Page 8 of Hard to Love
Cal reached toward the chair on his other side.
It was like an old movie, flicking by shot by shot. Cal picking up a box. Gently setting it on the table. Slowly sliding it to rest in front of her.
No hurrying this moment.
Greer traced her fingers over the edges of the silver metal boot box. Other than a stitched leather medallion carved with the initialsPBCin the center, a matching pull strap on one side and two intricate hinges on the other, it was just a box. A box with her future inside.
The table was silent, and every other noise in the place seemed muted. Or maybe that was just the blood booming in Greer’s ears.
She looped a finger into the pull tab and hesitated.
“Greer,” her brother finally said. “You’re taking as long as you did that Christmas Mom and Dad bought you a Barbie head.”
She laughed at the memory. She’d wanted one of those mannequin heads so bad. Wanted to learn to apply makeup and fix hair. After all, Barbie’s golden ’do had been perfect, a direct contrast to Greer’s dark, wavy mess.
“This only happens once in a girl’s life.”
“Well,” Sawyer drawled in his smart-ass way, “I’ve heard of otherfirst timesthat were over faster than this.”
She shot him a raised-brow look.
He hurried to add, “Not that I would know anything about that. I like to take my time.”
Ty nodded toward his niece. “Do I have to remind y’all that little elephants have big ears?”
Sawyer held up his hands. “Boots, I was talking about boots.”
Greer and Sawyer had been buddies since he moved to Prophecy. Friends only, even though he was a charmer of the first water. People around town had often asked her why she and Sawyer weren’t dating. After all, they were around the same age, and the man was as attractively golden as the sunshine after three weeks of thunderstorms.
Her mind wandered back to Alex Villanueva and his dark, broody sensuality, and her excitable parts revved up in a way they never had when she thought about Sawyer.
Apparently, she just wasn’t a fair-weather gal.
But some woman would come along eventually and turn Sawyer into a mess of shuffling feet and tangled tongue.
And she was procrastinating by thinking about Sawyer’s future love life.
With a deep breath, she lifted the box’s lid. What was inside was obscured by PBC’s trademark metallic tissue paper. When she peeled it back, her heart expanded inside her chest so that it was pressing almost painfully againsther ribs. Her prophecy boots were made of three colors only—black, white, and red. This was it, her chance to touch them, interpret them, interpret her future. She lifted the right boot from the nest of tissue paper and felt…
Nothing.
Where was the jolt of energy that normally streamed through her when she touched a prophecy boot?
Today, with her boot cradled between her palms, all she felt was quality leather.
Still, they were beautiful. Intricate. Amazing. Black calfskin like her brother’s prophecy boots. But that’s where the similarity ended. Along the multi-curved scallop were small inlaid dice—six, with different numbers showing on each. Good Lord, inlaying those dots must’ve been a bear.
Curved pieces of pieces of leather wound around the front and back quarters. At first glance, a random swirl, but when she looked closer, the shapes became clearer. The four suits in a card deck—spades, clubs, diamonds, and hearts.
Dice and playing cards.
“Who…” Greer’s vocal cords mutinied, and she swallowed a few times to prod them back into service. “Who made them?”
With a gentle hand, Delaney reached over and touched Greer’s arm. “Your dad drew them and that’s what matters most. He saw them and put that design down on paper. I just helped finish what he’d started.”
She was right. It didn’t matter that Cal’s and Delaney’s boots were the last her dad had ever made. That he’d fought through the pain of his rheumatoid arthritis to guarantee they had a future together.
What mattered was these boots were crafted with loving intention and incredible skill and genuine love. Tearscrowded at the corners of Greer’s eyes, and she turned to Delaney. “They’re beautiful. It would have been the world’s loss if you’d left Prophecy and never come back.”
