Page 13 of His Tenth Dance

With that not working out, she’d branched over to an online dating app. She was the only one who’d tried that, and she hadn’t had much luck there either.

No wonder they were all so excited about her date with Mission.

And honestly, Kristie was too.

Maybe even more than bingeing on a quartet of the most delicious desserts she’d ever seen. Yes, an evening with the handsome, quiet cowboy would surely be better than dessert night with her friends.

Right?

A quaking in Kristie’s stomach told her that equal parts anxiety and excitement bubbled inside her, and she decided toquickly text Mission about the finer details of tomorrow night’s date, just to quell some of her nerves.

I was thinking we could get dinner and do the Summer Stroll. Is that doable?

She looked up from her phone just as Lennie said, “Okay, up first, we have a chocolate hot chocolate float.”

Kristie took hers, and once everyone had their knobbly mug of hot chocolate with a big scoop of chocolate ice cream in it, she said, “Mission is taking me to the Summer Stroll tomorrow night.”

A beat of silence filled the house, and then all four of them squealed.

“Did you tell him that’s your favorite thing ever?” Lennie demanded, her second float forgotten.

“I can’t wait to see a plethora of pictures,” Harper said.

“You can totally do that in white shorts and Crocs,” Jocelyn said.

Kristie simply couldn’t stop smiling, even though the orange soda-chocolate ice cream combo made her cringe, and the mint wasn’t enough to cover the lime in the virgin mocktail chocolate float.

The Summer Stroll.

How had Mission known?

He listens to you, she thought, something tiny and true ringing through her. But she couldn’t remember a single instance where she’d told him she absolutely loved the Summer Stroll in Ivory Peaks.

five

Mission blew out his breath and somehow got his lungs to inflate again. He picked up his cowboy hat and positioned it just-so on his head. He certainly looked ready for a date, the don’t-meet-me-down-a-dark-alley frown on his face notwithstanding.

He tried on a smile, but it didn’t feel natural, and he let his mouth settle back to normal. Turning away from his reflection, he left the bigger second bedroom at the end of the hall in the foreman’s cabin.

He could admit he enjoyed living on his own, as quietness had never bothered him. He liked that everything in his cabin sat where he’d left it, and that he didn’t have to worry about having a roommate who ate all of his peanut butter granola bars.

Cleaning didn’t bother him, and he swiped his wallet and keys from the corner of the countertop, his stomach growling at him for something to eat. Mission ate every couple of hours while working the farm, but he hadn’t had anything since lunchtime.

Kristie had sent him her address a few days ago, and Mission had enjoyed texting her more personal things this week while he waited for this in-person date. At this point, he could only hopeshe’d smiled when he’d sent her veterinary memes, pictures of a couple of horses here, and general texts about himself.

“She’s been responding,” he muttered to himself as he left the air conditioning in the cabin and got hit with a wall of early summer heat. He started to sweat instantly, and he jogged down the steps to the front sidewalk.

He barely felt like he belonged at the foreman’s cabin, what with its emerald-green grass, pristine front porch, and an actual carport. Matt had lived here for a long time, through many winters, and Mission liked that he could pull up to the side of the house instead of out front, and that he wouldn’t have to scrape his truck before he went somewhere when it got cold.

That reality sat several months in the future, and Mission seriously needed to focus on the here-and-now. He couldn’t afford to have his mind wandering into the past or down darker roads filled with self-doubt.

Not tonight.

Kristie possessed some serious intelligence, and Mission would need all of his wits about him to keep up with her. How did he tell her he’d never gone to college? She was a doctor of veterinary medicine.

Oh, yes, he was way out of his league.

Still, he continued on, and it only took him about twenty minutes to drive from the farm to Kristie’s front door. She lived in a house that screamed her personality, with blooming rose bushes lining the front of the house, and he smiled at how she’d told him she’d planted them there as an intruder deterrent.

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