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Kelly shook her head as well.

Once they were alone, Tate looked expectantly at her. “What?” she asked.

“I want to have a look at your plans or designs for the floral displays.”

“Oh, right.” She dug into her oversize purse and pulled out her tablet. She flipped the cover over and tapped her finger on the screen. Tate had a tablet as well—who didn’t these days? He mainly used it for tracking sugar levels in the peaches. How his father and his father before him had done things without the technology that fine-tuned the process these days always amazed Tate.

“Okay, so here’s what I was thinking we could do as everyone arrives on your property. We use your sign welcoming everyone to Prentice Peach Farms. Below that we have the Founders’ Day banner. On either side of the sign we have massive urns with red blooms. They’ll have to be changed out maybe once or twice during the festival, but that’s okay. With an order this big I’m sure my distributors will do a deal for me.”

She slid the tablet across the laminate tabletop. The colors were so vibrant he could almost smell the aroma of the flowers in the design. He noted that she highlighted the farm’s sign with rosettes of red and gold.

The urns, while large, didn’t look too ostentatious—if anything they enhanced the farm’s entryway.

He looked up at her, smiling big. “These are gorgeous, Kelly. I love the look of this whole design.”

“Does that mean I have your approval?” she teased him.

He laughed and relaxed a little. Perhaps he’d been making the whole floral arrangements around the farm into a bigger deal than it needed to be. “Yes, you do. But”—he halted her little dance of delight on her bench—“I still have the right to refuse if it’s too over the top.”

“Fair enough.” She inclined her head before smiling smugly. “But I don’t think you will. I can assure you that all my designs are as tasteful as this one.”

“Okay, Ms. Turner, dazzle me.”

Over the next twenty minutes, Kelly walked him through the vision she had for the farm. He noted that, as she said she would, she’d taken his suggestion and drawn a design of some of the peach trees with ribbons wrapped around the trunk. At the center of each tree was a rosette design like the one she’d put on the front sign.

Both of them barely acknowledged Norma returning with their desserts. They ate as they talked.

“You know what I think would look great?” Kelly gushed as she drew on the screen. “How about this?” She turned the screen back to him.

Yet again, her creativity surprised the hell out of him. She’d drawn a picture of a wooden cart filled with baskets of peaches and flowers. He could almost taste the sweetness of the peach juice as he bit into one.

“Okay, I like it, but where are you planning on placing that? We’re already tight on space at the farm as it is.” During the evening, they’d also come up with a rough plan of the layout of the vendors and where they would be.

“Oh, this wouldn’t be at the farm. This would be in the town center. Not that I think we need it, because everyone loves the Founders’ Day festival, but if we want to draw people passing by to stop and spend the day in Sweet Ridge, we need to tease and entice them. We can do that with this cart. We could get a couple of them and place them strategically on the road coming into town. They’ll see the beautiful peaches and flowers and won’t be able to resist finding out what is going on in Sweet Ridge.” She tapped the stylus pen against her lips. “I wonder if Grayson and Becca would be interested in showcasing some avocadoes as well. I’ll make a note to speak to them.”

As much as Tate was caught up in her excitement and he liked the idea, he wasn’t sure about the fact that he was going to have to use some of the peaches from his harvest for this display. Like anything, there were always peaches that didn’t make the grade, and usually he sent them to Betty Lou because she could use the slightly bruised fruit in her pies and donuts. No way would he put second rate fruit on display for all to see, though. Prentice Peach Farm’s reputation of producing the best peaches in Texas was something he was extremely proud of.

“Kel, before you go too far on this, if you’re talking about doing two or more carts, how many peaches do you think you’ll need?”

“Umm, I don’t know. We’ve got to make the displays big enough to see, so I’m thinking we’ll need a couple hundred or more.”

Tate sat back. Hmm, how to phrase his objection so he didn’t deflate Kelly’s excitement or send their relationship back to where it had been when he’d first sat down. Over the course of the evening, the tension and awkwardness that surrounded them had disappeared, and he liked to think they were moving forward in the manner where he may be able to ask Kelly out for a dinner date where they didn’t have to talk about Founders’ Day.

“That’s a lot of fruit.”

“Well, you have a lot of trees,” she teased.

“We do, but we supply a lot of places with our peaches. I have to allow for fruit that isn’t quite up to standard. There will be some fruit that will have been eaten by birds and other critters, no matter how many measures we put in to counteract those incidents. They still happen.” Tate looked over at her, noting the way her excitement had dimmed a little. He didn’t want to extinguish it completely. However, Kelly needed to know all the facets of what he had to deal with on a daily basis. “As careful as we are when harvesting, some fruit gets bruised or slightly damaged.”

“Well, we can use that,” Kelly interjected. “We’ll just turn it so that damaged part isn’t on display.”

Tate shook his head. “No, Kel, we can’t. I’m not prepared to risk the farm’s reputation for the sake of a display.”

He held his breath, waiting to see if she would argue with him, try to get her way. Convince him that they could make it work somehow. Instead, she nodded, and he relaxed his shoulders.

“Okay, I can understand that. I’ll see if I can come up with a different concept. I still think the carts on the side of the road are a good idea.”

“Thank you for being understanding. And I agree, I like the idea too. Maybe Macy can help you come up with something we can put in the carts. Of course, we have to get the carts to start off with.”