Going Once... by Raney Deborah

Author:Raney, Deborah [Raney, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Raney Day Press
Published: 2016-04-27T04:00:00+00:00

May

“How about we drive through the Dairy Barn and take our lunch to the park.”

Piper froze. They’d agreed on the cafe. She wasn’t prepared for a change of plans. But it was a beautiful day and the park was across the street from the sheriff’s office. “Okay. But we sit where people can see us.”

He laughed. “I’ll be a perfect gentleman.” He put his right hand over the heart as if he were going to spout the Pledge of Allegiance at any moment. “I promise.”

Piper tipped her head, studying him. His hair was longer than it’d been just two weeks ago at the auction. His tan deeper. He was working for a rancher in the Flint Hills, he said. Had bought a little rundown house on twenty acres and hoped to have his own ranch someday.

They’d had a very pleasant lunch at the cafe. Finn was easy to talk to, and in some strange way, she felt like she’d known him all her life. And somehow by the end of that first meal together, he’d charmed her into meeting him for lunch the first of every month—payday—with a check for one hundred dollars in hand.

She still wasn’t sure where she would get an extra hundred dollars a month, but she couldn’t let the clock go. It was a piece of her history. And her connection to Grampa. She would regret it for the rest of her life if she let it get away.

Even so, she’d refused to let Finn accept less than the full price he paid for the clock. “It may take me twenty-two payments, twenty-two months to pay it off,” she’d told him. “But I promise I’m good for it.”

He’d gotten a funny look on his face—like maybe he hadn’t done the math yet—but then he smiled. “I guarantee it won’t take that long.

“How can you make a guarantee like that?” she’d asked.

But he only smiled that charming, crooked smile, tipped his hat, and said, “See you next month.”

Now he was ordering lunch for two at the Dairy Barn drive-thru. She followed him in her car to the park where they straddled opposite benches of the picnic table closest to the sheriff’s office. While the spring breeze made the cottonwood leaves whisper overhead, they sipped cherry cokes and laughed and talked over double cheese bacon burgers. Then she handed over his check, and they both went back to work.

Only then did she realize Finn never had told her how he knew Grampa.

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