“Porter probably did,” Cole admitted, “but totally not the point. Who isn’t looking to live life to the fullest?”
“Just as long as that adventure doesn’t end the same way as it did with this cart,” she whispered, though she knew exactly what he was saying, and was feeling herself getting swept up in his intense expression as he watched her.
“I want to live that life with you,” he said.
“You… do?”
“Don’t you?” he asked.
She did, but still she hesitated. He wasn’t afraid that they were moving too fast? Normally, it was the other person’s job to object, not hers. But wasn’t that what sensible people like West did? “You’re not scared that I-I’m not everything you want me to be?”
“I’m not afraid when everything feels so right,” he said. “Are you?”
Not at all. Recklessly tossing aside any other considerations, she slid her arms under his and kissed him. He might’ve helped her reach him this time by scooping her up.
A part of her was very well aware of what kind of explosion happened when two wild, passionate souls like them found refuge in each other’s hearts. He was the intense one; she was the impulsive one, and she didn’t care what storm rained down on them! She welcomed it, welcomed the adventure, the hardship… and everything else that Cole was talking about when he’d had her touch that wagon wheel.
Her daddy was going to freak out! But this? His lips traveled over hers.Thiswas so worth it. She stepped down to the ground and slipped in the mud. Cole let out a surprised grunt, toppling backwards into the reeds. She eagerly followed him, crawling beside him and laughing down at his mud spattered face. The back of him was covered in it.
“What are you doing over there?” he asked. What did he mean? She held her hands up while he took her wrist. “Get over here.” He dragged her through the mud. Eva realized that they were both covered in the sludge again. Her dress wasn’t exactly the color of buttermilk anymore.
“Cole!” she cried. She took a handful of mud and ran it down his hair and neck, so that a brown puddle dribbled down his widow’s peak. He wasn’t about to be outdone. Grabbing her around the waist, he rolled her through another puddle. She screamed, finding whatever part of his body that happened to be clean of mud and fixing that for him.
She was aware that he was doing the same thing to her.
“You little dork!” she called out. “We look… uh…” like they’d been having a lot of fun. The evidence of it was all over them, and for a moment, she spared a pitying thought for West for what he’d think when he saw them… if hereallywas waiting for them at the homestead.
West wouldn’t really try to take her to her daddy, would he?
Almost as if thinking of someone else brought intruders, a voice broke through their solitude. “Eva!”
“West?” she whispered. Her back stiffened, and she raised her head, not that she could see through the reeds. They were too high. She sucked in her breath to shout back and got a hand over her mouth.
Cole sat up, his face alert. “That’s not West,” he hissed.
Her whole body tightened.
“Eva?” the man shouted out again. “I know you’re out here.” Cole’s pickup was just across the meadow. Anyone would know that if they weren’t in sight, they’d only be somewhere hidden in the swamp area. “Come out,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.”
She gulped.
A shot sounded through the air.
She’d left that shotgun by the fence! Had whoever followed them stolen that to use against them? Cole’s arms went around her. He brought her close. “Shhh.” His breath lifted her hair.
She listened to the heavy thudding of his heart. Her own was trying to lodge into her throat to choke her. Her stalker had found her, hadn’t he?
If he’d found her through Kylee’s TalkieTalk, the guy must’ve traveled all night to reach her. Eva dug into her pocket. She tugged out her phone to see if her stalker had written anything to her after her TalkieTalk.
He had. Plenty. She read the messages in succession:
“I’m almost there.”
“Nobody’s home?”
“Even more intriguing.”
“Where are you off to now, little girl?”