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“Sounds good. I’m at the coffee shop until three.”
She went into the house and found Max had already brushed his teeth and put himself to bed. She tucked him in, kissed his forehead then grabbed the load of laundry from the dryer and took the basket into the back room to check on Lorna.
“Nice shirt,” her sister said, taking a tiny onesie from the basket as Leni set it between them before dropping onto the edge of the sofa bed.
“Chevy’s dog bought it for me. Apparently, it came out of his treat budget since he stole mine the other day at the cabin.”
“Makes sense. Although,youshould have bought that dog a gift. From what you told me, him taking your shirt worked out quite well in your favor.”
“True,” she said, not able to keep the wicked grin from creasing her face.
“So, how’s it going with you two?”
“Good.” She let out a sigh as she folded one of Max’s shirts that had a Transformer on the front. “I told him I loved the shirt, then I almost told him that I lovedhimtoo.”
“Whoa. That’s big.Doyou love him? Like still? Or maybe again? Or were you just having a knee-jerk reaction to a hot make-out session followed by a cute cowboy giving you a gift?”
“I don’t know. I mean this shirt does inspire all kinds of romantic feelings,” she said, pulling out the front of the T-shirt. “But all this stuff, the making out, themore thanmaking out, the fun times we have together…I mean we rescued a cow and took an old lady out for ice cream today…how could Inotbe falling in love with him?”
“Oh honey, you might not be able to admit it to yourself, but I’m not sure you’ve everstoppedloving him.”
“I’m not sure about that either. But how do I know how much of my feelings are memories from before versus new feelings I have now?”
“What do you think?”
“I think that the boy I loved has seemed to have turned into an amazing man, and I can’t stop thinking about him.” She stacked another one of Max’s T-shirts onto his pile. “This whole day has just been crazy.”
“Morecrazy things happened beyond finding a cow in our backyard?”
“Oh yeah. This morning, I took donuts out to the Lassiter ranch to thank the guys for all their help, and when I ask Dodge where Chevy was, he told me that he’d been with Jolene all morning, and that they were still out in the barn together.”
“Jolene? The girl he left you for that summer after high school?” Lorna crushed the shirt she was folding in her fist. “He was seriously with another girl?Thismorning? I am going to kill him.”
“I thought that same thing. And then I found out Jolene wasn’t a girl?”
Lorna stopped crushing the shirt and tilted her head at Leni. “Huh?”
“She’s a horse. And according to Ford and Duke, a pretty good one.”
“Wait. Chevy broke up with you for ahorse? Like I said, I’m gonna kill him.”
Leni gently took the shirt from her sister like it was a loaded weapon. “That’s what I thought too. At first.” She filled her sister in on everything that had happened that day.
“Wow. You have had a crazy day,” Lorna said when she was done. “You had a lot to unpack there, sis.”
“There’s one more thing,” Leni said, her heart racing just thinking about it. “Just now, out by the truck…Chevy asked me to stay. Well, he didn’t ask me toexactly, but he said he didn’t want me to have any doubt that he wanted me to.”
Her sister’s eyes went wide. “Are you thinking of staying? Because you know you can totally have your old room back. Or we can turn the whole basement into a place for you. I’m just using it to store paper towels and mom’s old junk. We can paint it whatever color you want, and we’ll get the guys to move your bed and dresser. I know the bathroom down there is outdated, but we could paint the vanity and redo the tile in the shower ourselves. It can’t be that hard. And it would be fun to do it together.”
Leni held up her hand. “All right, slow down there, HGTV. Don’t start watching YouTube videos on how to tile a shower just yet. I committed to staying a few more weeks to help in the shop while your ankle heals, but I never said I was coming back for good. I never even considered it.”
“Until now?”
She sighed. “Yeah, until now.”
“What about the dream job you just took with NASA?”
Leni folded a pink onesie covered in hearts that read ‘Auntie’s Little Bestie’ and thought about how much she loved being with Max and Izzy and how the job at the space center in Texas would take her so far away from them. “Yeah, I guess I need to figure NASA out.”
