Page 103 of His Tenth Dance

“Text,” Deacon muttered.

“Let me see.” Mission held out his hand, and it took Deacon an extra beat for him to fumble in his pocket and pull out his phone. He slapped it into Mission’s palm, and he started sliding through it.

He told himself he didn’t need to rush off to Stag Hollow Lodge. As he’d told Kris once before, he could take a minute and think things through.

He found Deacon’s text to Judy, and he turned the phone toward him. “Is this it?” The message read,You should go out with him, Judy. He’d be good for you.

“Yes,” Deacon said.

Mission found his mouth curving up. “Okay, Deac, this is going to be hard, but you’re a farm owner, and you have to do hard things all the time, right?”

“Right,” Deacon clipped out.

“Okay, so.” Mission handed Deacon his phone back. “You never said, ‘You’re a lovely woman, Judy, but I don’t have any romantic feelings for you. I think we’re only meant to be friends.’” He tapped Deacon’s chest. “That’s what you’ve got to say. I know, it’s awful. I know it sounds bad. But if she’s not taking the hint—and that, my friend, is not a great hint—the best thing to do is be direct.”

“Be direct,” Deacon said. “My daddy always told me that too.”

“Well, your dad is a great man,” Mission said. “Do you want me to type out the text for you?”

Hope entered Deacon’s face, but then he shook his head. “No, you were leaving, and I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

Mission stepped out onto the porch with him and reached to pull the door closed behind him. “Yeah, I have to go be a little bit more direct myself,” he said.

“Yeah?” Deacon asked. “And not that I care, but I kind of do, because I care about you, Mish. What happened with Kristie?”

Mission considered him for a moment, but he absolutely wouldn’t be disloyal to Kristie. “She had something really hard happen over the weekend,” he said. “And she needed some time to herself.”

“But you’re going to see her tonight.” Deacon didn’t phrase it as a question.

“Yeah,” Mission said, a true smile finally forming on his face. “I’m going to stop and get dinner, and then I’m going to show up and beg her to come home.”

“Good luck, Mission,” Deacon said, and he followed Mission down the steps. He jogged over to his truck, quite anxious to leave, as Deacon crossed the lawn back toward his house.

Mission got behind the wheel and backed out of his driveway. As he rumbled past the other cabins, which held his friends and colleagues, a sense of calmness came over him.

Don’t rush, boy. Take your time and do it right.

Mission listened to his grandfather’s voice in his head as he headed first to the grocery store, his ideas taking on a life of their own as he drove.

“Lord, bless me to say all the right things when I get there,” he prayed. “Guide me, bless me, help me—and most of all, help Kris to feel the sincerity of my feelings.”

God had a couple of hours to answer his prayers, and though Mission had felt abandoned in the past, tonight, he believed the Lord would come through for him.

thirty-four

The timer on the last batch of chocolate chip cookies buzzed through the cabin. Kristie turned from where she’d been washing dishes to silence the irritating alarm. Baking had been her crutch in the past few years, and she’d needed it more than ever since Saturday.

Really, Sunday morning when she’d packed a bag and left her house in Ivory Peaks for this escape in the city. It wasn’t really the city either, but she’d driven almost two hours to the Stag Hollow Lodge, and she’d enjoyed a facial, a massage, and cabin service for the past couple of days.

In all of her quiet downtime, Kristie had had plenty of time to think—and she’d gone down into somedeepholes.

“You dug yourself out,” she told herself as she moved this latest batch of cookies—a mixture of milk and semi-sweet chips—to a cooling rack. She’d had to run down the road to the store to get the racks, and she wouldn’t care if she left them here.

She’d be here for one more night, but she had to go back to work tomorrow, as she had a scheduled cattle immunization day at a ranch north of the city.

She had canceled and rescheduled everything else for the past two days, and for whatever reason, she could hear Mission’sgrandfather’s voice in her head telling her she’d had her pity party and it was time to get back out there.

Out where, Kristie didn’t really know, but she knew she couldn’t keep hiding at a luxury lodge, ordering expensive food, and pampering herself. She had savings—that wasn’t the issue—but she couldn’t let one person and his opinions drive her out of her own life.

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