Aloha Love by Yvonne Lehman

He wondered what kind of vehicles seven people would take for an outing in Texas. Of course, that would depend upon how they were dressed. Jane and their other guests were dressed for a semiformal dinner. “Or we could take a couple of surreys.”
    “No, the wagon’s perfect,” she said, and he believed she meant it, until she added, “If it’s not clean, we could sit on a bandana.” A trace of mischief was in her eyes.
    At that, a stable boy appeared from the passageway. “I cleaned it, Mr. Mak.”
    “I was kidding about the bandana,” she said. “Do I need to return it to you?”
    He reared back and stuck out his hands. “Oh, please don’t. I never want to see that again.”
    “I can hook up the fillies, Mr. Mak.”
    Mak nodded, aware that the stable boy—and Chico, too—probably strained to hear every word they spoke. Other than his mother, Jane was the only woman who had been in this carriage house and stable since Maylea. But they would see her ring, or he could tell them before anyone started rumors about anything possibly being personal.
    “I think they’d love riding in this and seeing the ranch. I know I will.”
    “It’s not too. . .rustic?”
    “It’s perfect.”
    Mak smiled and nodded to the stable boy, who struck off down the passageway toward the horses.
    Mak asked the reverend to sit up front with him and have the ladies ride in the seats behind them.
    Listening to the women talk and his mother describe certain sections, Mak felt he was really seeing his own ranch for the first time in a long time.
    He allowed the two dapple grays to trot-walk along acres and acres of green rolling fields, past grazing sheep and cattle. At one point, they stopped to watch a herd of wild mustangs disappear along the slope of a distant mountain.
    He heard his mother explaining about the bunkhouses, the many corrals, the small houses where some of the paniolos lived.
    Beyond that was endless acres of green merging with white wavy lines of tide rushing in and out from a royal blue sea that melted into a lighter blue sky dotted with a few wispy clouds.
    “My property ends here,” Mak explained, pointing to a fence. “That’s the beginning of a sugar plantation. All that is sugar cane. Belongs to friends of mine, the Honeycutts.”
    “Honeycutts?” Pilar said. “That must be where Susanne Honeycutt invited me to go on Sunday.”
    “I’m going, too,” Leia said.
    Mak heard his mother explain, “Leia’s grandparents on her mother’s side live at the plantation. But, Pilar, you must know Susanne from school.”
    “Yes, we’re both seniors.”
    “Well, Rose,” Matilda said. “Since our young girls will be away, why don’t you visit with me on Sunday?”
    “That would be perfect,” Rose said. “I’ll be at church.”
    They’d been gone for about thirty minutes. “I’ll take you back around a different way,” Mak told them.
    “I could go on forever,” Jane said. “This is the most beautiful countryside I’ve ever seen.”
    “We do still have a ride back to town, you know,” Russell reminded them.
    “Okay,” Jane said. “But if we’re going to head back, there’s something I have to do.” Mak stopped the horses when she began climbing over the seats.
    “Uncle Russell, change places with me, will you?”
    They managed to make the exchange, but Mak wasn’t about to sit anywhere but right beside her. He should have expected it when she reached over and clutched the reins. “It’s either this, or you walk home.”
    He handed over the reins.
    After a while, he quit watching her every move and even enjoyed the ride when she had the horses canter. When she had them come close to a gallop, he murmured, “Ump uh,” and she slowed them.
    He could not remember when someone else had given him a ride. He was always at the reins. All he needed to do was occasionally tell her the way to go until, in the far distance, his home rose like a man’s castle atop the gentle slope.
    Seeing it as