Page 54 of The Pumpkin Spice Romance
“More like I’ll be a nervous wreck in it,” Scarlett said, thinking of all the things that could go wrong when living on and amongst someone else’s property. “It sounds fancy. . .like, too high-end to touch anything or sit on the furniture.”
“I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised,” Noah cajoled. “And there’s no reason to borrow trouble. . . I doubt you’ll be all that rough on the decor.”
“Your lips to God’s ears,” Scarlett said.
“Amen,” he responded, although she hadn’t been praying.
Scarlett kept her thoughts to herself as Noah continued through town, passing small side streets filled with historic buildings, old-timey streetlamps, and impeccably manicured lawns.
Maybe it’s all a bizarre dream? An out-of-body experience?
This has to be what an alternate universe feels like.
“To our left is Malone’s Hardware & Lumber Yard, owned by Jinx Malone,” Noah explained a couple of miles outside of town, pointing to a brick structure with a metal roof, set off the highway a few hundred feet. “We’ll stop on our way back to town so you can meet him. I suspect he’ll offer the use of anything in his super-secret woodworking lair. Take him up on that offer; you’ll be glad you did.”
Scarlett made a mental note to ask Jinx if he might have a bench or even just a pile of old wood she could stack and secure for families to sit along. If she found a thrift shop, perhaps they’d have old blankets, afghans, or quilts to drape over the wood. Layers of fabric would add pops of color while adding comfort and warmth. Pumpkins would work well as weights to hold thelinens in place, and they had the added benefit of being easy to move and position for each unique portrait sitting.
Her mind spun like a Tilt-A-Whirl, circling around each backdrop and adding ideas to an ever-growing list ofmaybesandwhat-ifswhile simultaneously spinning up, down, and around the full scope of setting up the pumpkin patch. She’d only been to one carnival in her childhood. The amusement rides had evoked the same gut-curdling nausea she felt the longer her brain churned through a storm of creativewant-tos.
“You okay?” Noah asked, sequestering the grin reflected in his brown eyes. Somehow the shade, deep like dark chocolate, glistened. “You’re looking a little green around the gills.”
“I have a strong desire to puke,” she answered.
“Car sickness?”
“Life sickness, I think.”
Noah smiled as he slowed and turned off the highway. Scarlett detected indulgent understanding mixed with empathy and compassion in his expression. He slowed the truck and rolled down his window as they approached a massive entry gate flanked by two enormous oak trees.
He entered a code into the intercom box, and the pipe-fence gates opened. As though God Himself had rolled out a red carpet to celebrate their arrival, the brick drive led through a canopy of trees lining their path. Sun filtered through the leaves in every shade of gold, yellow, orange, and red. As they drove deeper into the trees’ tunnel, Scarlett imagined Peter, Susan,Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie’s first trip through the wardrobe and Harry, Ron, and Hermione stepping through Platform 9¾. Flames, dancing a frenzied jig over hot coals, couldn’t hold a candle to the aesthetic brilliance.
Scarlett’s photographer’s eye yearned to capture the moment. If anyone invented a method to bottle that radiance, they’d hold the world in the palm of their hand.
Before she’d hypothesized a way to accomplish it, the truck emerged, forcing Scarlett’s eyes to readjust to the onslaught of daylight.
My nerves are in shambles. . .waxing poetic about magical portals and personifying fire like cartoon characters on a Saturday morning kids’ show.
“Easy to see why people call this God’s country, isn’t it?”
Great, now Noah’s reading my mind.
“Itisbeautiful,” Scarlett admitted as they rounded a curve and topped a gentle hill of sparkling green and yellow, lush with native grasses. “I thought Oklahoma was flat plains and dusty red dirt.”
“A lot of it is,” Noah said. “But even those areas are their own kind of beautiful. And that red dirt is what makes our sunsets so luminescent.”
“Luminescent?” she questioned, raising an eyebrow at his dramatic hyperbole.
“That’s putting it lightly.”
“This might be my first time in Oklahoma, but I’m from Dallas, which is only three hours south,” she pointed out.
“Not the same,” he decried. “Trust me, you’ll want to have your camera ready this evening,” Noah promised.
“Well, that is why I’m here,” she said, half shrugging acceptance, half pursing her lips at his latesttrust me.
“And here we are,” Noah said, stopping the truck next to a rustic barn in the middle of level pasture with nothing more than a lean-to, a few scattered copses of trees, and a barbed wire fence.
Scarlett watched Noah get out of the truck and hustled to catch up as he began walking across the field.
