Caroline scoffed, though herbrain whirred through what else they might both like. “That’s not true,” she said. “We both like over-easy eggs.”
He huffed out a couple beats of laughter. “True.” He exhaled and squeezed her hand. “I’ll watch the weather, but it’s not that fun to be out in the rain.”
“Mm, no, it isn’t.” She watched the ground at her feet, existing in a state of excitement mingled with disbelief that she was holding someone’s hand and talking about a date later that night. She’d never thought she’d be here again. In fact, she’d sworn not to put herself in this position again.
Her heartbeat throbbed painfully against her ribcage, her most vital organ feeling far too big for her chest. “So you’ll watch the weather,” she said as they reached the vehicles.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll watch the weather.” He pulled open her door for her, and Caroline smiled shyly at him as she stepped past him and got behind the wheel. “See you at six, beautiful.”
With that, he closed her door and moved over to his truck without a backward glance.
Caroline gripped the wheel with both hands and left the West End Fence ahead of Dawson, her eyes straight forward but not seeing anything. “Dear Lord,” she pray-moaned. “What am I doing? What am I going to tell Belle?”
Chapter Seven
Dawson glanced at the pair of tennis shoes as he went past them and into the cabin. They belonged to Dwayne, as the twelve-year-old could never find his shoes. Zona had simply started buying more pairs and leaving them wherever her son might go or be.
Therefore, Brandon and Dawson had some here; a couple of pairs waited at the homestead, and Dawson knew Zona had even put some in the back of every vehicle they owned.
He smiled to himself, because the soup pot he’d picked up from Etta Glover-Winters weighed a lot, and he didn’t have the mental energy to smile, walk, and carry the soup toward the back counter. He made it, relief singing through the muscles in his arms and shoulders.
Brandon hadn’t come in for lunch yet, and Dawsonsighed as he took in the silence in their shared cabin. In that moment, something started clattering. It sounded like tires over rutted road, and it took Dawson a moment to realize what it was.
“Rain,” he said, looking up at the ceiling. When he switched his gaze outside, he found the raindrops splashing angrily against the glass. “Great.”
At least he wasn’t outside, but Mother Nature had ruined his plans for that evening. “It’s not the first time you’ve had to change things up last-minute,” he muttered to himself and Ruffin. The dog looked up from his water bowl, decided Dawson wasn’t talking to him, and went back to his drink.
He had modified his dates plenty of times in the past, but none of them had ever turned out all that well. His confidence level for this date already hovered near the bottom of the scale, and he desperately wanted to impress Caroline.
Why, he wasn’t sure. And how? He had no idea.
The weather is making an outdoor walking tour of Main Street impossible, he sent to Finn.Other ideas for me for tonight?
Let me ask Henry.
Dawson looked up from his phone, trying to place Henry.Your cousin?
Yeah, and he dates a lot, Finn said.Same age as Link. A year younger maybe. He’ll know of something.
I can text him. I think I have his number. Dawsonstarted looking through his contacts while Finn texted back that he’d already asked Henry for something to do that night in the rain.
Dawson set down his phone and went to get down a couple of bowls. The front door banged open, and he dang near jumped out of his skin. “Bulls and broncos,” he swore as he twisted and jumped away from the door at the same time.
“Whoo-ee,” Brandon yelled. Or maybe he was just talking. He did everything louder than Dawson, that was for sure. “It iscoming downout there.” He brushed something off his shoulder that looked dangerously like hail, and with his adrenaline positively pumping through him, Dawson switched his gaze to the window.
Sure enough, he couldseethe rain more fully now, and the pounding on the roof intensified.
“You cooked?” Brandon didn’t seem to care about the hail, but Dawson sure did. Hail ruined crops way more than rain did. Hail didn’t seep right into the ground immediately. Hail meant the weather was more severe than one could tell from just looking at the flat, gray sky.
Hail could turn to snow. And while snow in the Texas Panhandle wasn’t all that unheard of, it wasn’t anything good either. Alerts would be sent out. Roads would get icy. More accidents. Heck, sometimes the over-anxious restaurant owners closed their doors for the safety of their employees.
“I didn’t make the soup,” Dawson said. “Etta did, and I went to pick it up.”
“Even better,” Brandon said, grinning his way into the kitchen. He lifted the lid and said, “Oh, boy. It’s the tortellini kind. I love this stuff.”
Dawson did too, but his phone had started chiming, one right after the other. Five, six, seven-eight-nine-ten times. The beeps crowded over the top of one another, and both he and Brandon looked at his device.
“That’s not good,” Brandon said. But he wasn’t in charge of anything on the ranch, so he didn’t have to carry that weight. Dawson did, but he tried to ignore it while he finished the task of getting down bowls and ladling up their lunch.