“Periwinkle. I’ve never seen eggs such a pretty color of periwinkle.”
“Haven’t you ever had an Easter egg?”
She chuckled as she swatted him. “I’m not talking about that, and you know it. It sure is pretty,” she said.
“Like you.”
She shied away from his compliment by dipping her head and the hesitant smile that pulled at her lips.
“So what about this color?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“What about it?”
She drew in a deep breath. “For your house, silly. Do you like this color?”
“It will remind me of you.”
Her bottom lip dropped open just a fraction making him want to bend his head and kiss her lips. He wanted to taste her. And more than that, he wanted to know if she’d respond to his touch.
“Is that a bad thing? I mean, I’ll be picking out the pieces for your house, but like everything else, you’ll know where it came from. It’s kind of hard for you not to think about Sweet Sensations when you look at them.”
“I already think about you, Tara. “
She suddenly looked uncomfortable, and Brody immediately regretted going too far. He didn’t want to ruin what he was feeling and what seemed to be flowing between them. He dragged his gaze away from her face and the torture he felt in holding himself back from touching her. He focused on the meadow and saw a butterfly.
“What about that?” he asked.
Tara turned her attention to the direction he was pointing. “You mean the butterfly? Or something else?”
“Do you know what kind of butterfly that is?”
She shook her head.
“Really? I figured you’d know. It’s the state butterfly. The Mourning Cloak.”
She frowned, crinkling her nose in the most adorable way. “We have a state butterfly?”
“Yes. Most states do.”
“How do you know that?”
Brody sighed, but kept his smile to keep things light. “I had a lot of time to read a while back.”
“Oh.” Tara continued to look at the butterfly that was now flying over a meadow of wildflowers. “Then I guess we’d better not let it get away.”
Laughing, she took off running through the meadow. Brody hadn’t seen the wildflowers blooming until they began to run. Tara moved faster than he had expected. He loved this sudden burst of joyfulness he saw in her. It was infinitely better than the pain he’d seen in her eyes in the past.
“Do you see it?” she asked. “It’s getting away.”
* * *
Tara raced through the field, feeling the laughter inside her bubble up in her chest until it was ready to explode. She could understand why Brody had chosen this spot to come to. It was vibrant with color of all kinds. Nature in its true perfection.
She looked over her shoulder to see if he was following her. Her excitement surged when she saw that he was closing in on her.
“It’s getting away. Hurry,” she called out.
He laughed. “There’s more than one butterfly in this field, Tara. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of things crawling around out here.”
She stopped in her tracks. “What are you saying?”
His expression collapsed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Oh, no, you don’t start something like that and not finish it. What are you telling me?”
He scratched the back of his neck and looked around at the distance they’d just run. “Maybe we should just go back to the truck.”
Her feet were still on the ground, what a miracle because normally something as simple as a spider would have her climbing a chair. There were no chairs in this meadow, but there was Brody and the thought had occurred for her to jump on his back just to get her feet out of the weeds.
She glanced around, imagining all kinds of things that she didn’t want to imagine. Creepy crawly things. She lived in Montana a long time. Practically her whole life. She knew there were insects that were native to any part of the country and people just got used to it. Her mother had told her that when that when they’d lived in the South for a short time. She didn’t remember living there, but she remembered her mother’s expression when she talked about scorpions and cockroaches that were so big she gave them names.
“I think I hate you right now,” she said, sprinting past Brody as she made her way back to the truck. She didn’t look down as she ran. She just moved quickly through the field. She wasn’t wearing boots. She was still wearing clothes she wore to work and those flat shoes she’d worried about getting dust on back at Brody’s house. It was way too easy for creepy crawlies to find their way inside her shoes. Thinking about it only made her mind go wild.
When she was nearly back to the dirt road, she heard Brody chuckle behind her.
“You’re a real jerk, you know that?”
“What? I’m not the one that ran off the trail towards the butterfly. Well, I did, but only after you did it. And I was smart enough to do it with boots.”
“I hope a spider crawled in your boots. How about that?”
He laughed louder. “You don’t want me to respond to that.”
“And don’t you dare blame this on me.”
“Blame what? Nothing’s happened to you. All you did was run across a beautiful field of wildflowers to chase a butterfly. I have to say you looked wonderful doing it.”
“Shut up!”
She didn’t want to laugh but she did. She refused to let him off the hook. It was easier to let him think she was angry or at least annoyed with him instead of letting him see how much she’d enjoyed their playfulness in the field.
When she reached the dirt road where the truck was parked, she slipped out of her shoes, putting her stocking feet on the dirt so she could empty out whatever might have fallen or crawled in her shoes. Then she bent over and started brushing the bottom of her pants.
Brody came up alongside her. “Find anything?”
“For your sake, you better hope I
