“She was my favorite teacher,” Connor told Dylan.
“I’ll bet.” He said it without thinking, a little more emphatically than necessary, and her eyes widened.
Connor asked, “How do you know her?”
“We met here a little while back,” Dylan replied, without quite being able to take his eyes off Paige. Again he imagined a boyfriend. Any moment, a man would probably come up and put a proprietary arm around her waist.
She said, “I’m kind of addicted to the pumpkin spice lattes here.”
“We’re going to pick our own pumpkins,” Noah told her. He was gazing up at her, clearly smitten.
“Wow. That sounds like so much fun!”
“It’s a place called Happy Harvest Farms,” Connor explained. “You can pick your own apples off the trees, and they have cider donuts.”
She nodded. “I’ve been meaning to go there! I tried to get someone to go with me, but they said no.”
“You should dump him,” Dylan said lightly.
Her cheeks flushed pink. “Oh, it wasn’t—it was my best friend. There’s no him.”
No boyfriend. She was single. This simple bit of information buzzed through him. She’d let him know that on purpose, too.
She turned to Connor again. “You know Miss Garza?”
Connor nodded. “I wanted to be in her class. But I got Mrs. Goff.” He made a face.
“Mrs. Goff is a good teacher, too,” Paige said in what sounded like an obligatory tone.
Connor shrugged, clearly unconvinced. “Why didn’t Miss Garza go with you?”
“I tried to talk her into going, but she’s very busy lately. She’s planning a wedding, and it’s very complicated.”
Connor screwed up his face. “Why?”
“Right now, they’re having some disagreements about flowers.” She cast an amused glance at Dylan.
He shook his head. “What a hassle. Everyone should just go to the courthouse.”
Her expression softened. “Oh, I don’t think that. I mean it doesn’t need to be big or expensive. At all. But it should be someplace special. Because finding someone you love enough to spend the rest of your life with, that’s amazing.”
“I—see what you’re saying.” He’d been talking to this girl for two minutes, and they were discussing true love. How did that happen?
She said with a laugh, “I didn’t mean to make a speech.”
Noah grabbed his wrist and tugged. “Let’s get apples!” Dylan didn’t blame him for being antsy. They’d been standing there in the middle of a coffee shop for a little while now.
“Have you ever had apples you picked yourself before?” she asked Noah. He shook his head. “They taste so much better than apples from the store.”
“You could go with us,” Connor said.
Awesome idea. Maybe having the boys around wasn’t so bad. He doubted she’d take them up on such a spontaneous suggestion, though, so he gave her a graceful out. “Miss Reynolds probably has other things she wants to do today. Though she’s definitely invited,” he added, as if that weren’t one-hundred-percent obvious.
“I’d love to,” she said, surprising him.
It took him a moment to remember it was his turn to talk again.
“Great! Uh, why don’t we give you a ride? We can drop you off back here later. That way we won’t get separated.” And that way, they’d have a lot more time to get to know one another.
“It’s better for the environment, too.”
“Yes, exactly.” That hadn’t been on his mind, but the fact that she thought of it pleased him. “Let’s go.”
“Did you want to get a coffee first?”
Right. He’d come here for coffee. In fact, until he’d seen her, he’d been pretty sure he couldn’t stay alert behind the wheel without it. He felt wide awake now, though, and his heart seemed to be beating at a brisk pace without the aid of caffeine. “Oh yeah, definitely. And I’ll get your PSE.”
“My what?”
“PSL,” he corrected himself. Pumpkin spice latte. He’d let a work term slip in there. She wanted coffee and whipped cream and spices, not a public sector enterprise. “Sit down, I’ll get in line.”
Smooth, he thought as he walked away. Get it together, Cain.
In the car, Paige chatted with the boys, and he and Paige talked, too. “A couple of months ago I ran a half marathon that went up this hill,” he commented at one point. “This was the last mile.” Was he trying to impress her? Of course he was.
She scrunched up her shoulders. “That’s thirteen miles, right? That hurts to even think about.”
Farther out in the country, they came upon a hand-painted wooden sign that read “Welcome to Happy Harvest Farms!” Apples and pumpkins with smiling faces surrounded the words.
Dylan found a place to park in the grassy fields that served as parking lots. From the backseat, Connor said, “Awww! There aren’t any apples on the trees.” As Dylan shut off the car, he looked in the direction of the boy’s gaze. Sure enough, the nearby line of trees held no fruit, although small piles of half-rotten apples lay in the grass beneath them.
Paige said, “I bet when we walk a little farther, we’ll find trees with lots of apples.”
He appreciated her optimism. He didn’t even care about the apple picking, but both Paige and his nephews apparently did, and he hoped he hadn’t devoted part of his day to something that would disappoint them. Okay, he was more concerned about Paige. If his nephews had been disappointed, he would’ve chalked it up to a lesson about how you didn’t always get what you want and then taken them bowling or something.
They walked up the hill toward a wooden building with a sign out on the front that read “Country Store.” On tables out in front, piles of apples, gourds, and vegetables gleamed in the sun. The smell of cider doughnuts filled the air. Inside the store, Dylan approached the woman behind the counter.
“Hi!” she said. “How can I help you?”
“How does this work? Picking apples.”
“You grab a basket there.” She pointed to where they were stacked in the corner. “We sell them by the peck, the half peck, or the quarter peck. You fill it up and bring it back here to pay.”
“What’s a peck?” Connor asked.
“Oh, it’s usually around thirty, thirty-five apples,” the woman said. “Here’s a map of our different varieties. The Red Delicious are pretty much gone.” She shrugged. “Though honestly, they’re my least favorite. We’ve still got everything else.”
Dylan thanked her and then studied the photocopied hand-drawn map. “What kind of apples do you want?” he asked Paige and the boys. “They’ve got Golden Delicious, Jonathan, McIntosh, Honeycrisp, Cortland, and Granny Smith.”
“What’s the difference?” Connor asked.
“I have no idea,” Dylan said. “Except I’m pretty sure Golden Delicious are yellow.”
“I like red,” Noah said.
“Tell you what,” Paige said. “Let’s get a few of all of them.”
Connor grabbed one of the