From the dining room window inside her house, Jessie stood watching Henry and the mare. With her arms folded in front of her, she let out a small sigh and smiled.

CHAPTER 30

Henry had a hard time falling asleep that night. He had never really dated anybody but Annie, and even then, he couldn’t recall their first date. Everything he and Annie did together since they were kids always just seemed to happen naturally. Because of that, their dates never really felt like “dates.” They felt more like two really good friends spending time together. As a result, Henry never really knew what it felt like to be on a date, and specifically, he didn’t know what it was like to be on a first date. Still, if he had to guess, he thought being on a first date might feel real close to what he and Jessie had done that day.

And that’s what was keeping him awake. Henry had always admired Jessie. Since the first day they met he had seen in her something special. The way she so easily went from one small catastrophe on the ranch to another without so much as a blink of an eye, the way she handled the guests and employees, the way she was with the horses, and most of all, the kindness she showed him. Henry was finally realizing that ever since Annie and Josh died, part of him had died with them, and for the past seventeen years he had done everything he could to make sure that part of him stayed dead.

Yet, because of his time with Jessie, he was also starting to realize there was another part of him deep inside that was slowly waking. He was coming to understand that he was feeling different about her now—as though there might be more between them other than an employer/employee relationship. He wasn’t sure, and of course had no real way of knowing, but he felt Jessie might be looking at him differently, too.

He lay in bed, thinking about the poster he had seen in town advertising the Fourth of July dance, and struggled for hours whether or not he should ask her to go with him. The problem was, if he was wrong and she wasn’t feeling the same way about him that he was for her, it might make her feel bad or put her on the spot, and he didn’t want to do that. But most of all, he didn’t want to hurt the relationship they currently had by assuming there might be more to it. Yet, if he didn’t ask, he’d never know. It was a dilemma, all right.

Henry finally dozed off two hours before it was time to get up, having gotten no further in the process than when he had started it nearly eight hours before. When he woke, however, he decided he would see how the day went. If there came a time when it felt appropriate to ask Jessie to the dance, he would. If not, he wouldn’t…simple as that.