“Neither do I.”
“I know I want it.”
Nola looked toward him.
“What exactly are you asking?”
He swallowed.
“Stay through winter.”
She waited.
“That sounds like employment.”
“Then stay until spring.”
“Seasonal employment.”
He groaned.
Nola smiled.
“Try again.”
Garrick thought.
Then:
“Let me court you.”
There.
Simple.
Honest.
Nola’s smile disappeared because suddenly the moment mattered too much.
He continued:
“No promise.”
“No contract.”
“No obligation.”
“If you decide in a month that I’m impossible, leave.”
“You are impossible.”
“Then perhaps a week.”
She laughed.
He smiled.
“Is that a yes?”
Nola looked toward the packed bag.
Then toward the man who had met her at the stagecoach with disappointment written across his face.
The same man had cried beside his child.
Listened when she stopped him from violence.
Opened his dead wife’s ledgers.
Admitted when he was wrong.
Tried again.
Not perfectly.
Enough.
Nola walked toward him.
“Court me properly.”
His breath left.
“That’s yes?”
“It is instruction.”
He smiled.
Then leaned toward her.
Stopped.
Asked with his eyes.
Nola appreciated that.
She closed the distance.
The kiss was brief.
Soft.
Almost shy.
From the hallway came Clara’s voice.
“Finally.”
They jumped apart.
Eli appeared behind her.
“I told you.”
Weston pushed between them.
“Is Nola staying?”
Garrick looked toward her.
Nola sighed dramatically.
“For winter.”
Weston cheered.
Clara hugged her.
Eli tried to pretend he was too old.
Failed.
Garrick watched all of them.
The house became loud.
Nola thought she could learn to love the noise.
Courtship on a working ranch was not elegant.
Garrick brought flowers once.
Half were weeds.
One was a thistle.
Nola looked at the bouquet.
“Are you courting me or threatening me?”
He inspected it.
“I thought those were purple flowers.”
“They are technically flowers.”
“Then?”
“They stab.”
“Symbolic.”
She laughed.
He improved after that.
They took rides beyond the north pasture.
Ate bread and cheese beside the spring Crow had wanted so badly.
Garrick told her about Mae.
Not the illness.
Her life.
How she cheated at cards.
How she sang while cleaning tack.
How she once struck him with a broom because he entered through the window after forgetting his key and she thought he was a thief.
Nola laughed until she could barely breathe.
Garrick laughed too.
Each story returned Mae from patient to person.
That healed something no court could.
Then Nola told Garrick about herself.
Her father had died when she was sixteen.
Her mother two years later.
Debt consumed the small house they rented.
An engagement at twenty-one ended when the man discovered marrying Nola meant inheriting obligations rather than property.