Caroline blinked at him and said simply, “No, sir.”
“I’ll bring you back the moment you say,” he said, and she didn’t detect an ounce of dishonesty in him.
She still gave him a side-eyed look and squeezed past him to get in the truck. She honestly had no idea what she was doing. The Rhinehart Ranch sat forty-five minutes south of town. She couldn’t just leave Belle and Judy at the community center.
Panicking, Caroline pulled her phone out of her pocket and started texting frantically. Dawson slid into the driver’s seat and backed the truck out. He drove insilence, and Caroline had learned that he was familiar and comfortable and best friends with silence.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about it, but she took the opportunity to text her sister where she’d gone and that her keys were sitting next to her plastic cup of water on that table.
I am going to get the whole story when you get back, Belle said.Or I will fake a heart attack and interrupt whatever it is you have going on with Dawson.
Caroline scoffed, which drew Dawson’s attention. “You okay?” he drawled.
Okay, she tapped out quickly, and then she shoved her phone back into her pocket. “Yes,” she said. “Just telling Belle what’s going on.”
“Mm. What did she say?”
“What are you going to tell your parents?”
“That something came up on the ranch.” He grinned at her, that lopsided smile so adorable. “It’s not exactly a lie.”
“Do you regularly tell little white lies?”
“Technically, I haven’t told either of my parents anything yet,” he said. “So no.” His smile remained as he turned to get on the road that led south. Caroline knew the area pretty well now that she’d been in town for nine or ten months, as she had to drive to a lot of the ranches and farms in Three Rivers for her job.
“Besides,” he said. “I’m thirty-two years old, and if Iwant to take a pretty woman home for breakfast, I don’t need to tell my mommy and daddy.”
Ah, there was that familiar bite and fire. “Wait,” she said as her brain caught up to her ears. “A pretty woman?”
Dawson’s jaw jumped in that tell-tale way Caroline had seen in other men. He might not be a big talker, but he had plenty of non-verbal cues she could read just fine. Maybe she hadn’t seen another man’s jaw jump like that for her in a while, nor had she been called pretty by anyone but Belle or Judy in longer, but she wasn’t new to dating and relationships.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I think you’re pretty.”
“Well…thank you,” she said, not sure what else to say. Her momma had taught her that she could always be grateful, so “thank you” seemed appropriate.
“You ordered over-easy eggs at the diner a few months ago,” he said. “Is that your favored way to take eggs?”
Caroline swiveled her attention toward him again. “Favored way to take eggs?”
“Yeah,” he said without missing a beat. “Eggs are the most versatile food there is. You can?—”
“Besides potatoes,” she said.
He looked over to her. “Besides potatoes.” He drove with one hand on the top of the wheel and the other draped lazily over his thigh. He seemed at-ease on thisroad, in this truck, with her. “So…how do you take your eggs?”
Caroline relaxed into the leather seat behind her. “I do like a really good over-easy egg. They’re hard to do, and I’ll admit I usually break mine on the flip.”
“I’ve done that too,” he said.
“If I’m going to be real honest, though, I’d go with a poached egg. Over a nicely toasted English muffin, with hollandaise sauce.”
“So an impossible task,” he said.
“So far in Three Rivers, yes,” she said. “There was this cute little bistro in Sweet Water Falls that made the best Eggs Benedict I’ve ever had.” She smiled, the morning sunshine of this New Year streaming in through the windows. “Gonna be a nice day.”
“Yep,” he said. “Good day to be outside for sure.”
He made the turn to go west from the highway, and they bumped along a nice dirt road and onto the Rhinehart Ranch. The homestead, a shed, and a barn sat straight ahead, with another much newer, nicer, and bigger house to her right.