelves had been affixed to one side. Cables were strung lengthwise across each shelf, holding back the rows of books from falling with the movement of the trailer.

There were a few bales of hay, but they had been arranged to form a small sitting area around a rag-tied rug.

Her gaze traveled over the spines of the books stacked neatly on the shelves. Recognizing the titles, she gasped again and blinked back tears as she looked at Dodge. “These are the books from my bookmobile.”

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