been sitting there nodding your head and mindlessly answering me.”
“Um . . .”
He shook his head and walked over to the fence we had just finished repairing. “Do you see this fence?”
Okay, where is he going with this?
“Yes. I see the fence.”
“I might as well have been talking to it for the last hour. What in the world is weighing on your mind, son? You haven’t been yourself ever since you got back from Europe, and I swear if I didn’t know any better I’d say your favorite horse died this morning with the way you’re sulking.”
Jumping off the tailgate, I smiled. “I’m not sulking and nothing is wrong. I’m just tired I guess. Went out last night with a few friends.”
He lifted his brow and gave me that look when he doesn’t believe that line I’m feeding him. “Tired? Well you better snap the hell out of it.”
I gathered up the tools and put them in the bed of the truck before facing him and asking, “How did you know Mom was the one?”
He stopped and looked at me. It never failed, any time he talked about or thought of my mother his eyes lit up. With a chuckle, he shook his head as if lost in a memory.
“The first time I met your mother I wasn’t sure if I wanted to kiss her or strangle her.”
“That’s funny, Mom says the same thing about you.”
A roar of laughter escaped from his lips. “Yeah well, there was an attraction there from the very beginning. One I’d never felt before, so that was probably my first clue. Then my desire to protect her from everything and everyone was most likely the second clue.”
“You never felt that with any other girl besides Mom?”
He shrugged and replied, “I’m sure to some point, but with your mother everything was different. She consumed my every thought. One day it hit me how much I cared for her, but I was stupid.”
“What do you mean?”
“I pushed her away because I didn’t think I was good enough for her.”
My heart dropped as I listened to my father.
“She walked away from me and it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I knew in that moment, I wouldn’t ever be able to live without her. Life just wouldn’t be the same if she wasn’t by my side, so I went after her and told her how I felt.”
I reached for the fence pulls and sighed. “What if you feel all of that, but if you follow your heart, you risk making her unhappy?”
“How would you make her unhappy if you follow your heart and it leads you to love?”
“I don’t know, say she isn’t a country girl. She wants a life in the city, working and doing the whole corporate world thing. I mean, Mom already lived here.”
He leaned against the truck and studied me. “Talk to me, Jase.”
I dropped my head. “Shit,” I mumbled under my breath. “I messed up, Dad.”
“You messed up how?”
“Taylor. The first time I saw her it felt like the air around me changed. She smiled and I was lost in her eyes. I hadn’t ever seen a girl so beautiful before. Everything about her was perfect, especially the little dimple that only comes out when you really make her laugh. Every time I saw it I had to fight the urge to kiss her.”
Glancing over to my father, he smiled and motioned with his head for me to keep talking.
“I tried like hell to stay away from her.” With a chuckle, I looked at him and asked, “Do you remember when I went to Durango that summer?”
He nodded.
“She was there. I couldn’t believe it when she walked up to me and told me about some stupid bet she was in with her sister and friends. It was almost like a sign or something. Anyway, I ran into her one day back at school and ended up going back to her apartment. Things started to get a bit . . . heavy . . . but she stopped it and dropped the news on me that she was a virgin.”
“Oh God,” my father whispered. “Please tell me you didn’t?”
My father and I had always had such a close relationship. Finally being able to allow myself to talk to him about what was going on