When an asshole cut her off, she smiled, sunny and sweet, enough to disarm the guy, and then she flipped him off before heading her own way.
“So, road rage with a little pizzazz?” he teased of her middle finger salute.
“Well, I’m a work in progress.”
He snickered. “I can dig that. Tell me about the event we’re going to tonight.” He just slid that in there, his assumption they’d be attending together.
She gave him some world-class side-eye though, which had him leaning back with a satisfied smile on his face. In some nearly perverse way, he absolutely got off on the idea that she would be a person who didn’t let him get away with things like pretending they already had a date without doing the work of asking.
“Would you like to come to the gallery tonight?” she asked, laughter in her voice. “Gregori will most likely be there with Wren. A few of the artists showing are friends of hers.”
“I should offer you an out here. Some sort of self-deprecating bit about how you don’t really have to ask me to go tonight. But I won’t. I want to be there. And not because I’m in the market for art.”
“You should always be in the market for art.” She said it like a mantra.
“Clearly I have a lot to learn.”
“Hmm,” was all she said for a moment. “Seems to me you know a lot of useful things. So you’re welcome to make me food, make me come and eat appetizers while looking at evocative artwork. But that’s a lot of Cora in one day. Just an advance warning.”
It would have been a lot of anyone in a day. Aside from a few very close friends, there wasn’t anyone he liked to spend a lot of one-on-one time with.
But he’d already accepted she was different than most other people. His reaction to her most definitely was unusual.
“I like a lot of Cora in my day. Come to think of it, why aren’t you at the gallery now? You strike me as the type who likes to manage closely to be sure things are perfect.”
“That’s the coolest way to be called a control freak ever.” She laughed. “I was there most of yesterday and into the night, and then back first thing this morning. And now it’ll marinate until later. If I hang out too much I start to pick my work apart, second-guess and redo stuff. Then everyone hates me and I do three times the work because, in the end, I go back to how I originally had it.”
She pulled into a patch of dirt that’d been transformed into a lot where people parked their cars to head out into the wide fields of pumpkins just beyond. “This is still early days for this patch. In two weeks or so, there’ll be ruts deep enough to make your teeth hurt when you drive over them.”
“It’s weird how cheerful this makes you.”
“I like knowing I made a good choice when I’m lucky enough to make one. You come early and you get the best pumpkins and avoid the worst of the crowds and traffic. This lot is the one we went to when I was a kid. Family owned. It always smells like mulling spices and kettle corn.”
And on that word salad, she hopped out of the truck, turning back to grab her camera. “It’s a little muddy, but not too bad. You don’t have to wear the boots if you don’t want to.”
* * *
BEING OUT THERE with the brilliant orange of pumpkins against the pale gold of the straw and hay bales all around, Cora let herself fully live in that precise moment. Happiness at being back home. Comfort in the familiar signs leading to the corn maze. The same goofy cutouts she and her siblings had stuck their faces in for the pictures their father had on his desk to that day. Butterflies and giddy delight in the birth of something new and delicious between her and Beau.
“So what’s the process then? Do we just pick one?” He looked dubiously at the big, flat-bottomed wagon she grabbed.
“They’re sold by the pound, so at the end we’ll come back and put them on those big scales over there.” She pointed. “As for one? Pah! I’m no amateur, Beau. I’ll get as many as it pleases me. I have a nice-sized porch so naturally I’ll need several for that. And whatever else that strikes my fancy. And my fancy is easily struck.”
He just shook his head as he looked out over the wide fields beyond, full of pumpkins ready for the grabbing before he took the handle of the wagon. “I’ll pull. Point me the way.”
It was early enough on a weekday that the patch wasn’t crowded at all, which didn’t stop a few people from nearly falling over themselves as they stared at Beau. It wasn’t even that they recognized him—at least not at first—but purely the fact that he was so beautiful.
Because he tried to ignore it, she did, as well. And it wasn’t like she didn’t totally understand everyone who gawked at him. She felt like gawking at him too.
“Is that weird for you?” Cora asked him as she began to think about just exactly what she wanted her porch to look like.
“Is what weird?”
“Being so handsome you literally make people halt in their tracks to stare at you.”
His surprised laughter rang out and made her smile in response.
Seeing the pumpkins for herself, she began to build a theme. She headed toward a group of tall, narrow ones. “Look at these bumps all over. I love that. Then I need squat ones. So they can group together.”
He bumped her aside with a hip and loaded the ones she pointed out onto the wagon. “Getting recognized is nice usually. People are respectful. But sometimes it’s invasive, offensive, scary even.”
“Oh, you mean like stalkers? Or people who don’t like the, uh, group you grew up in?” From everything she understood it was a cult. But it wasn’t relevant what she thought on that point. Not right then.
“Both.” He shrugged. “The people who were either part of my former church or who were wronged or hate groups like Road to Glory pop up less than they used to. New outrages I guess. New self-appointed prophets all too eager to drain people dry and ruin lives.”
“I’m sorry,” she said simply.
“I got away. Mostly. As far as being a celebrity and getting recognized, that’s complicated. It’s nice that people care. That’s why they watch my shows and buy my books. I like that. But some people have messed-up filters. Or they forget I’m a real person.” He turned to face her. “And sometimes it encroaches on my personal time. I want to be all about you right now, so I would be aggravated. Which is why I generally avoid eye contact if I get that buzz that they might think of intruding.”
Damn. “You make my stomach all floaty.”
He smirked. “Is that good?”
Cora nodded.
“All right then. What’s next?” He indicated the area all around them.
Cora considered following up but he clearly wanted to change the subject so she let him. She went to her toes, kissed him quickly and pointed. “Let’s head that way. I see some fat ones. I need fat ones.” Cora danced away, taking in deep gulps of the fresh air, happy with her life and the sight of one pumpkin with super deep grooves on it that she decided she had to have.
Each time she would pause to really examine a pumpkin, and then later the gourds, he patiently waited for her to do whatever she pleased. He never glanced at his phone. Never looked bored. In fact, he began to point out his own pumpkins, even grabbing a few he said he wanted to put in the windows of the apartment he was staying at.
He never complained about the weather, even after a light rain began to fall, or how heavy the wagon got once it was laden down with pumpkins. He didn’t bat an eye at how many she ended up buying and unloaded them all at her side, making her smile the whole time.
“So,