“You know, you’re an incredibly wise person,” Bella said softly.
“Nah, I’m just a dumb farm boy with a guitar,” he chuckled. “You’re the brilliant librarian.”
Farmboy…
Her stomach tied itself in a knot, and she felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over her head.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, it’s just a lot to take in.”
She started walking again, leaving him to catch up with her.
“Slow down,” he said. “We’re in no rush.”
“I don’t want Cody to get back before me,” she told him. “He was nervous about today.”
“Ah, I get it,” Cash said. “We can go a little faster, then. Though if they’re bottle-feeding calves, they’ll be a fewminutes. Mom will make them take turns, and they’ll want to play with the babies a little.”
Bella nodded, forcing herself to breathe. Her days of mourning over her onlineFarmboyshould be long over by now. People grew up, changed, matured. There was no reason to let the past keep its hold.
“This is me,” Cash said, rousing her from her thoughts.
He was pointing to a huge Victorian house that had been painted a dusky lavender color. It looked like something out of a dream, or one of the very expensive dollhouses she had mooned over as a little girl.
“You have a wholehousehere?” she asked him.
“Back in the day, all the Lawrences lived on the farm,” Cash said. “So the farm has a ton of houses, and my parents let us each choose one. I still can’t believe they kept this for me all these years. They could probably rent it out for a pretty penny, but instead they’ve kept it maintained just for me. I didn’t even know until I came back.”
She could hear the pain in his voice.
“You don’t talk to them much?” she asked.
“Not as much as I should,” he admitted. “I call every week or two, but I should have been here more. I should have been coming home a couple of times a year, at least. They need me.”
She could have told him that he had five other siblings who were around, and that his parents seemed to be very active and able-bodied.
But she knew that he didn’t mean they needed him on a practical level, at least not yet. They justneeded him. He was one of them and he shouldn’t have stayed away from the nest for so long.
“Well, you’re here now,” she told him. “And I can see how happy your mom is today.”
“That’s because of you and Cody,” Cash said as they stepped up onto the porch. “You want to come in for a second?”
It hit her that if she followed him, they would be truly alone in there, and she paused. When she glanced up at him, there was something dancing in his eyes, though it was hard to say exactly what. But she was more afraid of her own feelings.
“I’ll just stay out here,” Bella said lightly. “The view is so gorgeous.”
“Okay,” he said with a half-smile. “I’ll be right back.”
What was that smile about?
But there was no point trying to figure it out, so she went to the porch railing and looked out over the farm.
Bella loved Sugarville Grove at every time of year, but right now it was so beautiful that it made her ache. The sun was just beginning to set, and the snow was tinted peach and pale pink. The evergreens were frosted with pastel snow, and everything looked sosoft.
She wondered what it must have been like to grow up on this farm, with so much space around, and animals everywhere. She wasn’t a city girl, but she was a suburban one for sure.
Bella felt a pang of guilt at the thought of all the space and animals. Cody had let it slip recently that he really wanted a dog. But they had practically no space for a pet,and no time to spend with a bored, cooped-up dog, except at night and on the weekends.
