“For everyone? How do you do that when you don’t even know how many will be there or what they’d like?”

“Boxes of candy and tins of popcorn. Everyone likes that, and it’s fun to have a present,” she answered.

He tucked her hand in his and paced his step to match hers. Hooter stretched and followed five feet behind them. Blister had a sudden burst of energy and bounded off the porch to run ahead of them.

The spark that was between them hadn’t died, and that was saying a lot for Raylen, who had always been the love ’em and leave ’em type of cowboy. That old adage “out of sight, out of mind” did not apply when it came to Liz.

Which is not a good thing. Colleen whispered so clearly that he glanced over his shoulder to see if she was right behind him. You could get hurt really bad, my brother.

He squeezed Liz’s hand and swung her around to face him. “I’ve been putting hay in the barn all day and…”

She took two steps forward and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’ve been working around food all day, but I could use a long, passionate kiss.”

Her lips were like water to a man who’d walked thirty miles in the desert without a canteen. He couldn’t get enough of them. One long, steaming hot kiss led to another and then a dozen.

“If we don’t stop, these lights aren’t going to be working when your carnival family gets here, darlin’,” he whispered.

“Right now, I’m all for instant gratification,” she said.

“Me too, but when your family and friends arrive, I want everything to be perfect,” Raylen said.

And I’m not backing away because of something you said, Colleen, he thought.

They’d barely begun putting the lights on a piece when Liz’s phone rang. She checked Caller ID and answered it. “Hi, Blaze! You just wakin’ up? I’ve already put in a day at the… Oh my God! Blister, my cat, just ran down a field mouse and she’s eating it from the nose, yuck, to the tail and I can hear the bones crunching.”

Raylen looked up with a quizzical expression, removed his hat, and hung it on a snowman as he wiped away sweat again.

“It’s Blaze,” she said as if that was all the explanation he needed. Liz sat down on the ground beside the eight-foot-tall wooden Christmas tree. “Yes, I live in the country and yes, I really have a cat. I’ve told you that a million times, and yes, she is really eating a mouse right now. So how did your day go?”

Raylen couldn’t hear what Blaze said and didn’t want to. She could have said that she was working, that her brand-new boyfriend had come over to help her and that she’d talk to him later, but oh, no, she just sat down like she was going to talk for a whole hour and ignored Raylen.