“She’s pretty tough,” Cricket said in a low voice. “I think she’ll be fine with whatever comes her way today. I heard you offer to take them to dinner with us. That was so sweet.”
“I’m a sweet guy,” he said with a smile, “who would be even sweeter if he could tell everyone that Cricket Lawson is his girlfriend.”
Cricket looked up at him with a twinkle in her eyes. “Really?”
“Never been more serious in my whole life,” he said. “I want us to be dating exclusively. I don’t want to share you with anyone else.”
“Yes!” she squealed. “Yes, I will be your girlfriend, and honey, after spending so much time with you this week, I don’t even want to date anyone else.”
He picked her up and swung her around until they were both dizzy. “I’m so happy that…” He stopped and kissed her. “There are no words, except that I think I’m falling in love with you.”
“Me too,” she said and wrapped her arms around his neck and tiptoed for another kiss. “And I love this feeling.”
Epilogue
Several weeks later.
Good morning,” Anna Grace called out as she came in the back door of the bookstore. “Looks like it’s going to be another hot one.”
Cricket looked up from her desk. “How was the honeymoon?”
“It was amazing.” Anna Grace smiled. “Mama called this morning and offered to give me my old job back, and Daddy wants to buy us a house right here in Bloom as a wedding gift.”
“And?” Cricket’s heart fell to her shoes. She didn’t want Anna Grace to leave the store. If Bryce hadn’t moved in with her the previous week, she would have been super lonely at the farm. Jennie Sue and Rick didn’t pop in as often now that gardening season was over.
“I told both of them no,” Anna Grace said. “I like it here, and we’ve found an old farmhouse on an acre of ground about halfway between Sweetwater and Bloom that we will be signing a contact on this week. It’s a lease-to-own thing, so that all the rent money goes toward buying it in three years. It will be a great place to raise the six kids we want to have.”
Instant relief washed over Cricket. “Have you seen the Bloom Weekly News? I picked one up off the newsstand on the way in today.” She flipped the newspaper to the society page and pointed. “Who would have thought we’d get our pictures in the paper in the same week?”
“Well, would you look at that.” Anna Grace smiled and read the first few lines of the article out loud: “Anna Grace Cramer of Bloom married Thomas Arrington Bluestone of Sweetwater in a private ceremony on the beach at Padre Island. Bluestone’s brother, Harry, served as best man. Cricket Lawson served as her friend’s bridesmaid…
“I told Mama if she didn’t put it in the paper exactly as I wrote it that she would never see her six grandkids.” Anna Grace laughed. “Besides, by now Lettie and Nadine have already spread the news. Folks just read the paper to be sure those two haven’t lost their touch.”
“Ain’t that the truth?” Cricket smiled and flipped the paper around so she could read: “Cricket Lawson and Bryce Walton have announced their engagement. They plan a December wedding right here in Bloom. Bryce is the owner of the Bloom Drug Store, and Cricket is the proprietor of the Sweet Seconds Book Store in Bloom…”
“One marriage, one engagement. Hopefully, by Christmas next year, there will be two baby announcements,” Anna Grace said.
“One marriage, one engagement, and one very good friendship that started most of it.” Cricket held up her coffee.
Anna Grace took a bottle of sweet tea from her purse and clinked it against Cricket’s cup. “May the friendship last forever!”
“Amen.” Cricket nodded.
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Read more about Cricket and her family in
Small Town Rumors
Keep reading for a peek at
Second Chance at Sunflower Ranch,
the first book in the Ryan family series.
Chapter One
Honey Grove billed itself as “The Sweetest Town in Texas.” Jesse Ryan certainly hadn’t agreed with that when growing up there, but as he drove back into town, he hoped things had changed in the past twenty years. The morning he had left—a lifetime ago—the sun had been low in the eastern sky. He’d hoped his best friend, Addy, would have at least shown up to wave goodbye, but she hadn’t. Jesse remembered all too well the lump in his throat that morning and the same feeling returned as he drove past the familiar sights in the small town.
He remembered how his mother, Pearl, had managed to hold back her tears until she had hugged him in front of the Air Force recruiter’s office in Paris, Texas. She had clung to him and wept on his shoulder.
“Mama, this is no different than if I was going to college,” he had said.
“It seems different to me.” She’d stepped back and looked at him like it was the last time she’d ever see him. “I love you, son.”
His father, Sonny, had kept a stiff upper lip, but had shaken his hand firmly. “This has always been your dream. Go make us proud.”
“Call and write when you can,” Pearl had whispered.
“I promise I will,” he had managed to get past the baseball-sized lump still in his throat. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
“We’ll look forward to that.” Sonny had grabbed him in a fierce hug.
Jesse had kept his promise and come home when he could, sometimes twice a year, but most of the time just around Thanksgiving so his team members with wives and kids could be with them at Christmas.
The sun peeked up over the horizon beyond the rolling hills of North Texas. That he had left at sunrise and was now coming home twenty years later at dawn seemed fitting. With the sun rising ahead of him, he was beginning a new chapter in his life—right back on Sunflower Ranch, where he’d grown up.
Not much had changed. The OPEN sign in the window of the same old doughnut shop that had been there forever flashed on just as he passed, and he was tempted to stop and buy a dozen to take home. But he forgot all about that when he saw a banner strung up across Main Street, announcing the Honey Grove Rodeo in a few weeks.
The banner wasn’t the same one that he’d seen in the rearview mirror when he left all those years ago, but it reminded him that not much ever changed in a small town. He made a left-hand turn at the first of two traffic lights, drove down the familiar road about three miles, and braked before he entered the ranch property. He rolled down the window of his pickup truck and inhaled the fresh country air. A south wind kicked up and caused the Sunflower Ranch sign above the cattleguard to squeak as it swung slowly back and forth on rusty hinges.
“First order of business after breakfast is to grease that sign,” Jesse said as he drove under the sign and down the long lane to the house. When he’d left, his two foster brothers, Lucas and Cody, had waved goodbye from the porch, but they weren’t there to greet him that morning. Cody was working for a program similar to Doctors Without Borders, and Lucas traveled all over the world training cutting horses.