Page 53 of Ocotillo Kisses
“Maybe it isn’t,” he said. “But it makes all the difference to her. And to me.”
They drove in silence for a while, and Britt wondered if they were going to talk about the kiss last night, and his interaction with Poppy afterwards. She didn’t want to talk about it, but maybe they should.
“Did you hear anything from Poppy?”
“No, I didn’t think I would. Sofia let me know she got home okay.”
“That’s good. Again, I’m really sorry to be the cause of that.”
He turned his head to look at her then. “You didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do, Britt.”
She didn’t know why those words sent a shiver through her.
Con admitted to himself he expected shopping with Britt to be different. When they’d been kids, a trip to San Angelo had taken all day, stopping from store to store. But today, no, they went straight to get her phone, which the technician helped her update, then they went to the box store his mom had wanted to visit.
Okay, they took a little longer here, because Britt had a list from her grandmother, so she went off to fulfill it while Con stopped at the seasonal section and dutifully sent pictures of the available decorations to his mom. He added a note that she would have been disappointed by the limited selection. But she would have liked seeing everything else. They probably would have been here much longer with his mom.
Britt found him again, with a shopping cart half-full of linens and other household supplies, as well as a float for the pool. His heart gave a little twinge. He didn’t know why he thought she looked so out-of-place here. This would never be her life. She belonged in a city with high-end shops, where her heels wouldn’t be out of the ordinary among others who were wearing flip flops. And she deserved it. She’d worked for it.
It just hit home that they didn’t have a future, not one that kept her here.
“I think I got everything Grandma wanted. Did your mom like any of that?”
He reached over and pulled off a couple of banners. “She liked the wreaths but there aren’t enough of them for what she wanted.”
“Let’s get them, anyway, and see if we can find more online.” She motioned for him to add the items to the cart. “Anything else?”
“I can’t think of anything.” He stretched to pull the last wreath from its peg, and turned to her. “You ready?”
When she nodded, he motioned for her to lead the way.
“Did you decide where you want to eat?” he asked when he closed the lid to the truck bed after loading their purchases inside.
“Oh, I don’t care. Any place where we can sit down will be nice.” She pushed her hair back from her face and smiled up at him. “Maybe have a glass of wine.”
“Yeah, okay.” He thought about the steakhouse his dad used to like, the one Sofia said he made her take him after his treatment in the early days. The restaurant wouldn’t be up to Houston’s standards. The comparison would be all in his head, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“Wow, we didn’t have to come anywhere this nice,” she said when he parked in front of the stone-fronted building.
“Nah, it’s good, you’ll like it. My dad’s favorite place.”
“Oh.” She looked at him as she slid of out of the truck. “You going to be okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Feeling a little guilty because Mom would have liked it, too. She might have had a harder time, though, knowing it was Dad’s favorite place.”
“So who did he go with, then? She said she hadn’t been to town in years.”
“Business dinners, stuff like that.”
She nodded as he held the door for her.
“Do you do that, meet clients at business dinners?” she asked as they sat at a table in the dimly lit restaurant.
He shook his head. “Dad held onto that job until he couldn’t manage it anymore, and so far I’ve just had prospective clients come out to the ranch, like Wednesday and Thursday. I guess eventually I’ll have to. I just haven’t worked up to it yet.”
“Surely your dad wasn’t meeting clients when he was so sick.”
“No, we, ah, we hired an agent to take care of that while Dad was so sick, but I guess I’m more like my dad than I thought. I didn’t want to give that control up any longer than I had to.”
