by Emmy Eugene
“I do like that potato salad…”
“Great,” Seth said, seeing his opportunity and seizing it. “It’s a date.”
Seth once again found himself in the canine enclosure before the sun had fully dawned over the Texas Hill Country. He worked quickly, because he would need a couple of hours for lunch. Russ had done all of his evening chores after Jenna had passed out in his arms, and Seth made a few fixes as he fed, watered, and checked on the dogs.
“See how we just walk along?” he asked the third dog as he walked the perimeter of the building. He had Dodger on a leash, and he never let the dog go ahead of him or Winner or Thunder.
Dodger had quite an anxious air about him, but he’d already calmed down, and Seth hadn’t even had him for more than twenty-four hours. The dog had done well in the kennel last night, with Winner right next door.
He started opening doors, and that brought out more dogs. Dodger tensed, but Seth snapped his fingers at him. “Lay down.” The dog did, and Seth let each dog come over and smell their new addition. Some of the friendlier dogs, the ones near the end of their time here at Canine Encounters with him, smiled and sniffed with wagging tails. Some didn’t come over at all.
Dodger handled them all like a champ, and he crouched down in front of the dog. “All right, buddy. You ready to be off the leash?” Seth wanted to see how the Akita would handle being out with the pack of dogs.
He unclipped the leach, and he held onto the collar. “Winner, Thunder, watch out for him, all right?” He stood and let go of the collar. The Akita barked and dashed off, more of a gallop than a run. A happy stride that looked a little like frolicking.
Though Seth had a ton of work to do, he took a moment to enjoy the dog’s joy at being allowed to socialize with other canines. The brown and white beagle that had been rescued from a canvas sack in the Chestnut River shied away from Dodger, a growl low in his throat. Seth didn’t try to correct Will—what he’d named the beagle. He had to work through his fear of other dogs on his own.
He did step closer to the beagle and said, “Easy,” to let him know Seth was there. Seth was in charge. He didn’t need to worry, because Seth wasn’t going to tie him in a bag and throw him into the river.
“Come on,” he said, and Will came over to him, his tail back up. “That’s right. Lay down, Will.”
The beagle did exactly what he said, and Seth let several seconds pass before he leaned down and clipped the leash to the dog’s collar. “All right. Let’s go meet Dodger.” He walked slowly, never letting the beagle think he even had a choice but to go with him.
He whistled, and Winner and Thunder came trotting over to him, which meant that almost every other dog did too, including Dodger. He said, “Yeet,” and eight of the dogs sat right down. He held up his fist and repeated the word, and the rest of them did.
Pride moved through him. He absolutely loved dogs and horses—all animals he could work with, talk to, train to do awesome things.
He looked down at Will, who’d also sat down. “All right,” he said, tugging on the leash to get Will back on his feet. He held his free hand out, palm down to keep the other dogs in place. Thunder actually laid down, his tongue panting out of his mouth.
Dodger wasn’t super happy to have Will come up to him and smell him, but the two dogs met well enough, both of their noses sniffing strong, and Seth removed the leash again. “Go on.” He yipped, and all the dogs got up and started about their usual business.
Seth drew in a deep breath and let it out. “Okay, guys, I have horses to feed.” He whistled again, this time two short sounds one right after the other. Winner rounded up Dodger, and they met him at the gate.
He stepped through and let the three dogs who should come with him follow him, and then he locked the gate behind him. He whistled as he walked over to the horse stables, and he hummed as he rinsed out troughs. By the time he was checking their feed bags and the legs on a couple of yearlings, he was full-blown singing.
He didn’t have the greatest voice on the planet, but he sure did like singing in the morning, the scent of fresh straw and horses surrounding him, his trusty companions going wherever he did.
Dodger did great, and Seth didn’t think he’d need to keep him longer than a week. He returned to the homestead once he’d put out to pasture any horses that were on the rotation to be in the fields.
“I can’t believe it’s still so hot,” he said to Travis, who stood in front of the freezer.
“Mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwich?” Travis extended one to Seth, who took it.
“Thanks.” He smiled at his brother. “So, what do you think about…you know. The money.”
“It’s wild,” Travis said. “I mean, I knew Mom came from the cosmetic Alameda’s. I guess I just never thought about them having so much money.”
“Beauty is a huge business,” Seth said.
“You looked that up on your phone.” Travis laughed, and Seth shrugged.
“I had some time at the hospital last night.”
“Yeah, how is Jenna?”
“Good, I think. I’m taking her lunch.” He tried not to sound too excited, but he wasn’t exactly sure what inflection he had put in his voice.
“Yeah? Are you goin’ into town to pick something up?”
“Yeah, you want something? I’m going to Krauss’s.”
“Definitely,” Travis said, unwrapping his ice cream sandwich. “I want their sausage plate with the German potato salad and fries.”
“All right,” he said, tipping his hat. “I’m going to check on the mowing schedule before I head in.”
“Oh, and we need to get down to the footbridge on the west side of the crops,” Travis added. “There was a bunch of debris that came downriver, and it’s damaged.”
Seth nodded, though he’d forget about the bridge if it wasn’t added to his digital to-do list. “Sounds good.”
He left the homestead, his nerves already vibrating throughout his whole body. He thought about kissing Jenna again, and he wondered what the chances of that were. By the time he had the food and was approaching Jenna’s front door, it felt like the sun had intensified its heat by at least a thousand degrees.
Standing on the front porch, with the bags of food in his hand, he did what he should’ve done last night. He rang the doorbell and waited.
Chapter Four
Jenna tugged on the bottom of her blouse, semi-embarrassed that she’d gotten so dressed up on her day off. Normally, she’d wear a pair of leggings and an oversized T-shirt, because she’d have time to work out and she saw no need to change after that.
She’d woke with a splitting headache and taken a bath along with a large dose of ibuprofen. She’d eaten a little bit so the pills wouldn’t upset her stomach too much, but she’d still felt jittery all morning.
The doorbell rang again, and she nearly bolted off the barstool, the way she’d shot off the starting line when she ran hurdles. She hurried through the house but managed to slow down before she yanked the door off the hinges in an attempt to get it open.
She breathed some calmness into her lungs and opened the door. Seth stood there, gorgeous as always, wearing that white cowboy hat and a smile that made her stomach betray her by squirming.
“Hey,” he said, holding up the bags he carried. “How’s your head?”
Instinctively, she reached up and touched the back of her head. “It’s okay right now.” She fell back a few steps, using the door as a support. “Come in.”
Seth ducked his head, his cowboy hat hiding his face but not before Jenna caught the beginnings of a smile. “Thanks.”
Jenna looked outside, noting how normal today seemed. The sky was blue. The grass in the front yard green. The faint rushing sound of the river in the distance. “Where are the dogs?” she asked. Seth never went anywhere without his dogs.
“I thought lunch could be dog-free,” he said, continuing into the kitchen. “Though I do have a behavior canine this week, and he’s
super sweet.”
“What’s his name?”
“Dodger,” Seth said. “You know, if you want a dog, I’ve got several almost ready for homes.”
“You always tell me that,” she said, grinning at him as she followed him into the kitchen. He set the bags of food on the island, and she stepped to his side. “But it would be World War Three here if I brought home a dog.”
“Where are Gypsy and Apples?” He glanced around as if the cats would come say hello.
“I keep telling you that cats and dogs are different,” Jenna said, reaching into the bags and pulling out the top Styrofoam container.
“I’m familiar with felines. We have loads of barn cats at the ranch,” he said.
“How many?” Jenna asked.
“I dunno.” Seth shrugged and removed the next container from the bag. “I haven’t counted them or anything.”
“That’s because you’ve probably never seen some of them,” she said, making her point. “Some cats just like their privacy.”
“Right,” he said, chuckling. “Some cats are just snobby.”
“Hey.” Jenna bumped him, clearly flirting with him. “I like my cats.”
He laughed, the sound rich and delicious, like her favorite hot chocolate. She suddenly had a craving for the stuff, and she turned to the cupboard behind her. “Coffee?” she asked, her voice a little too high. If Seth didn’t know what he did to her, he surely would by the end of this lunch.
She thought about the kiss they’d shared yesterday, and her face heated. She hated that he’d kissed her while she lay in a hospital bed, but she hadn’t hated the kiss. In fact, she’d liked it very much.
“Hot chocolate?” she added.
“It’s like, ninety-five degrees outside,” Seth said. “I’ll take iced tea if you have that.”
“What proper Texan doesn’t have sweet tea?” she asked, opening the fridge. She set the tea on the counter while he turned toward her. His eyes skated past hers, and she watched him open her cupboards and pull out plates.
“We can just eat out of the containers,” she said. “Less dishes.”
“Deal.”
“You want to sit in here or go out on the patio?”
He gave her a look out of the corner of his eye.
“What?”
“It’s hot outside, Jenn.”
“You’re such a baby,” she said. “Isaac and I have been working on the house, and we have a new, screened in patio that’s shady almost all the time and has misters.” She picked up her container of food and got a fork out of the silverware drawer. “I’m eating out there.”
She walked away from him, maybe adding an extra sway to her hips. She wasn’t sure, because she wasn’t super great at this flirting thing. Maybe with more practice she’d get better at it, but right now she wanted to disappear. Bask in her own humiliation.
Pressing her eyes closed in a long blink, she set her food on the table just outside the door and hit the switch that would turn on the fans, then the one that controlled the misters. She turned back and nearly ran into Seth.
“Oh.” She danced out of the way, and he moved onto the patio and put his food down too.
“Okay,” he said. “We need to talk.”
“Sweet tea,” she said, hurrying back into the house. She breathed in and out, and then grabbed a couple of cups and picked up the pitcher of tea. Back on the patio, she found Seth standing under the fans, looking up.
“This is awesome,” he said, glancing over his shoulder when she set the tea on the table. “I need this done at my place.”
“I’ll tell Isaac,” Jenna said, pulling out her chair and sitting down. She wanted to talk to Seth, but she was afraid of the topic.
He joined her, sitting with a sigh. “I’m sorry about the kiss, okay? I didn’t mean—I mean, I did mean to kiss you, but I didn’t mean to make things weird between us.”
Jenna opened her container and found her chicken fried steak with a kielbasa and German potato salad. A side of the vinegary cole slaw she loved made her mouth water. “Then why are you sorry?”
“I’m…not.”
Jenna looked at him, and she didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t entirely sorry he’d kissed her either. “Why did you come over last night?”
He took a bite of his Polish dog and nodded. After swallowing, he said, “I got the greatest news. Apparently, my mother is some sort of cosmetics heiress, and her sister bought out her share of the company.”
“Wow,” Jenna said. “Which cosmetics company?”
“Alameda?”
He said it like a question, which made Jenna smile. She nodded and forked another mouthful of her favorite food into her mouth. “I love this stuff,” she said, and he grinned at her. She swallowed and added, “And I know Alamdea.”
“Yeah, apparently they’re huge. My mother cashed out her shares and she gave me and each of my brothers part of it.”
“Wow.” Jenna watched him now, because he had suddenly come alive.
“Yeah,” he said, his whole face glowing. “And I want to revisit the Edible Neighborhood. I can fund it all now, but I can’t actually pull off the project without you.”
Surprise moved through Jenna. “You want to fund the whole project?” She stared at him even more closely now. “How much money did you get?”
He leaned back in his chair, though he still had plenty of food remaining. And Jenna had never seen Seth let food go to waste. “I don’t mind telling you,” he said. “But I don’t want anyone else to know.”
“Isaac?” Jenna asked, her curiosity raging through her.
“Fine, Isaac can know too.”
“I mean, we are neighbors,” she said. “I feel like it’s a given that we know each other’s gossip.” She smiled at him, wondering if her comment could be considered flirting.
Seth obviously thought so, because he chuckled. “Fair point. We each inherited two-point-six billion dollars.”
Jenna choked, sure she’d heard him wrong. “Two-point-what?”
Seth shook his head, such a handsome smile on his face. “You heard me.”
She looked at her food, trying to digest more than the fried food and sausage she’d just consumed. Her next-door neighbors were now billionaires. Big time billionaires, as three Johnson brothers shared the homestead. Almost eight billion dollars now resided across the river, and Jenna didn’t know how she felt about that.
She and Isaac had plenty of money for their needs, as they lived in this house for free. They both had full-time jobs, and Jenna also got alimony from her first husband. But they weren’t anywhere near billionaires. Or even millionaires.
Seth had started talking again, and Jenna clued in on the word “muscadines.”
“Oh, you and those muscadines,” she said. “Why can’t you just say grapes?” She laughed and shook her head, enjoying this quirk of Seth’s. In fact, lunch with one of her best friends sure was nice.
“Because they’re not grapes,” he said. “But we can plant those too.”
“Are you going to be the one to prune the muscadines?” she asked. “Remember how much work the Edible Neighborhood requires?”
“Yes,” he said, but Jenna didn’t think he did.
“Seth, I work twelve hours a day, and it’s not even my neighborhood.”
He blinked and looked at her. “So you’re out.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“And you only work twelve hours a day three days a week,” he said.
Sometimes she disliked that he knew her so well. “And you want to make it seven,” she said.
“No,” he said. “The Sabbath is a day of rest.” He cocked his head as if to say so there.
She rolled her eyes and stabbed her last piece of sausage. “So you want to call another meeting, is that it?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” he said. “What’s your schedule like?”
“Oh, ho,” she said. “I’m not sure you’re dragging me into this.”
&n
bsp; “Oh, ho,” he mimicked. “I so am.”
“Seth,” she whined, though she already knew she’d agree to meetings and community plantings and a schedule for wedding and pruning. She’d loved the idea of a community garden the moment she’d heard of it, and she’d been as disappointed as Seth when the concept had fizzled.
“I’ll do all the prep work,” he said quickly. “All you have to do is come to the meeting and charm everyone who lives on Victory Street.”
“Right,” she said dryly. “You’re the charming one.”
“You’re so wrong,” he said. “So text me your schedule, and I’ll set something up.” His phone chimed, and he glanced at it. “I have to go. I’m sorry. I have this horse that’s been sick, and I need to check on her.”
“It’s fine,” she said.
He smiled, closed the lid on his container of food, and got up. He swept a kiss along her forehead, said, “I’ll see you later, Jenn,” and went inside.
She sat on the patio, wondering when she and Seth had reached the point where he kissed her when he left. She wasn’t sure, and she didn’t know what they’d become. Still best friends? More than friends? Friends who’d accidentally kissed once?
She flinched when she heard the front door slam, and the back of her head pulsed with her heartbeat. “Time for more meds,” she told herself. “And a nap.” Maybe then she’d stop thinking about Seth as her boyfriend and the possibility of kissing him again.
Chapter Five
Seth didn’t stop moving until he got to the horse stables, back on the safety of his own property. Only then did he release the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
He wanted to spend more than an hour with Jenna, but he wasn’t sure how lunch would go, and he’d wanted to leave before the conversation stalled or things got too weird.
“Did you run out?” he asked himself. Maybe he had. The exit had felt fast to him, and Jenna hadn’t jumped at the chance to help with the Edible Neighborhood. “She will,” he told the horses as he started down the long row of stalls. Winner, Thunder, and Dodger came with him, the sound of panting and claws on concrete accompanying them.
