Page 94 of Risking it for the Cowboy
“Okay…” Her furrow deepened. “Want us to bring you dinner?”
“Y’all don’t have to do that.”
“We don’t mind,” she hurried, noticing him fidget.
“Are your band friends coming over tonight?” Daisy asked. “Can, can Creed and Calix”—Jack’s sons—“bring his tablet again? Can we bring Artex this time? I bet he’d like your yard. Or maybe we can finish the chicken coop? I can bring my tools. I’ll be a really good listener.”
Thaddeus’s face crumpled at the edge of worry in Daisy’s begging.
“Everything okay?” Charlie asked, that inkling growing stronger in his silence.
He kicked up his grin and squatted down. “Tell you what. Lemme finish my work for the day. I got somethin’ important to do first so if you come now, I’d be too busy to pay you and your momma any mind, and you’d be bored just sittin’ around. How’s about I throw some burgers on my grill this evening and we’ll put the wire up around the frame while your momma does her lesson plans?”
“Okay.” Daisy beamed, confidence restored even as Charlie’s worry grew.
“All right, then I’ll see you at dinner,” he said, and tousled her hair.
No … he wasn’t being cagey. He hadn’t planned for them to come over tonight.
Daisy, ever trusting, hugged him as he planted a kiss to her forehead.
But Charlie knew … when a guy acted like he was, he was hiding something. He’d just been confronted with something that he didn’t want her to know about and had been thrown off his game, trying to handle it. It was the same uneasiness she’d sensed in him when he’d ushered the girl off stage at the carnival, as if he’d been caught. It was the same uneasiness she’d sensed when she’d seen those posts from those girls on his band’s social media page, right there in public forums, some from women who’d clearly slept with him.
She’d been trying to quell the discomfort, telling herself he was different than Jason, but … Jason hadn’t started out mean. He’d started out as a huge flirt. As a guy who ate up the limelight. As a guy who thrived on his audience’s praise and basked in the benefits of it—
No, she ought to trust Thad. If Heart said he had a heart of gold, then it must be true. So far, she’d only been treated with a heart of gold.
“I get the sense you don’t want me to know about something,” Charlie hedged as he pushed back to standing.
He leaned down, planted a kiss to her lips more easily now. “Everything’s right as rain, baby, I just got hit with something I gotta deal with.”
“Okay.” She nodded, swallowing down the unease, and moments later, watched his taillights recede down the road.
She checked her phone. Three-thirty.
If she hurried to load up her laptop and coursework, they could get to the post office before it closed.
Clutching the rest of the mail stack, she smiled down at Daisy. “Wanna hit the post office with me?”
She tossed the mail on the passenger seat, starting the engine to crank the AC, let Artex jump in the back seat with Daisy, and raced inside to grab her satchel and books stacked on her kitchen table and … she smiled, her banjo case too.
Yeah, how could someone so reverent of her music and so honest about his want be doing something untrustworthy? This had to be her paranoia. Jason had made her see the worst in everyone else. She wouldn’t give this weird inkling any more thought until he actually did something untrustworthy.
But when she hoisted herself into the driver’s seat—
“Look, Momma, a letter for me!”
Daisy was leaning through the front seats, rifling through the mail.
Her school’s logo was on the upper corner. Oh God, her invitation to the daddy-daughter dance!
“Exciting! Let’s open it later, chica—”
But Daisy was already tearing it open.
Distract her. “Hey, Daisy, put your belt on. We can worry about the mail later…”
Daisy sat back and clipped on her belt, but she’d already slipped the card free. Charlie craned back to take it from her, when the pictures of an illustrated silhouette of a man in a suit dancing hand in hand with a little one in a dress, with stylized party bunting printed across the top, met her eyes.
