started to fade too. Really, Judge just wanted a normal life. Average was fine by him.
“June’s not average,” he grumbled to himself, clicking away from the window where he coded the light show and over to social media.
Judge was fairly social, especially online, and he scrolled through a few posts from friends who’d already posted pictures of their Christmas morning. It was barely seven a.m., but Judge didn’t have little children excited to see what Santa Claus had brought them.
He smiled as he saw new skateboards and bicycles, video games and drones. Judge himself worked with a lot of drones around the ranch, and he loved flying model airplanes. His last one had crash-landed in some bushes out at the Cornish Plantation, and Judge hadn’t found time to rebuild it yet.
The light show consumed him from June to December. January was usually dedicated to taking down the decorations and properly storing them, so he only had a few months where he could dedicate his time to other hobbies.
His eyes caught on June’s name, and he stopped scrolling. “Best Christmas gift ever,” he read, his eyes skipping to the picture of her and her daughter, their faces pressed cheek-to-cheek. He pulled in a breath, because Juniper Nichols really was the most beautiful woman in the world. At least to Judge.
She had soft, wavy dirty blonde hair and the biggest, brownest eyes. Joy poured from her when she smiled, and she’d recently cut her hair barely long enough to keep it in a ponytail. This morning, it had been parted right above her left eye and fell in dark golden waves luscious enough to make Judge’s fingers curl into a fist.
She had black eyelash extensions that always made her look perfectly made up, and Judge sure liked how big her eyes were. She could devour a man with a single look. His heart pounded as he glanced at Lucy Mae, her sixteen-year-old daughter. She’d be seventeen in a couple of months, if Judge remembered right, and he did.
She had another year of school, and then Judge might have a chance with June. She’d told him she didn’t want to get involved with a man or remarried until Lucy Mae was graduated and gone to live her own life. Judge wasn’t sure what the difference was, because it wasn’t like Lucy Mae was never going to come back to Three Rivers to visit her mother. Either way, she’d have to make a family with whoever her mother started seeing.
He looked back to the text above the picture. “My baby announced that she completed her online classes and will graduate from high school a whole year early. She’s applying to colleges across the state, and she’s already gotten in to UT.”
There were multiple exclamation points, though June didn’t normally use such punctuation marks. Judge sat back from the computer, realizing he’d been leaning forward to read the screen faster.
His heartbeat boomed at him, saying things like a year early. Lucy Mae is going to be graduated and gone in only six months.
Six months.
Six. Months.
Judge’s hand flew out in the direction of his phone, and he hit it in his haste to pick it up. He had to talk to June right now.
He tapped, her texts always pinned to the top of his app, and the call connected. His brain fired at him, telling him the clock had barely ticked to seven, but he argued back that June had posted already this morning. She was obviously awake.
“And not answering,” he muttered, hating that her phone would tell her it was him calling. He didn’t want to think that he was one of the people she screened for.
He was just about to hang up when she said, “Good morning, Judge.” She sounded really happy, and his voice lodged in his head.
“June,” he managed to push through his narrow throat. He cleared things away and breathed. He’d been out with this woman before. He’d held her hand before. Heck, he’d kissed her before.
The fact that he wanted to do all of those things again made him very, very nervous. June had turned him down in the past, after she’d broken up with him, and Judge really didn’t need this to be his third strike.
He’d been playing things cool for months. Over a year. Maybe two years. Time had a way of flowing by him without him noticing, but he tuned in keenly when she said, “Merry Christmas. What are you doing during the storm?”
“Just hunkering down,” he