“Don’t laugh,” he said. “I’m serious. It’s better to be overprepared than underprepared.”
“Caleb, I really don’t think crowd control will be a problem. Finding suitable homes for shelter pets has always been a challenge.”
“You never know. Your posters could change all that. People may flock to adopt a pet.”
“We should be so lucky. Speaking of posters, let’s go hang these and see if we can’t rustle up the need for crowd control.”
Caleb grinned and shook his head. “Okay, but I still say you need to plan for overflow.”
“Fine, fine, you win. I surrender. What do you suggest?”
“First, mark off a perimeter in the field around the shelter for extra space for parking.”
“Done. I’ll get on that as soon as I return home.”
“I can get one of my ranch hands to spray paint the grass where visitors are allowed to park if that helps.”
“Good idea. Sure. I’ll take all the help I can get.”
Ava thought about the small parking lot in front of the shelter. She’d never really considered it before, but the three parking spaces were pretty limited. Rarely did they have more than one or two potential adopters at a time, so they’d needed nothing bigger.
Caleb had a point. If even a few more cars showed up, there would be no place to park.
She tapped her chin. “You might be right. We need additional parking.”
To his credit, Caleb didn’t gloat, although she suspected he wanted to.
“Go ahead. Admit it,” she said, tucking the posters under her arm and hitting the ‘lock’ button on her car remote.
He backed out of the parking space and headed toward Kringle. “Admit what?”
“You were right, and I was wrong.”
“It’s not about right and wrong, Ava. It’s about having an effective event. That’s all I want. I’m not trying to tell you how to run your business.”
“Good.” She grinned.
They headed down the sidewalk together, a comfortable silence settling between them.
Caleb was one of the few people she could spend a chunk of time with and not feel compelled to chatter. His presence calmed her. Not only was she sexually attracted to him, but she genuinely liked him as a person, and she enjoyed being around him. He was the salt of the earth. A man you could count on.
She stopped at the crosswalk on the corner.
She pulled a staple gun and a roll of heavy-duty tape from her purse. “Which one do you want? Take your pick.”
“Look at you.” He laughed. “Planning ahead.”
“Watch out, Sutton,” she teased, shaking the tape roll in his face. “I’m not the same sweet little girl I was ten years ago.”
“You were never sweet.”
“Point made.” She waggled her head from side to side and sent him a comical grin.
He burst out laughing. “Heavens above, Ava,” he said, surprising them both. “I’ve missed you.”
Oh, Caleb, I’ve missed you too!
Since Kringle’s downtown wasn’t that big, it didn’t take long for them to work their way around the town square. All the local businesses that opened on Sunday agreed to let her put a poster in their windows. Ava noticed how store owners would eye her, then Caleb, and look back at her again. No one came right out and asked if they were a couple, but she knew the question lay on tips of tongues.
Caleb went into the ice cream parlor to put up a sign while Ava ambled through the door of the bakery, Kringle Kakes. The owner, Mike Honeycutt, greeted her with a great big smile. Mike had known both her and Caleb in high school, although he’d been a couple of years behind them.
“Hey, Ava, are you here to order a wedding cake?” Trust class clown Mike to be the first one to make a joke.
“Nooo,” she said. “I was thinking of ordering a funeral cake for you if you keep up this line of questioning.”
He laughed again. “I’m just messin’ with you.”
Ava stood in the middle of the bakery, holding the posters, her thoughts a jumbled mess. Marriage? To Caleb? She hadn’t been looking that far into the future. Marriage talk gave her the heebie-jeebies. Sure, she was glad to see Caleb again, and heartened that they were working through their past issues. She definitely wanted to date him. But marriage?
Well, that just felt too darn nice, didn’t it?
“Um, do you mind if I hang this poster in your window? It’s for an adoption event we’re having the day after the parade.”
“Home for the Holidays, I heard.” Mike grinned and wiped his hands on a kitchen towel. “Sure thing. Happy to help.”
She placed the sign in the window and headed for the door.
“Let me know when you want to put down a deposit on a wedding cake,” Mike called.
“You’ll be the last to know.” She chuckled to show she wasn’t the least bit thrown by his ribbing. “Thank you for letting me hang the poster.”
“No problem, Mrs. Sutton.” Mike chortled.
As the cowbell over the door jangled, Ava groaned. Welcome home to Kringle.
“Guess what,” she told Caleb when they reconvened at her car.
“What?”
“Apparently, we’re getting married.”
“No kidding.” He pushed his Stetson back on his forehead and propped the toe of his boot on the curb. “First I’m hearing of it.”
“Me too.”
He shook his head. “This town. You gotta love it.”
“All kidding aside,” Ava said. “We can’t let this town run our lives.”
“I agree completely.”
“I’m happy being home. Whenever you come into the room, I feel lighter, safer, but at the moment, I’m not interested in anything more than dating. Is that all right with you?”
He just looked at her for a long moment, and then said, “My thoughts precisely.”
“You agree?”
“We shouldn’t jump into anything. Let’s take things nice and slow. Test the waters. See if we really want to flame the embers.”
“Yes, yes, slow, slow,” she said, but her throat was scratchy, and her chest felt tight. Was she coming down with a cold?
Or could it be she was actually more into Caleb than he was into her?
“Hey,” he said. “I just remembered I have a can of orange spray paint in the back of my truck. What say I follow you back to the rescue and mark off the extra parking spots so that’s one more thing off your plate.”
“What?” she teased. “You don’t trust me to handle it?”
“Just an offer.” His shrug was casual, but the heat in his eyes was anything but.
“To go out your way for me? Why?”
“Peanut,” he said with complete sincerity. “I’d go to the ends of the earth for you.”
Caleb guided his truck behind Ava’s compact as they headed back to the rescue.
Something had changed with Ava while they’d been hanging up posters. Based on his own experience, he’d be willing to bet that people in town had asked her about them as a couple.
It had freaked her out a little. Heck, it had freaked him out a little too. It had devastated him when she’d broken off their engagement, and he really didn’t want to go through that again.