“What if we’re miserable without each other?” Raylen asked.

“After this board, we can use the electric drill and it’ll go faster. I’m determined to figure out a way to build a ramp that won’t require teardown for next year. But right now, it’s got to be dismantled, or else we’d have to buy a forklift to get it from here to the semi.” Blaze stopped and checked the scratch on his hand. “You just think you know Liz. She’s like a sister to me.”

“I can see where that one would be a real problem, up underneath like that.” Raylen leaned into the job and the three-inch screw went right into place. “If you love Liz, then let her make her own decisions.”

“Liz is headstrong and—” He stopped in the middle of the sentence.

Raylen followed Blaze’s eyes to find his two sisters and Liz coming toward them. “Maybe they came to get a key from Liz so Colleen can see the house all lit up.”

When they were close enough, Liz gave Raylen a big hug and kissed him on the lips. “I’m going to show the girls the fortune wagon, and then we’re going to set up toys in the dart gallery. When you guys get this done, come and find us. We want the trial ride on the wheel.”

Blaze couldn’t take his eyes off Colleen. Standing, she was even more stunning than she’d been sitting down at the café. She was taller than Gemma but not by much, putting her at just the right height for him to walk beside comfortably with his arm around her shoulders. Kind of like how Raylen and Liz fit together. He shook that picture out of his mind. He didn’t want to like Raylen, and he didn’t want Liz to really fall for the cowboy even if he did know how to use a screwdriver. He wanted her to come back to the carnival, not put down any more roots in Ringgold.

“Well, guess we’d best get to work,” Raylen said hoarsely.

“Yep,” Blaze agreed, glad that Raylen couldn’t read his mind. If he’d known how Blaze was looking at his sister, he’d use that screwdriver in his hand for a lot more than putting a ramp together.

Chapter 18

Liz could hardly sleep on Wednesday night and awoke long before the alarm clock went off the next morning. Like every opening day for the carnival, her first thought was weather. She raised the blinds in her bedroom to nothing but darkness and groaned. The sun hadn’t even started to rise yet. She checked her laptop for the weather update to find that it hadn’t changed since the night before. Eighty percent chance of rain, cold front moving in, and enough wind to bring the chill factor down. Thursday night of a carnival was usually the slowest one. Friday night business picked up and Saturday night it was booming. The Bowie gig was always touch-and-go with the weather. It either rained and was so cold that only the brave at heart brought their whining children out to the carnival, or else it was unseasonably warm and everyone wanted one last fling before winter set in–feast or famine was what Tressa called it.