Page 45 of His Tenth Dance

He made the uncertain steadier, and she…trusted him. With every step he took up toward his cabin, Kristie fell a little bit more in love with him.

The slide usually scared her, but after tonight—seeing his calm steadiness in the face of emergency and fear and injury—Kristie trusted that he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her either.

fifteen

Mission really appreciated that Kristie did not argue with him about leaving Lady with Gerty—or going with him back to his cabin. In fact, she stayed silent all the way back to his house. The front steps creaked as he walked up them and opened his front door.

“Do you want to shower?” he asked quietly, making his voice match the night around them.

She looked at him with a measure of hope in her eyes. “Could I?”

He smiled and nodded. “I have two bathrooms, so you won’t even have to use mine.” He took off his hat and hung it on the hook, then gestured down the hall. “I already got some extra clothes from Judy, and she gave me some…more feminine toiletries as well, so you won’t smell like a cowboy.”

He cleared his throat and moved into the kitchen, so Kristie could go past him and down the hall. “I put it all in the bathroom for you.”

She blinked at him, her eyes wide. “Thank you, Mission,” she said, the level of sincerity in her voice unlike anything he’d heard from her before.

She looked absolutely haggard, and Mission didn’t blame her. The workday had almost been finished when he’d called her, and she’d worked on Lady, gone back to her house, then returned and done more with the horse.

Mission hadn’t had time to go to town for groceries, but he had made all other arrangements so Kristie could be comfortable, get cleaned up, and sleep in his guest room—should she choose to.

“How do you feel about breakfast for a late-night dinner?” he asked. He, too, felt as if he had been run over by a thresher, but he opened the fridge to get out the eggs.

“Breakfast sounds amazing,” she said, and then she rushed at him.

“Hey, okay.” He set the eggs on the counter quickly and received her into his arms. She clung to him, and Mission wished he could erase time and get those rattlesnakes somewhere else before Molly and Lady happened by.

“I’m going to shower for a while,” she finally said. “Just to calm down. So don’t make anything until I’m done, okay?”

“All right,” he murmured.

She pulled away and looked at him, reaching up to brush his hair off his forehead. “I still haven’t cut your hair.”

Before he could respond, she tipped up and pressed her lips to his, kissing him in a new and needful way. She didn’t carry on too long, quickly settling back onto her feet and clearing her throat.

She let her hair fall between them and then tucked it away. “I’ll go shower.” She turned abruptly and hurried out of the kitchen and down the hall. Mission stared after her until he heard the click of the bathroom door, which jolted him back to himself.

He wouldn’t start Kristie’s sandwich until she came out of the bathroom, but he needed other elements to put everything together.

He pulled out the package of bacon and put several slices in a frying pan. He sliced a tomato and then several pieces of Colby Jack cheese. He tended to the bacon until it was crisp, then tonged it out of the pan onto a plate with a paper towel and set that aside. Then he whisked a couple of eggs together with a tiny bit of milk, salt, and pepper.

That went next to the stove, ready to be poured in the pan. The shower still ran in the bathroom, which sat right on the other side of the wall. He didn’t know what “a long time” meant for Kristie, but she did stay in the shower for a while.

Mission sometimes didn’t like being at-one with his thoughts in the silence, but tonight, he opted for that instead of turning on the radio or the TV. He settled on his couch and looked at his phone, hoping to find a dog well-suited to farm life. He’d been looking for a couple of weeks and hadn’t felt good about any of the canines that came up for rehoming.

He pushed his hand through his hair as it kept falling over his eyes, and he really did need to get it cut. He really wanted Kristie to do it, but summer was a very busy time on farms and ranches, and while he saw her almost every day, he hadn’t been able to schedule a haircut yet.

He lifted his head when the water turned off in the bathroom. He got to his feet and went into the kitchen, lit the stove again, and set the pan that had fried the bacon over the flame. He used a paper towel to soak up some of the fat and tossed that in the trash. Then he poured the eggs in, the satisfying sizzle making him sink into the comforts of home.

He laid two pieces of cheese at the top of the pan and two at the bottom, the egg making the round shape inside it.

Kristie joined him just as he picked up the two slices of bread. “You like egg sandwiches, right?” he asked, though he knew she did.

She pressed right into his left side, looping her arm through it and holding it with both of her hands. “What are you doing here?” she asked as he laid the top piece of bread over the cheese, with the curved top near the curved edge of the pan.

He did the same with the second piece of bread, matching up the curves, and tilted his head to look at her. She gazed into the pan as if he was completing some sort of magic spell.

“The egg is going to cook,” he said. “Then I’ll flip the whole thing over to toast the bread. I’ll add more cheese on the other side, so you’ll have cheese, egg, cheese. Then we fold the round parts of the egg in on the sides, and I add a little tomato and a little bacon, and then fold the whole thing together.”

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