moving here permanently—if I can pull enough business together from my website and locally to make ends meet, that is.”
“And the second reason?”
She leaned closer and whispered in his ear, “The stork costume fit me.”
He chuckled at that. Then he asked about her family. “Ryan told me that you’re staying at your grandmother’s boardinghouse.”
She explained that she had two sisters, one of whom still lived in Bozeman, as did their mom and dad. “My other sister, Claire, her husband, Levi, and Bekka, their little girl, live here at the boardinghouse. Levi manages a furniture store in Kalispell and Claire is the boardinghouse cook.”
Carson listened to her ramble on. He really seemed to want to know everything about her. She found his interest flattering.
Maybe too flattering. Was she playing with fire?
Of course not. She’d met an interesting, attentive man, and she was enjoying his company.
Nothing wrong with that.
Eventually, they got up and each took a beer from the coolers. They visited with friends and family until the barbecue came off the smokers; then they sat together at a picnic table with Ryan and Kristen, Trey and Kayla. Tessa’s sister Claire and her husband, Levi, joined them, too.
Tessa was having a fabulous time.
Her original fears about Carson seemed so silly now. He liked her. She liked him.
It was a beautiful day, and she was spending it with a handsome, hunky guy. It would go nowhere, and she was happy with that. Before very long he would return to his glamorous life in LA. She would stay right here in Rust Creek Falls, enjoying her summer break and trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her life.
Later, as twilight fell, she and Carson got a blanket from his car. They spread the blanket on the grass, got comfortable and talked some more.
She confessed that she was kind of at a crossroads, trying to decide where to take her graphic design career. There was her nice, safe job in Bozeman and the growing business she was building through her website. “I kind of want to try leaving the Bozeman job and focusing on freelancing independently, but it’s tricky.”
He stuck his long legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles. “I thought you said you wanted to move here, to Rust Creek Falls.”
“I do, but that doesn’t really fit with my ambitions for work. I’m slowly accepting that eventually I need to choose between trying again for a more ambitious career and a move here.”
“Go big,” he suggested.
“And what, exactly, does that mean?”
He shrugged. “You need to be where the action is. Why don’t you move to LA?”
She set her hat on the blanket between them and stretched out on her back. Folding her hands on her stomach, she stared up at the darkening sky. “You weren’t listening to me.”
He leaned over her and touched her chin with a light brush of his finger, causing a bunch of small, winged creatures to take flight in her belly. “I would be there. To help you get settled.”
She tried to keep it light. “Oh, I just bet you would.”
“Can you dial back the sarcasm?” He held her eyes.
“Carson, you hardly know me.”
“And that’s my point. I want to know you better.”
There was a moment—a long, sweet one—when he gazed down at her and she looked up at him. The world seemed wide-open at that moment, bright and so beautiful, bursting with hope and limitless possibility.
He whispered, “It’s just a thought.”
“Don’t tempt me.” She meant it to sound teasing. Flirtatious. But somehow, it came out too soft. Too full of yearning.
But then the band started playing over by the portable dance floor beneath the warm glow of the party lights strung between the trees.
“Come on.” He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s dance.”
And they did dance. For over an hour, they never left the floor. He was more than a foot taller than her, but when he wrapped his big arms around her, it felt only...right. He knew the two-step and how to line dance.
When she told him she hadn’t expected an LA boy to know the cowboy dances, he laughed. “You oughta see my disco moves.”
“Okay, Carson. Now you’re starting to freak me out.”
Eventually, they got bottles of water from the coolers and returned to the blanket. Theirs was a great spot, out of the way of the action, shadowed and private, with only the thick swirl of the stars and the waning moon overhead for light.
They whispered together like a couple of bad children plotting insurrections against unwary adults. He told her that he’d been married to his high school sweetheart, Marianne. “Marianne wanted to start a family right away.”
“And you didn’t want kids, right?”
“Right. I realized I’d married too young. We divorced. She remarried a couple of years later. Her husband Greg’s a great guy. They have four kids.”
She stretched out on her back again and stared up at the stars. “So you’re saying she’s happy?”
“Very. I don’t see much of her anymore, but it’s good between us, you know? We’re past all the ugly stuff. She ended up finding just what she wanted.”
“And what about you?”
“I’m happy, too. I like my life. It’s all worked out fine.” He leaned over her, bending closer.
It just seemed so natural, so absolutely right, to offer her mouth to him, to welcome his kiss.
His lips settled over hers, light as a breath. They were every bit as soft and supple as they looked. She sighed in welcome as little prickles of pleasure danced through her, and she was glad, so glad, that she’d denied her silly fears and come to the park, after all. That she’d met this charming man and was sharing a great evening with him.
When he pulled back, his eyes were darker than ever. “What is it about you, Tessa? I can’t take my eyes off you. I feel like I’ve known you forever. And how come you taste so good?”
She laughed. “Oh, you silver-tongued devil, you.” She was trying to decide whether or not to kiss him again when a raspy throat-clearing sound came from a clump of bushes about ten feet away.
Tessa sat up. “What was that?”
Carson challenged, “Who’s there?”
Branches rustled—and an old man emerged from right out of the center of a big bush. He wore baggy black jeans, a frayed rope for a belt, battered lace-up work boots and the dingy top half of a union suit as a shirt. Bristly gray whiskers peppered his wattled cheeks. What was left of his hair stood up at all angles.
Tessa recognized him instantly. “Homer Gilmore, were you eavesdropping on us?”
Homer Gilmore blinked as though waking himself from a sound sleep—and then he grinned wide, showing crooked, yellowed teeth. “Well, if it ain’t little Tessa Strickland. Stayin’ at your grandma’s place for the summer?”
“Yes, I am. And you didn’t answer my question.”
Homer scratched his stubbly cheek. “Me? Eavesdropping?” He put on a hurt expression. “Tessa, you know me better than that.”
Beside her, Carson rose smoothly to his feet and held down a hand for her. She took it, and he pulled her up