Page 53 of His Tenth Dance

“A little jigsaw,” she said. “And templates for the letters. I can make almost anything if I sketch out a template first.”

Tarr gazed at the sign, still amazed by it. “And you sell these online?”

“I have a little online shop, yes,” she said. “I don’t get tons of orders, though. It’s a very specific clientele.”

“My momma would love something like this.” He turned. “Let’s go see how it looks on the actual Goatel.”

Talking to Briar was easy, and Tarr wished he could kick down the walls she kept firmly erected between the two of them. Everything about her still made his skin sizzle, sent his heart leaping, and coaxed the feelings he kept carefully repressed pressing against the box where he’d put them.

Could she seriously not feel any of that?

What are you going to do about it anyway?he asked himself.

She never came back to his side, but Tarr continued to the peaked roof he’d already put on the enclosure. She walked a few paces behind him and stopped as he moved onto the stepladder in front of the enclosure and held up the sign.

“Yeah, I think it’s gonna look real nice here,” he said. “Do you want to help me get it even, and we’ll attach it?” He looked over his shoulder and found her with her arms folded and a glare on her face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “It fits great.” So great, in fact, it was like he’d been given the exact measurements for this sign and told to make room for it on the front of the enclosure.Perhaps Bobbie Jo had come out and measured while he’d been working with the cattle and horses.

“Could you put a shirt on?” she asked.

Tarr turned to face the sign only a couple of inches away from him—his nose almost meeting the painted wooden goat.

Oh, she feels it,he told himself as he started to chuckle.

“Yeah, okay. It’s on the nail there on the side of the barn. Will you grab it for me?”

She muttered something he couldn’t quite catch, but he heard her marching through the gravel.

He got down off the stepladder and carefully leaned the sign against one of the fence pillars. He stayed right where he was and made Briar come all the way to him with that shirt. She thrust it at him from a couple of feet away.

“Am I too distracting for you, sweetheart?” he asked.

“And too arrogant,” she shot back.

Tarr only chuckled, because he knew he wasn’t arrogant. “You know, we could go out again,” he said. “I didn’t think our first date was that bad.”

Briar looked away instead of saying no, and Tarr was actually surprised the invitation had come out of his mouth. He’d thought about asking Briar out again, of course, but he’d never done it.

“I don’t know, Tarr,” she said. “We just feel so different.”

“That’s because you don’t know me very well,” he said. “You’ve made all kinds of assumptions about me that may or may not be true.”

She didn’t argue with him. so Tarr knew he was right.

“I did want to ask you something,” Briar said. Her voice was hesitant, like every word had to be pulled out of her mouth by the wind.

“Go on then,” he said. “And Bobbie Jo really does want pictures of this sign.”

“I know,” Briar said. “Can you just let me ask this?”

“Go ahead and ask it.”

She remained silent.

Tarr swore their entire conversation on their first and only date had been recorded in his mind so it could torture him whenever possible. She’d literally told him she didn’t like the rodeo or any of the athletes in it. She found it too dangerous.

And yet, she’d been at the ranch working with Tuck and Tarr as they trained rodeo athletes and animals.

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