Second Chance Ranch Chapter 15

Chapter FIFTEEN:

Kelly kept adjusting her jeans, then her shoes. She hated the jittery feeling coursing through her veins, along her skin, tightening her muscles. At the same time, it kept her hyper-aware of everything in the cab of Squire’s truck. He whistled along with the radio, seemingly without a care in the world.

“Heard anything from Texas A&M?” she asked just to get him to stop.

“I only applied three days ago.”

“You’ll get in,” she said.

“We’ll see. Where are you planning to live?” He pulled into Vince’s, and Kelly felt the burden of dozens of eyes. Watching. Staring. Judging.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t had any time to look for anything yet.” When he asked, she didn’t feel the same level of annoyance as when her mom had. No pressure, no defense needed to be played. He asked because he was curious or wanted to help, not because he wanted to tell all his friends at the salon.

They walked into Vince’s, and he chose a basket he could carry while she got a cart. “Gonna show me up with your muscles, huh?” she teased.

In response, he flexed for her, and she laughed. They meandered through the aisles, getting what their mothers wanted. Kelly noticed every glance that came their way, but she found she didn’t care. Let them talk, she thought. Heaven knew they already were.

“Ice cream?” the checker asked as she finished ringing up Squire’s groceries.

“Yes,” he said. “Two.” He handed over his money before Kelly could protest. She rang out next, and they stopped by the customer service counter to get their soft serves.

“I haven’t had one of these in ages,” she said after she’d gotten her chocolate and vanilla twist.

“You worked here. I would’ve gotten one at the end of every shift.” He’d gotten plain chocolate, and Kelly couldn’t help watching him carefully lick around his ice cream. She wondered what his mouth would feel like against hers.

She numbed her lips with a huge bite of ice cream, her synapses firing. Was she ready to start dating again? So soon? It would only take a single step, and she’d be on that path.

“My favorite kind of ice cream is Rocky Road, but they don’t serve that from a machine.” He stowed his groceries in the back of his truck and nodded toward the park. “You game for a walk?”

“Sure.” With her bags in the truck too, they headed across the street.

The conversation lulled, but the silence didn’t need to be stuffed with words. Just being with Squire felt natural, like she’d known him her whole life. Which, of course, she had known him her whole life. She’d been comfortable with him in high school too. But her feelings hadn’t been mixed up; her eyes hadn’t wandered his way; her mind hadn’t fantasized. As she walked next to him, she wondered if that would’ve changed if they’d gone to prom together. If she would’ve started dating him. If she would’ve stayed in town instead of leaving for college.

They bypassed the playground and the field where a few people were throwing Frisbees. As they moved into a more secluded area, her insides puddled like her ice cream. 

“Do you want more kids?” he asked, his voice quiet. Contemplative. 

Kelly looked over to him, her ice cream creating a cold space inside her body, which suddenly felt too warm. “Yes,” she said carefully. “I can’t imagine Finn as an only child.”

Squire nodded, his mouth twitching slightly. He kept licking his ice cream, and then he took a bite of the cone. 

“What about you?” she prompted when he didn’t say anything. He wasn’t anything like Taylor, and Kelly barely knew how to talk to him. Taylor would’ve filled the silence with words. With things about himself, a client, the newest book he was reading.

He was showy. Flashy. Loud.

Squire was the opposite of that. He took his time thinking through things, and he only said what absolutely had to be said. He reminded her of her daddy, and that made Kelly smile. 

She tried to imagine life with him, and it felt very much like…home.

“I love Three Rivers,” she said next, the silence starting to get to her. It’s so much better than California.”

“Is that right?”

She looked around at the tall, leafy trees. The roar of the traffic on Main Street had dulled the further they walked, but it still served to remind her that civilization existed nearby.

“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, the beach isn’t here, and I did love taking Finn to the beach.” She smiled at the memories of him yelling as he ran into the ocean. “But I love small-town life. I love that the ice cream is the same in the grocery store as it was a decade ago, when I first left town. I love that it feels like nothing has changed, and yet, it has.”

She didn’t know what she was trying to say, so she licked up a drip of her ice cream that had started to melt while she was talking.

“I love Three Rivers too,” he said, and that was all. “It was—and still is—a great place to grow up.” He hid his smile as he glanced down the path, which turned from sidewalk to dirt path. “There’s a well back there—or there used to be. Me and my friends used to toss all kinds of stuff into it.”

“A well?” She looked into the trees as if it might be right there. “I’ve never seen a well back there.” She’d been all over this park too. Without devices and cellphones growing up, her only options had been to ride her bike to her friends’ houses, and this park on the main drag of town had been a popular gathering place.

“Like the fountain?” Three Rivers boasted a pioneer fountain right in the middle of all the city and town government buildings, only about a block away. 

Maybe. Kelly felt turned around, and she circled three-hundred and sixty degrees, trying to get her bearings.

“Not the fountain.” Squire swallowed the last of his ice cream cone and turned a Cheshire cat face toward her. “Today is your lucky day.” He took her hand and stepped from sidewalk to dirt, taking Kelly with him.

She had the very real feeling she’d like to go anywhere he went, her smaller hand tucked securely into his. The problem was, he’d applied for veterinary school hundreds of miles away, in College Station. If he got in—and he was going to easily get in, if he was to be believed about his grades from his Bachelor’s program—he’d be leaving in just a couple of months.

They weren’t even dating.

Yet.

The word entered her mind, and while she tried to battle against it, she quickly realized that was a war she was going to lose. The man held her hand, and she held his back. 

The shade covered them both, the trees turning thicker around them, crowding closer to the path. Kelly fell into step beside him, the mischief from his grin infecting her mood too. “What? You threw quarters in and made wishes?”

He slid her a sideways glance that screamed dreamy. Oh, yes, they were only moments away from becoming something, and Kelly didn’t mind the thought of that. In fact, they might even be on their first date right now.

Or maybe the second, as he’d spent so much time at her house earlier this week, when Finn was sick. 

“Sometimes,” Squire admitted. “But mostly we threw in our old jerseys and shoes after football season. Sort of a rite of passage from one season to the next.”

They rounded a bend, the trees and bushes now effectively shielding them from the rest of the world. 

Squire’s step slowed; his hand in hers tightened as he squeezed. “I’m not your boss anymore.” The words seemed swallowed up in the leafy trees, or maybe his voice was just low and husky.

Her fingers relaxed, and she reveled in the warmth of his skin against hers. The sky shone a deeper blue. The trees whispered romantic advice. The birds quieted, as if they too sensed beginning a real relationship with Squire Ackerman would change any woman’s life.

“No,” she said. “I suppose you’re not.”

“I suppose that means if I ask you to dinner, you might say yes?” He met her eyes, something hot and chemical arcing between them.

Kelly put the last bite of her ice cream into her mouth. “I might,” she said airily.

He chuckled, but he didn’t ask her out. A slash of disappointment cut through Kelly, but she didn’t want to rush this moment. The air of Three Rivers spoke of the ability to take things slow, to really enjoy holding a man’s hand on a stroll through the park.

Squire paused, examined the thicker foliage back here, and then tugged her toward a side trail, barely wide enough for one person. “It’s down here.”

“No wonder I’ve never seen it.” She had to let go of his hand to navigate the steep terrain, stepping over fallen branches and tree roots as she tried to put her feet precisely where he put his.

His legs were longer, so Kelly couldn’t take quite the steps he could. But when he made it down first, he turned back to help her with the last few feet, which was a straight drop-off. She put both hands on his shoulders, and he put both his on her waist, lifting her down.

Tingles ran the length of her body, along her extremities and the outside of her legs. This man made her feel things she hadn’t in a really, really long time—even when she’d been married. 

Had part of her known Taylor didn’t really love her? The thought rang true, and Kelly had really been trying to pay attention to the quiet affirmations of the Lord. In Three Rivers, it was far easier to do that than in San Diego.

Once on her feet, with Squire’s hands gone, she experienced a sense of loss she didn’t understand. Along with the rush in her stomach, the electricity in her bloodstream, and the swooping of birds in her chest, she simply felt…whole when he touched her.

Tucked against the incline they’d just come down, sat a well. Old, with the stones crumbling, it possessed a charm that gave Squire a run for his money. 

He held out a quarter, that smile oh-so-handsome, and she plucked it from his fingers. 

“What did you wish for, usually?” She strolled over to the well, allowing the swell of magic that came from wishing to encompass her. 

“I can’t tell you that.” He joined her, his chest pressing into her back and igniting everything inside her again. “Don’t you know you don’t tell other people about your wishes?”

“Mm, I guess.” The air smelled a bit mossy, definitely damp, and Kelly closed her eyes and tossed in her coin.

Seconds later, Squire threw in his quarter as well. The coins hit water with soft plink, plink sounds, and Kelly couldn’t help smiling with everything she had.

She’d been so nervous when she’d left her house with her mother’s grocery list. All of that had fled, replaced by only magic and comfort and the very real possibility of falling in love again.

Squire’s eyes met hers, and for the first time in a long time she felt as alive as he looked.

He closed the distance between them, effortlessly taking her in his arms. “Kelly,” he murmured, almost a question but not quite.

She wrapped her arms around his strong back. She was safe; secure; home. “Hmm?”

His answer came as he brushed his lips against her temple. The birds in her chest rioted, pushing her pulse into the rapid beating of wings.

“What do you think about me and you goin’ to dinner? Want to try to make it happen one day next week?”

“Yes,” she whispered. 

“Finn can come.”

She kept her eyes closed, listening to the sound of her own pulse as it mingled with his breath. “He doesn’t have to.”

“I’ll need time with him too,” he murmured.

Kelly pulled back slightly and looked up at him. “You’ve had time with him. He adores you.”

“Not as a friend,” he clarified. “Or a good guy. But as his…daddy.” 

Kelly swallowed, her mind suddenly off to the races. Squire kept her right inside the circle of his arms. “How involved do you think your ex will be?” He leaned closer and took a deep breath of her hair. “If you stay here in Texas, and he stays in California.”

Her voice emerged as she said, “He won’t be involved at all.”

“Then that boy needs a father,” Squire said. “That takes time.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, wishing time was the one thing that wasn’t against them. Helplessness began to crowd its way up her throat, but Kelly pushed against it mentally, emotionally, and by swallowing again. If she and Squire were meant to be, the Lord would open a path for them. 

Most of the summer remained, and Kelly knew a lot could happen in a short amount of time. Heck, people met and fell in love in days or weeks. Some experienced love at first sight.

Squire began to sway, almost in time with the breeze lilting through the trees. This deep in the park, the rush of traffic couldn’t be heard, creating the perfect bubble of privacy and bliss. 

“Can I kiss you, darlin’?” he whispered.

“I wished you would.” The words flew from her mouth before she could censor them. Her pulse picked up a beat, then another as he pulled his face away from hers slightly.

His gaze met hers, something dancing in those blue eyes. “We wished for the same thing, then.” He leaned down, his expression—his very being—sparking with the hope of a second chance. 

The first touch of his lips to hers made her world stutter, stop, spin spin spin. She lost herself in the kiss, in Squire’s touch, in the easiness of being with him.

And Chelsea was right.

Squire was nothing like Taylor. Everything he did was vastly superior, and Kelly knew she’d be ruined for life. Every kiss would be compared to this one, and none would ever be this spectacular.

* * *

“You know, I didn’t want to come back to Three Rivers,” she told him as they picked their way back to the park.

Still on the dirt path, his hand secured in hers, he lifted his eyebrows. “Oh?”

“No, I didn’t think it was the best place to get a job. I mean, it’s a small town in the Texas Panhandle. Lots of shops are still Mom-and-Pop operations. Who was going to hire an accountant?” She glanced at him, hoping for a reaction. He’d gone completely silent, almost into Army-mode. 

In fact, Major Ackerman stared straight ahead.

“A bigger city would’ve been a wiser choice,” she continued, unable to stop herself. “But my mom insisted. She said we could live here for a few months just to catch our breath. And then the job at the ranch came up.” She wasn’t sure why she was telling him this.

He finally squeezed her fingers. “I’m glad you came back.”

Her heart slipped through the cracks between her ribs and landed in her shoes. She realized she was hinting that she could come to A&M with him. She’d have a good chance at finding a job in a city the size of College Station. Then she wouldn’t have to live five hundred miles away while he completed his medical degree.

She said nothing, though. The magic of the kiss by the wishing well faded as they stepped from dirt to cement, and the fact that Squire would be leaving town soon hit her in the chest like a wheelbarrow full of bricks. 

Had he felt his pulse in every appendage when she’d left? How had he managed to put his organs back where they belonged? Kelly felt scrambled up inside, a tangled mess she couldn’t unravel.

“Kel?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

He lifted their joined hands a fraction of an inch. “This okay in public?” His bright blue eyes danced with hope.

Kelly warred with herself. She wanted to announce their relationship to the world. But she preferred to do it from another city—like College Station—so she didn’t have to endure the questions, the sideways glances, the gossip in the diner, the grocery store, and the salon.

He let go of her hand, the light in his eyes dimming even though his lips twitched upward. “Okay. Later.” He moved, much quicker now, down the sidewalk.

She hurried to catch him but didn’t reach for his hand. “Squire,” she said. “What are we doing?” She needed to know. If she could plan, maybe she could take the next step.

“Walking in the park.” He pushed his cowboy hat lower to cover his eyes, a fact she greatly disliked.

“No.” She pulled on his elbow to get him to stop. “I mean, us.” She gestured back in the general direction of the well. “That.” She breathed like she’d been underwater for too long, her chest so, so tight. 

“I mean, I liked that.” She studied her sandals next to his cowboy boots. “I like you. But it feels like maybe we need to…label some things.”

His eyebrows went up. “You want a label?”

“And talk about you leaving town.” She gave him her best Mom-stern-look, hoping he’d get her drift.

“Ah, okay.” He cupped her face with his right hand, the warmth of it seeping straight into her skin. He searched her eyes, and while she didn’t know what answers he found, she couldn’t ask because his phone broke into their lives with a loud buzz.

“We’ll work it out.” He pulled his cell from his pocket, frowning as he read the incoming message. “I need to get back to the ranch.” He kissed her again, quick and without the same careful passion as at the well, barely a meeting of mouths. She clutched the disappointment at such a short union, and then released it.

“I’m sorry. I have to go.”

She wasn’t sure if he just meant for the day, or if he meant forever. She didn’t know what the text said. But she did know that it felt like he was running away. Even though he’d said they’d work things out, all she saw was his retreating back.