Page 32 of Cowboy Falling Hard

He was quiet for a moment, then he snorted a laugh. “I’m not used to people making jokes about my breakfast food and getting revenge.”

She almost put a hand over her mouth. Maybe she’d shocked him. That wasn’t exactly what she was going for. “I’m sorry. Are you still going to be able to eat?”

“Bacon?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not dead.”

“That’s a relief. I’m really not into zombies, although I do like graveyards.”

“You do? That sounds a little strange.”

“Not in any weird way, just because they’re usually peaceful. And I make up stories about the people who are buried there. Or maybe not even stories, just think that they used to be where I was, and I’m going to be where they are someday, and what do I want the time between where I am and where I’m going to be to look like. You know?”

“Talk about big picture thinking.”

“I know, right? Because then you set goals, and you need to come back down to earth to create the steps to make it to them.”

“Or just bulldoze your way through. Sometimes I do that.”

She didn’t say anything, because she was thinking that maybe that’s what he was doing whenever he was with her before. Just trying as hard as he could to get what he wanted.

She didn’t have to wonder long, because he spoke again. “Maybe that’s part of where I messed up with us before. I didn’t have a very good plan.”

She looked back at the bacon, using the fork to flip it over, careful not to splash the grease out. “If you want to get the full effect of your revenge, you might want to come over here and do this.”

“Pretty sure that was a sneaky way of you trying to get me to cook my own breakfast,” he said, even as he moved over and took the fork from her hand.

His fingers touched hers, and she almost forgot to let go of the fork. Forgot to laugh. And couldn’t think of a single smart thing to say in reply.

Instead, she looked up at him, laughter on her face, and something else, something new and fresh and tender weaving around her heart, and she supposed she was looking just to see if she could tell whether he was feeling that too.

Maybe. His eyes crinkled, laughter obvious, and she liked that. She liked a man who was happy, even at some crazy early hour in the morning. Liked a man who could make her laugh. Wanted to.

Would that last? Sometimes people went out of their way to make a good impression first, and then they forgot to take care of the people around them and went off, trying to make good impressions on everyone else and neglecting the people closest to them.

She thought of Mrs. Brown and her husband, the people they would see later. They barely spoke to each other, and she felt like that had happened to them. That it had become less important to them to take care of each other and more important to impress other people.

She was pretty sure they didn’t hate each other. They just acted like their spouse didn’t matter.

“What?” Dwight said, his own look mirroring the look that must have been on her face.

She almost didn’t tell him, and then she figured since he had asked, he must have been interested. “I was just thinking of the couple whose farm we’re going to go to today. And how maybe they started out really liking each other, making each other laugh in the morning, but now... I don’t want to gossip about them, but they just don’t seem to care about each other anymore. And I was just wondering...”

“If I would be that kind of person?” he supplied for her, but he seemed to feel uncomfortable doing it, like he might have been being presumptuous.

“And me. Just wondering what it takes to continue to respect the person you’re with. To put them first. To care how you treat them. How to know you’re getting that kind of person.”

“I guess you probably look at how a person treats their friends. Particularly their good friends or their best friends. If they take advantage of their friends and treat people they barely know better, they’ll probably do that to their spouse too.”

“That’s a good point. I suppose it’s similar to the idea where you’re supposed to look at how someone treats their mom or dad or siblings, and that’s how they’ll treat their spouse.”

She moved back so he could reach the skillet, checking to make sure it was turned down low.

She turned toward the refrigerator to grab some eggs.

“I think there’s a lot of truth to that.”