Page 77 of Fixing to Be Mine

“Gorgeous,” I mutter. “Wow.”

“Not too bad yourself, cowboy,” she says as I offer her the flowers.

“For you,” I say, my voice lower than I intended.

She takes the bouquet slowly, her fingers brushing mine. There’s a pause that allows the weight of this to settle between us.

“Ready?” I ask, offering my arm.

“Absolutely,” she says, taking it.

I help her into the truck, careful with the bouquet as she climbs in. She settles into the seat, and it hits me again how much I want tonight to matter. It’s the start of a new beginning, not another page in her story.

As I circle the front of the truck and climb in beside her, I glance over and catch her watching me.

“You’re makin’ me nervous,” I tell her, adjusting the key in the ignition.

She bursts into laughter, and I love the sound. “No, you’re making me nervous.”

“Then let’s stop with that,” I say.

She reaches across the console and takes my hand. I kiss her knuckles and interlock my fingers with hers. The drive out to Bar V, my family’s ranch, is quiet in a peaceful way. The kind of quiet that settles when two people don’t need to fill every second withwords. When she gets in her head, I let her stay there without interrupting her. I know she’s still working through everything that happened with her ex and sister. She’s handling it better than I ever could.

The sun has started to lower behind the ridge, stretching the shadows long across the fields as we pass the front gates. The cattle guard rumbles under the tires. She’s watching the landscape as it opens—wide and golden and still—and I wonder if she knows how much of this I’ve wanted to show her.

We pull around the main barn and follow the dirt road past the fence line until the trees thicken again. There’s a side-by-side parked near the tool shed, exactly where I asked Emmett to park it for me. The second she sees it, her head tilts in that curious way she does when she’s trying to figure out what I’m up to.

“Is this part of the date?” she asks.

“Every bit of it,” I say, putting the truck in park and grabbing the picnic basket full of goodies from behind the seat. “Come on.”

The late sun hits her perfectly, glinting off her earrings, catching in her dark hair, and I have to take a breath to remind myself to stay focused.

I place the picnic basket in the back and strap it in.

“Can I drive?” she asks.

“Um, sure,” I tell her, climbing into the passenger seat. “Do you know how?”

She gives her signature Stormy expression with one brow slightly raised and her mouth quirked, like she’s two seconds away from making me eat my words.

“I’ve driven faster things than this with more horsepower and worse steering,” she says, sliding into the driver’s seat with way too much confidence for someone who’s never taken a side-by-side down a Texas trail.

I buckle in and brace my arm on the frame. “All right, hotshot, try not to flip us.”

She grins like that’s a dare.

The second she turns the key and hits the gas, we lurch forward with a jolt that throws my hand instinctively to the grab bar. Dust kicks up behind us in a thick trail, the engine roaring louder than I expected.

She laughs—a wild, free sound—and glances over at me, her hair whipping in the wind.

“This thing’s got more bite than I thought,” she shouts over the rumble.

“Maybe slow down before we find ourselves off-road.”

“Oh, come on,” she calls out, swerving us down a narrow path that cuts through the trees. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Back there with the picnic basket I strapped in with a seat belt,” I mutter, though I’m grinning too.

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