Page 15 of Stripped Down at the Fair

“It pays double my normal hourly wage,” I said. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to wait for me, but I can’t risk my job. And double pay for two months would get us way ahead as we start our life together.”

Her eyebrows rose and a hint of a smile returned. Just a hint, but I grabbed onto it.

“So, you want me to wait for you?” she asked.

She was full-on smiling now, which I assumed was a good thing. I’d ask if she wanted to wait for me, but that was clear.

“I want you to wait for me,” I said. “Here in Sweetheart Bend. You can stay in my cabin.”

“Like house-sitting?”

I shook my head. “Like you live there. It’s your home too. When I come back, we’ll get married. If that’s what you want.”

I waited to make sure, but her smile grew even bigger. She was full-on beaming.

“You want to marry me?” she asked.

“Are you kidding? I’d marry you right this second, but I have to head out of town tomorrow. When we do get married, I want to spend every night with you in our bed.”

She stood, pushing her chair back, and I started around the easel to help her fold it up. But she stepped in front of me.

“You’ll spoil the surprise,” she said.

“Surprise?”

I looked around. There was nothing but her chair and easel. Just land with no sign of the fair that had once stood around her. The crew had packed up everything and left, and pretty soon, we’d be gone too, leaving it abandoned until the next big event.

“Close your eyes,” she said.

That command had my mind automatically sliding into the gutter. I knew what I wanted the surprise to be, but that kind of surprise would have to wait until a little later, when we weren’t standing in the middle of a big, empty field.

I felt her move. Somehow, I knew she was standing next to her easel. A light swishing noise told me she was lifting the pad from it.

“Okay, open them,” she said.

My eyes popped open. In front of me was a large drawing. Not a caricature, but a regular drawing of the two of us. In it, we were standing side by side, arms around each other, gazing into each other’s eyes. The image showed exactly how I felt about her in ways I couldn’t put into words.

“That’s us.” I lifted my gaze from the drawing to her face. “We’re going to hang it somewhere in the house.”

She looked down at it. “You think so? I don’t know if it’s gallery-worthy, but I’ve been working on it between customers the past couple of days.”

“So you started working on this before we…”

She nodded. “I guess I’ve been fantasizing about you since the first day I saw you. As it turned out, the reality was better than…”

She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to. The drawing said it all.

“Let’s go get some dinner and have the best night of our lives.”

As we walked to the car, though, I knew it would only be the first of many. Even distance couldn’t separate us.

But no way could I make it two months without seeing her. I’d find a way to sneak in a weekend here and there. Even if I had to drive an entire day just to see her for one day, it would be worth it.

9

CATE

My heart raced as I pulled into the parking lot of the Wildwood Valley Inn. We’d made it to the seven-week mark, but the guys on Dustin’s crew were getting restless. The bad news was that two weeks had been tacked onto the end of the project, which meant we had another three weeks to go, and nobody was sure that would be the end.

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