Her eyes tighten a little as she tilts her head. “Hmmm.”

“What?” I ask.

She leans back and taps her chin. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

“You know, I can’t remember.”

Crap. She’s on to me.

“Right.”

“Well, let me know how you want to handle all this. I’ll start lookin’ for a manager and some workers.”

There are a lot of kids who are trying to save, and this would be the perfect job for them. I hop up, knowing she’s about to pry into what I wanted to talk to her about when we sat. “I love you, Mama.”

“I love you, too, sugar.”

Phew, that was close.

I spend the rest of the day preparing the store before I have to start back at school. I put a few flyers outside to advertise that we are hiring and call the local paper so I can put an ad in tomorrow’s edition. Mama may drag her feet a little, but knowing her best friends are all pushing her, she won’t doddle too much and I can rest easier about the future.

It’s finally Friday. Trent has been messing with me all week about what we’re doing today. He’s been at his parents’ all morning, and I’m on pins and needles.

“Hi, darlin’.” My father says as I saddle Lightning.

“Hi, Daddy.”

I walk over and kiss his cheek before watching him shuffle over to his workbench and take a seat.

“You’re goin’ out on a ride?”

“Trent is supposed to be meeting me,” I explain.

He smiles. “I heard somethin’ about that. You women are more confusin’ than that confounded cube thing we used to try to make line up. Remember that?” I nod. “Damn thing made me so mad I peeled the stickers off and won. Anyway, so Trent is who you chose?”

“I think you knew I was going to choose him, didn’t you?”

“Did I ever tell you the story about how I decided I loved your Mama?”

“I’ve heard Mama’s version.” I abandon the leather straps I’m trying to tighten and move to where my dad sits.

“She don’t tell it right.” He waves his hand dismissively. “It wasn’t like one of those books she likes to read.”

My mother has always been creative in her storytelling. Daddy is always more realistic, but as a kid, I loved her version. It was filled with undeniable love and magic. Who the hell wouldn’t want that?

Maybe that’s my damn problem.

“We were only seventeen when we met, two weeks before my eighteenth. I just enlisted and was leaving in a month for basic. All I wanted to do was serve my country. Your granddaddy was a Marine, his daddy was a Marine, and by God, I was going to be, too. She was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen, and she was dating some idiot from another town.”

Here’s where my mother would tell me that he fell head over heels in love with her the second their eyes met. And he walked over to her, told her they were going to get married, and she was going to love him because he loved her already.

“I told her he was a fool, and if she would go on one date with me, I’d show her what a real man was like.”

“Daddy, you weren’t even a man yet.”

“Hush, darlin’. She didn’t know that.” I giggle and lean back, listening to my father tell his story. “Anyway, I couldn’t afford much, but I knew I needed to put my money where my mouth was. So, I worked a few extra hours for your grandpa and scraped together just enough for dinner and one rose.”

Trent exits from the shadows of the barn with a single rose. I stare with surprise as he steps in front of me and extends the flower. He doesn’t say a word as I watch him.

“Our dinner wasn’t much,” Daddy continues as if my boyfriend didn’t materialize out of thin air. “I found a basket in my kitchen and filled it with two sandwiches, a bottle of wine I stole from our liquor cabinet, and one piece of cake.”

Trent removes his other hand from behind his back and places the basket in front of me. Everything inside me tingles as I realize that Trent’s heard this story before and he planned this. All of it. He moves around behind me and pulls my back against his front.

Daddy touches my chin, forcing me to look back at him. “I saddled my horse and picked her up. I told her it would only take one night for her to see why I was worth the chance. Sure, I had no money, I was leavin’ in two weeks, and she didn’t know me. There was nothing I could offer her except my heart. That night, I decided I was going to love her. I was going to give her the best life I could.” His voice cracks on that last part. “I left her two weeks later, and I hurt her. I didn’t write like I promised. I didn’t go see her when I came home on leave like I told her I would. But she came to me, darlin’. She found me and forced me to see the mistake I was makin’. The right woman will always make her man see sense.” My father looks over at Trent and then back to me. “But it takes the right man to hold on to her once he finds her.”

Trent’s arms tighten around me, and he bends close to my ear, whispering, “I won’t always see sense. I won’t always do right, but I know you’re who I love, and I won’t be such an idiot again.”

I look at him over my shoulder with more tears falling. “I’ll make you see sense.”

He leans in and touches his lips to mine. “I’m countin’ on it.”

Daddy stands, shakes Trent’s hand, and then touches my cheek. “Love isn’t always easy, baby girl. It takes a lot of work. Sometimes it fails, and sometimes you have to let it go to get it back.”

“I love you, Daddy.”

He smiles at me. “I love you more.” Daddy turns to Trent, and his face grows serious. “I’m trustin’ you, son. Break her heart, and I don’t care what side of the law you’re on.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right now, you two go off on your ride, but let’s plan to go shootin’ this week.”

I watch the man I’ve admired my whole life walk away before I turn to Trent. “You planned all of this?”

He shifts me so we’re face to face, he wraps his arms around my waist, and I lean back. “Your father has told me that story so many times. When we’d go huntin’ he would ask me my intentions—a lot. I didn’t have any other than I knew I needed you in my life. I was content with how things were, and your father didn’t push me. But after Scarlett, he wanted more for you, and then shit changed. Your sister was killed, we lost the deputy a few towns over, and I felt like if I allowed myself to love you, I’d lose you.”

I cinch his arms tighter around me, feeling a bit silly for not realizing they would have actually talked while they were on all those hunting and fishing trips. I never knew that they talked like this. Not that Trent or my dad are big sharers about what they do when they hunt. Daddy took me one time, and he told me I could never go again. Apparently, talking while in the deer stand is not a good thing. Neither is eating, having to pee, singing, or any of the other things I did in the two hours we lasted out there.

“But then I lost you. I know we’ve had breaks before, but this was different. I knew I loved you years ago, but when you didn’t say it to me again, I let it go. I thought you knew and sayin’ it wasn’t going to make a difference.”

“You were wrong.”

“I know that now.” He kisses the top of my head. “My father laid into me after the wedding. He told me that no son of his would let the woman he loved walk away so easily.”

“I’ve always loved your dad. He’s a smart man.” I smile as I say it, and I know he can hear it in my voice.

“He’s raised three idiots.”

“I think you Hennington boys aren’t half bad,” I joke.

Macie and Rhett are the epitome of marriage and strength. They’ve been together as long as my parents and have had a lot of struggles, but he still looks at her as if she’s the sun. When we were kids, we’d walk in and they’d be kissing like teenagers. It was so weird back then, but as an adult, I can appreciate that level of love.

My parents are not too far off, they just bicker a lot more and there’s no such thing as public displays of affection. My mother always thought Macie was off her rocker for that.

“You ready?” he asks.

We get the basket secured to Lightning, and Trent grabs his horse from the trailer. “Hi, Montana,” I coo as I pet the side of his neck. “You’re such a handsome boy.”

“Quit makin’ him love you.”

“Aww are you jealous?” I tease.

“Nope. Not when I know who you’ll be ridin’ tonight.”

“Trent!” I look around, afraid my mother’s sonic hearing might have heard.

“Relax.” He smirks. “You all set?”

“I’m ready if you are.” I mount Lightning and we head off. The ride is nice, although the heat is freaking brutal. It’s almost eight, so it should keep cooling down, but it’s still sticky and gross. We set a slow pace to the spot we think of as our own, and I turn to him.

“How’s your daddy doin’?”