It had never worked on Keaton. She’d always stood out to him. A tranquil pool amidst the white-water rapids of the people around her. Her still waters ran deep and he found this endlessly fascinating.
Keaton put his mulling aside as he parked his truck beside the rambling single-story building that housed the Texas Cattleman’s Club and strolled toward the clubhouse’s front door. The interior decor was classic men’s club. Dark paneling, lots of leather chairs and the walls were lined with hunting trophies.
A few years earlier the club had opened its doors to a few women. This had caused a great deal of consternation in many of its members. They’d grumbled and fussed, but the women had remained and then proceeded to ruffle even more feathers by transforming the billiards room into an on-site day care.
Keaton had sat back and watched the entire drama unfold, saying little, but throwing his support toward the women. It was long past time the Texas Cattleman’s Club stepped into the twenty-first century. Watching Tyrone Taylor sputter in ineffectual annoyance had merely been a satisfying bonus.
The status update meeting had already begun when Keaton entered one of the private meeting rooms and took a seat in the back. President Gil Addison stood at the front of the room, running through the list of all the ongoing projects the members were in charge of.
“How are our tarp teams doing?” he asked Whit Daltry, owner of Daltry Property Management. His task had been to coordinate small groups of people to make sure damaged roofs were covered until repairs could be made.
“They were keeping up pretty well until the wind kicked up last week. At least we haven’t had much rain.”
A murmur of agreement went up around the room. Keaton nodded. He’d volunteered to coordinate the club’s efforts to clean up the demolished town hall and preserve whatever records hadn’t been damaged by the tornado. Much of the building’s rubble had been cleared and they were close to being able to get at the filing cabinets. Depending on the ability of the old cabinets to withstand a building coming down on them, it was going to be dicey getting the records out intact. For the last few weeks he was wishing he’d volunteered to head up the chainsaw team.
When they finished the official business and Gil concluded the meeting, Keaton waved at a few of the other members, but didn’t linger to chat with anyone. The meeting had run longer than he’d expected and he was late for an appointment with the acting mayor to discuss his concerns about moving the town’s records.
As he drove, his phone chimed and the truck’s electronic voice announced that he’d received a text from Lark. He listened as the message was read to him and then smiled. She’d sent him another of those artistic pictures of blissfully sleeping Grace dressed like a fairy amongst flowers or sailing in a boat. Lark used fabric to create the scene on the floor and then set Grace into the tableau.
At a stop sign, he checked the photo she’d sent him and chuckled at the sight of Grace as Rapunzel in her tower. Lark’s creativity surprised him over and over. If she wasn’t baking and decorating cakes, she was seeking other outlets for her rich imagination.
Suddenly he was glad she’d spent her entire life building a defense of invisibility. If she’d let more people see who she really was, she might have gotten married before Keaton wised up.
But despite the soul-stirring kisses they’d shared and her acknowledging a case of proximity lust, Keaton wasn’t sure she wanted him to stick around once Skye and/or Jake claimed Grace.
And not for the first time that uncertainty was accompanied by a heaviness in his chest and a weighty sense of dread.
Lark felt sluggish and dull as she left her car parked in the hospital’s employee lot and leaned into the chilly January wind on her way to the entrance. Grace had developed a case of the hiccups after her four o’clock feeding, and Lark hadn’t been able to get her back to sleep until almost six. By then it was only an hour until she had to get ready for work, so she’d decided to bake a batch of cinnamon rolls to share with her fellow nurses since Marsha wasn’t on duty and couldn’t complain about the treat.
It was her first day back since bringing Grace home, and already Lark could feel anxiety getting the better of her. Keaton would be annoyed if he suspected how she was feeling. They’d had several tense conversations regarding her reluctance to let him be fully in control. Well, today she didn’t have much choice.
Lark swung by the surgical floor to drop off half the cinnamon rolls for her former coworkers. Even if her stint in the ICU hadn’t been difficult and lonely, she would have missed the camaraderie she shared with Julie, Yvonne, Hazel and Penny. They were smart, hardworking women who functioned like a team and had little interest in hospital gossip.