Page 43 of Spur of the Moment
I frownedat the center console. These damn new trucks had them in permanently with no ability to lift them out of the way.
“Well, I can’t even if I wanted to.” I gestured to the leather dividing us.
He shrugged. “Guess it’ll have to wait until we’re in my truck.” He drove an older vehicle, so the front was a bench seat. It made road head easy. Not that I’d know.
I narrowed my eyes at him, pressing my lips into a thin line. “I guess it will.”
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek, turning my attention out the window.
“You’re gonna chew your cheek clean off if you keep at it.”
Swallowing my nerves, I said, “It was the way you looked at me.”
His brows furrowed with confusion. “What?”
“The day I turned eighteen, something changed between us. I knew if I told you I was leaving, you’d try to change my mind.”
He nodded. “I would have.”
“At the time, I didn’t want my mind changed. But now, looking back at all this lost time, I wish you did.”
“Like I said, Lettie, that’s in the past.”
“I know. I just wanted you to know that I noticed it.”
“Huckleberry, if you noticed it, you would’ve seen I’ve been looking at you like that since the first day I laid eyes on you when we were kids. It was you who looked at me differently that day, not the other way around.”
I didn’t respond as I sat there thinking back to my eighteenth birthday when Bailey showed up with a vanilla cake coated in homemade huckleberry frosting. He’d made it from scratch, and if I knew anything about Bailey, it was that he didn’t bake. But he did it for me, and it was the best cake I’d ever had.
My lips twitched with a smile at the memory. “You want to give me the recipe to that cake you made me?”
He shook his head. “I’d rather make it myself for every birthday you have from this point forward.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Since when did you become such a romantic?”
He flashed his teeth with a smile as he clicked on his blinker to pull over since we were approaching our fifth hour in the truck. Shifting to park, he got out to check on the horses and the trailer. I wondered if my family would see that something changed between us on this trip when we got home, and how my brothers would feel about it if they found out.
24
Bailey
We pulled into the ranch a couple of hours before sunset. Everyone’s vehicles were parked in front of the ranch-style home, every Bronson, aside from Beckham, here to help unload the horses and get them situated. No matter the circumstances, rain or shine, the Bronsons showed up.
Lettie hopped out of the truck as soon as the tires stopped spinning, Rouge taking off after her. Brandy was talking to Callan when Lettie approached her, a smile lighting up their faces.
I got out of the truck after killing the engine, meeting up with Reed, who had made his way around the side of the trailer.
“Six horses, huh?” He stepped up on the wheel well, peeking in the trailer.
I chuckled. “Blame Beck and Lettie.”
After getting a good look at them, he stepped down. “I figured that would happen. Though I was surprised when Beckham called my dad. He practically begged him to call the kill pen. I’m sure if Travis said no, he’d be on his way there right now.”
“I’m sure your mom would’ve had Travis’s head if he said no to him.”
“That’s why we’re packed full. My mom can’t turn down a sob story.”
Callan came over to us, his cowboy hat tilted low with his sandy hair curling at the nape of his neck. “I need the covered arena tomorrow so we’ve got to let ‘em loose in the pasture. It’ll be harder to catch them but Brandy’s confident she can handle it.”
