Page 56 of Cowboy Falling Hard

Dwight opened the door with one finger, carrying in all three bushels of apples together.

He grabbed it with his foot and shoved it open, looking up in time to see one of the Powers brothers.

“Excuse me. Almost ran you over.”

“You have your hands full. Here, let me hold the door,” the man said. “I don’t think I’ve ever introduced myself, and I’d offer to shake now, but it might be funny to watch you trying to juggle those bags of apples.”

“Yeah. I’m sure you’d get a kick out of that. I’m Dwight.”

The man had slipped through and held the door. “Good to meet you. I’m Brawley, one of the Powers brothers.”

“I figured. Recognized you as a Powers, anyway.” He stopped, looking into Brawley’s eyes, and got struck by something...familiar.

He didn’t mean to, but his eyes narrowed.

“What? I have something on my face? Guess I left without doing my regular beauty routine. It is kind of early.”

“No,” Dwight said absentmindedly. “There’s nothing on your face, you just look...familiar.”

“I look like my brothers. Although, the rest of them have brown eyes, and God gave me green for some reason.”

They weren’t an emerald green, but more of a sea green, like the Atlantic Ocean on a February day. Interesting. Because he’d just seen eyes that color not that long ago. Exactly that color. Eyes that had a slight tilt to them, the same tilt he saw in both sets of eyes.

He shook his head. What he was suspecting could not possibly be true. The whole town would know it. It wouldn’t be just him.

Although, sometimes a person didn’t see things that were right under their nose. Sometimes the best place to hide something was in the most obvious place, where no one would think to look for it, because it was too obvious.

Dwight shook his head, mumbled his thanks, and strode into the church.

“Good morning, Miss Charlene,” he said, setting the apples down carefully on the table. He didn’t know a whole lot about cooking much of anything, but he knew that apples bruised easily, and so he was careful as he handled them.

“Good morning. I see you arrived right as Orchid did,” Miss Charlene said with a knowing look.

“I sure did. Thanks for setting this up so we could be together today.”

“I’ve been hearing that you were together yesterday, so maybe you didn’t need our services after all.”

“I needed your advice. It’s been working for me, and it made sense. I...don’t want to lead her on with some kind of false pretenses. I don’t want her to fall for me because she thinks I’m someone I’m not. And your advice helped me see that I was actually going about everything the wrong way.”

“Sometimes we just need a little guidance. I got to thinking about what you were saying, and I also felt a little bad for the things I made you promise.”

“What’s that?” he asked, straightening up, glancing around the kitchen, and then looking at Miss Charlene more fully.

“I made you promise that you wouldn’t take her away. Dwight, that’s really not my place. If you’re meant to be together. If God wants you to be together. You need to go where God wants you to go. Whether it’s Sweet Water, whether it’s somewhere else. That’s the important thing, not doing what I want you to do.”

“Thanks for the apology. Thanks for letting me off the hook for that, but I have no intention of taking her away. I just haven’t found the perfect place to buy yet. I’m working on it.” He grinned.

“You have a baseball career in Houston, and if you need to go, you have my blessing.”

“Thanks. I’m pretty sure I’m gonna retire. I need to make a decision, but not today. Today, I’m gonna learn to make apple turnovers.”

“You’ve never made them before?” Charlene asked, although why that information would surprise her, he had no idea.

“Surely you know men do crazy things for women they’re interested in.”

“I do know that. I guess occasionally I get forgetful in my old age.”

“Well, yeah. I know how to eat apple turnovers, but that’s pretty much all I know how to do with them.”

---