Page 30 of His Tenth Dance

“No,” Kristie said. “I love pizza, though I can’t say that I’ve ever had the pan pizza from San Diego’s.”

“Have you been to San Diego’s before?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “But my girlfriends and I got the thin crust. And you woulddie,but Lennie likes veggie pizza.” She tacked a giggle onto the end, and Mission grinned at her.

He opened his front door and stepped back to let Kristie go in first. Blessed air conditioning came out to greet them, and she took three steps into his cabin and stopped.

He entered after her, squeezing in close so that he could swing the door closed behind him. “It’s not much,” he said, moving to her side. “The foreman’s cabin is the biggest, though, and Matt lived here with his family for quite a while. Then they wanted more land, and he moved to town, and he and Gloria just came out here to work.”

“Gloria is still around, right?” Kristie asked.

“Yep.” Mission moved past her. “Feel free to snoop around.” He grinned and turned back toward her as he reached the corner. “And look at the menu at San Diego’s. We can get more than one pizza, so if you want a thin crust, it’s no problem.”

Her eyes roamed through his living room, the dining room with a table and four chairs, and the kitchen before they settled on him.

“I’ll look at the menu,” she said. “I’m not going to snoop through your stuff.”

He grinned and reached up to tip his hat at her, then took it off and hung it on the hook on the other side of the corner as he headed down the hall toward the master suite.

The foreman’s cabin had a second bedroom, two bathrooms, and a loft. Mission knew Matt had once put Keith in the loft—only because he and his sister weren’t the same gender and were too old to share the bedroom. Mission wouldn’t have that problem for a while…if he ever did.

“Hey, don’t think like that,” he muttered to himself. Things were going great with Kristie—and they were. But as he quickly stepped into the shower to scrub the day’s dirt, horses, and sweat off his skin, he also reminded himself that this was only their third date. They wouldn’t be getting married and starting a family anytime soon.

As he toweled his hair dry, he realized how long it had gotten. He grabbed his phone and headed back down the hall to the living room.

Kristie sat at the bar—not at the table or on the couch—and she looked up as he entered.

“I actually think your place is bigger than mine,” she said.

He chuckled and shook his head. “I doubt that.”

“My place is only two bedrooms, and you have a loft,” she said.

“You have a basement.”

“It’s not finished, so your living space might be more than mine.”

“Okay,” he said, because he saw no point in arguing about it; he didn’t really care anyway.

“I’m just gonna text Molly real quick,” he said.

“Oh, yeah? About what?”

He glanced at her as he tapped on Molly’s name. “Just gonna ask her to cut my hair,” he said. “I realized it’s getting a little too long.”

Kristie got to her feet. “I can cut your hair.”

Their eyes met, and time slowed into small, thin strands connecting the two of them.

“You can?” The words came out of his mouth, though his lips didn’t move.

“Sure.” Kristie reached up and swept her fingers through it, pushing the long fringe to the side. She swallowed and dropped her hand as her eyes widened—like she’d just realized what she’d done.

And what she’d done was electrocute Mission from the skull down. He couldn’t move or think, and the only reason he kept breathing was because his lungs did so of their own volition.

“I used to cut my brother’s hair.”

She fell back a step, and Mission felt like she’d blown open the conversation.

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