Page 5 of A Sweet Deal for the Cowboy

He gestured to the dash. “It’s all yours.”

She went through every single station and then started again. Did she know that she’d already been through them all? When she started on her third trip through, he wondered if he should say something but decided not to. She seemed happy pressing the seek button over and over again. Who was he to interfere with her fun?

By the time she finally gave up and landed on 98.7, he had lost count of how many times she’d passed 98.7.

She sat back and started tapping her toes to the beat. She caught him looking at her feet, and he looked away quickly, his cheeks getting hot.

“How can you wear leather cowboy boots in this heat?” she asked.

“I wear socks too.” He’d rather die than wear sandals. The only time he had his dogs out was in the shower.

And even then, sometimes he was tempted to keep his boots on.

Chapter 4

The radio was playing a sad song, and Nova was working hard to ignore it when the handsome semi-stranger pulled his truck into a short driveway. The driveway led to a double wide trailer on a very small lot. Where were they going to put the goats, the basement?

“Were you around for the Black Hawk sinkhole?” Gunner asked.

“The what?”

He pointed out his window. “See that fence?”

“Yeah?” Behind the fence sat at least a half dozen houses, but the grass on their lawns looked to be waist high. It looked like a scene from an apocalypse movie.

“A few years ago, a giant sinkhole opened up,” he explained, “and those houses started sinking.”

“What?” she cried. “Is that a thing in South Dakota? Giant sinkholes?” She’d grown up here, but she couldn’t remember any stories about the earth trying to eat houses. She’d forgotten most of her childhood, but she knew herself well enough to know that something like that would have stuck with her.

“I’ve never heard of another case. Those houses were built on an old gypsum mine.”

That didn’t make much sense. “Did they not know the mine was under them?”

“I’m not sure if the people whobuiltthe houses knew,” Gunner said slowly, “but I’d be willing to bet that the people whoboughtthe houses didn’t know.”

She scooted a little closer to him for a better look. If it were this eerie from far away, she imagined it would be spectacular up close. “Can you go down in the mine?”

“No idea.”

“We should go try.”

Gunner’s head snapped her way. “What?”

She laughed. “Yeah, wouldn’t it be cool to go in? I love caves.”

“It’s not a cave. It’s an old mine, and that would be a really bad decision.” He narrowed his eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be on your best behavior right now?”

Oh yeah. She straightened, feeling appropriately chastised. He was right. She had to stop thinking about fun and adventure. Everything was about Gabby, Conley, and Mona now. Her fun was done, so that she could givethemthe funnest life possible.

Gunner looked out the windshield. “Here come our new goat owners.”

Nova looked to see a blonde woman in a sundress, and a little girl with the same blonde hair running toward the truck. Her long locks flew out behind her, and her smile spread from ear to ear.

They did not look like goat farmers.

Gunner got out of the truck, and Nova wondered if it was okay to follow. They started chatting, and she couldn’t make out what they were saying. She felt left out, so she got out of the truck.

Gunner stiffly introduced her as his friend, but Sophia and her daughter Madison were too excited about the goats to care about Nova. If Gunner hadn’t made introductions, they wouldn’t have noticed she was there.

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