Page 71 of His Tenth Dance

Kristie looked like he’d flung ice water in her face. “I know who you are, Mission.”

“Do you?” he asked. “And you’re willing to live on this farm with me if we get married?”

Her eyes widened, and she stared at him, her food forgotten.

“I run this farm now,” he said, feeling combative for a reason he couldn’t name. “And I’ve worked here for eighteen years. I’ve never been on an airplane, and I have no desire to visit fancy places and see the world. I do want to get a dog, but that’s about as exciting as my life gets.”

The microwave beeped and he turned away from her to stir his freezer meal. “I can eat a sandwich for any meal,” he said, the words like poison as they streamed over his tongue. “And I eat out of the freezer sometimes, and I work a lot. Yes, my life is simple—becauseI’msimple.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Kristie said.

Mission slammed the microwave shut and put his meal back in for its final two minutes. He kept his back turned to her, even ignoring her when he heard the barstool scrape and her footsteps come closer to him.

She joined him in front of the stove and reached for another piece of garlic toast. “This is the most complicated garlic bread I’ve ever had,” she said.

Mission huffed and grunted, very much like a horse who was being asked to do something he didn’t want to do. He cut a look at Kristie out of the corner of his eye, and she offered him a bright smile.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” she said, her smile fading as her sincerity shone through. “It was a nice prayer,becauseit was simple. Sometimes people have a tendency to overcomplicate things, don’t you think?”

“Like the names of their apple crumble,” he said. For one horrifying moment, Mission thought he may have pressed his luck too far and said something he thought was witty, but was actually hurtful.

Then Kristie sent peals of laughter streaming through his cabin, and he knew his life would never be the same without that sound in his ears—and this woman in his life.

“Yeah,” she said, giggling as she went back to her plate. “Like the overcomplicated names of their apple crumble.” She pointed her fork at him. “But just for that, Mister, you won’t get to taste it until after the State Fair.”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “That’s not fair.”

But Kristie wouldn’t budge. Mission didn’t really mind, because if he couldn’t taste her apple crumble until after the State Fair…that meant they’d still be together in September.

twenty-three

Kristie checked her plastic tote to make sure she had all the ingredients she needed for her spiced chai apple crumble tart with maple glaze.

She was doing a pâte sucrée crust with a very delicate blend of spices on the apples—which couldn’t be cooked for too long, but definitely had to be cooked for long enough. The maple glaze took everything to a new level and then toned it all down at the same time.

Some of the spices in this recipe she had found scrawled in the margin of an old church cookbook during one of her first cleaning Sabbath days definitely had a medicinal quality—like tea—but the apples, sweet pastry crust, and maple glaze made this a beautifully balanced dessert.

“All right, guys,” she said to her cat army. “I left the back door open; you can go out, and there’s plenty of food and water. Bob, don’t be greedy.” She pointed at the orange tabby. Bob simply yowled at her as if she were leaving him for a month instead of just the afternoon and evening.

She, Lennie, Jocelyn, and Harper had agreed to meet at Lennie’s house to practice their bakes and have dessert night.Since everything took hours, they’d moved it from the first Friday of the month to the next day—Saturday.

Kristie had been in a farrowing pen that morning, but now she had everything she needed to work in Lennie’s oversized kitchen for the rest of the day. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it—Lennie was like a whirlwind in the kitchen, whereas Kristie preferred a more careful and calm approach.

There would be so many different flavors and smells in the room, and her nose wrinkled. Still, an excitement built beneath Kristie’s breastbone as she loaded her big plastic bin into the back of her SUV and headed toward her friend’s house.

Jocelyn had already arrived, but Kristie wasn’t surprised to see she’d beat Harper. She was probably at the grocery store right now, buying what she needed for her peach bourbon layer cake with brown butter frosting. Kristie could admit she loved brown butter on almost anything, and mixing it with cream cheese and powdered sugar to make a frosting simply added up to heaven for her.

Jocelyn had been extremely tight-lipped about her dessert, but Lennie had been talking about her chocolate espresso pavlova for days now.

Thankfully, Lennie stood at the screen door and held it open for Kristie as she lumbered under the weight of her tote and climbed the front steps.

“Hey, girl,” she said, the scent of coffee drifting onto the front porch.

“Hey,” Kristie said brightly as she entered the house.

Lennie’s kitchen sat in the back corner, with an enormous peninsula that allowed them to work on either side. Kristie took the station next to the wall, as Lennie and Jocelyn had already taken the other two spots in the kitchen. Lennie had double wall ovens—as they all had to bake something that day—and she had three stand mixers lined up down the middle of the countertop.

“I’ve got your apron right here,” Jocelyn chirped as she held up a blue apron with an apple on the front and Kristie’s name embroidered beneath it.

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