“Alright. Thanks. Don’t do anything for now, but if you think of anything else, let me know.”
“I’ll do that.”
They hung up.
On his end, Ryder had already decided he’d rather be with Nell. After they spent the full year required for his inheritance, they could live half the year in North Dakota, half in New York. If she hated the social aspect, they wouldn’t go out. If she wasn’t good at entertaining and making the social rounds, he wouldn’t care.
He could make it work. He’d go to functions by himself. He’d send someone else. They’d skip them altogether. Whatever.
But he needed to figure out something with Vinton. If Nell were willing to allow her sisters to use her the way they did for the boy’s sake, he couldn’t ask her to leave her brother for him.
He was that close to being able to choose Nell at the masked ball. He had to figure something out.
TWO NIGHTS BEFORE THE ball, he hadn’t figured anything out. He’d spent some hairy moments waiting for business deals to come to fruition. He’d been in some tight spots and had some close calls with fulfilling contracts and delivering goods.
But he’d never had this much, personally, at stake.
He and Nell had spoken together every evening they’d been at the ranch since she’d come home with Will, and they’d already spoken tonight, but he was restless and couldn’t sleep. He walked around the house, through the designs, fountains, walks, and arbors that had been built especially for the ball. Roxie had done an amazing job. It truly would look like a fairy tale come to life. Not that he cared about such things, but Roxie had accomplished what she’d set out to do.
He went to where Nell’s Blue Girl rose bloomed in amazing profusion in the center of a circular bench, surrounded by a beautiful circular walk. An arbor on both sides made for a bit of privacy while still being close to the house. Low lights around the edges of the pavers provided plenty of light to see to walk, but the air was still sweetly dim and romantic.
He wished he could talk to Nell. Talk to her and not have to worry about someone seeing them.
As though he’d conjured her up, a figure stole out of the house.
“Ryder? Is that you?” She wore a flowing light blue sundress with a sweater and almost looked like an angel.
“Nell. How’d you know I was thinking about you?”
“I didn’t. But I saw you walk across the driveway through my window.”
“You can’t sleep either?”
“No.”
“Take a ride with me.”
“Okay.” She didn’t hesitate.
He grinned, grabbing her hand. It was cool in his, although now, after six weeks on the ranch, his callouses matched hers. “Come on.”
They laughed quietly together as they hurried through the artful landscaping and to the garage where he kept his Lamborghini.
He opened her door. She hesitated, looking up at him as though to check to see if it was okay for her to touch it.
“You’re worth more than the car. Get in.”
“I just don’t want to break anything.”
“Maybe you want to drive?”
She laughed and sat. “Not tonight.”
He closed her door and walked around, feeling good. It was true. Nell was worth far more than his car. He’d give it up in a heartbeat to be able to have her.
NELL SETTLED BACK IN the plush luxury of whatever kind of fancy car Ryder had. It was the same bright red one that he’d been driving the day he stopped and changed her tire. It seemed like so long ago.
She was glad he’d come for her tonight. Maybe he hadn’t exactly come for her, but whatever. Tomorrow night, Beth would be at the ranch, and she’d be busy doing last-minute things.
Plus, just a bit more time and Ryder would pick his future wife.
He’d mentioned a couple nights ago that he was willing to work out a compromise about where they’d live and stay and their social obligations. His concern was for Vinton. She’d lain awake wondering if she could give up her brother, leaving him, to be with the man she’d fallen in love with.
It was a choice that made her insides feel like they were filled with crushed aluminum cans. A phone call from Beth tonight had thrown them into even more chaos.
“Beth said Dad’s moving to Oklahoma.”
Ryder glanced at her before looking back at the road as he pulled out. “Really? Why?”
“She said he called yesterday and told her he was putting the ranch on the market. I guess, from kind of putting the pieces together, while he’s been gone so much the last six months there’s a woman he’s been seeing. She’s been up in the oil wells in the northwestern part of the state, but she’s just been transferred back to her hometown to work in the yard there. Tom’s moving down to be with her.”
“And he’s taking you all with him?”
“Well, the girls are nineteen, and technically, they don’t have to go. I don’t know what they’re going to do. Beth wasn’t sure.” Beth had said maybe she could get Ryder to choose her at the ball. Him choosing a wife wasn’t exactly something that had been advertised, but rumors had made their rounds. It was a small town and everyone knew it. “Vinton will have to go, of course.” She sighed. “I don’t know if he’ll let me come too or not. I tried to call him as soon as I hung up with Beth, but he didn’t answer.” She twisted her fingers in her lap. Wherever Vinton went, she wanted to go too.
At least, that’s the way she had felt until she’d met Ryder.
He shifted the car into high gear, opening it up on the highway, then held his hand out, palm up.
It only took her a second to look at it then slide hers into its solid warmth and comfort.
“You don’t know exactly what’s happening with your dad?” he said softly. “Right?”
“Right.”
“Let’s try not to worry about it until we can get all the information we need to make the right decision. I know you. If Tom moves to Oklahoma and takes Vinton with him, you’ll go too. I know that.”
She turned to face him in the dark, grateful that he understood and wasn’t trying to get her to renege on her promise to her mom because it was suddenly looking too hard to keep.
They rode in silence while the miles slipped by.
Nell looked over when Ryder slowed, miles since they’d passed the nearest house, and pulled into a field road that ran between a field of flax and one of wheat.
“You mind getting out and looking at the stars with me for a bit?” he asked. There seemed to be some hesitation in his voice.
If he’d been arrogant or overconfident, she might have hesitated. After all, the masked ball was only two days away. But she wanted to be with him as much as he seemed to want to be with her, and his insecurity made her feel like it mattered.
But even though there was so much going through her head and heart, worries and anxiety, she couldn’t resist teasing him. “Is this as friends, very good friends, or more?”
He wasn’t smiling. “More.”
Suddenly her throat felt like it was stuck to her backbone. Maybe she was making a mistake, but she breathed out, “Okay.”
He got out, walking around and getting her door. “Maybe I just wanted an excuse to hold you.”
“Maybe I hoped you’d find one.” She put her hand in his and stood up out of the low-slung car.
He closed the door, tugging her around and pulling her back against his chest. She felt him sigh behind her, like holding her eased something in him.
She allowed her body to lean back against him, feeling the comfort of shared burdens.
A shooting star streaked across the expansive sky, and she gasped. His arms tightened. She loved the feeling of not needing to talk and communicating without words.
They stood like that for a long time, him leaning against his car, she leaning into him with his arms holding her close. Their bodies pressed together, stirring heat and contentment. The cool breeze flowing over them, sifting through her ha
ir and blowing her skirt around his legs. The sandy stirring of the leaves and the scent of wild air and springtime seeping into her heart. They weren’t doing anything, they weren’t even talking, but she knew this would be one of the best memories of her life.
She wished the night would last forever.
“If you could do anything, be anywhere, have anything you wanted, tell me what it would look like,” he finally whispered on the night wind.
“It’d be this.” She didn’t have to think. “And we’d go home together. You and me. Vinton would be there.”
“Where’s home?”
She shook her head, lifting a shoulder.
“Sweet Water?” he prompted.
She sighed. “You probably can’t stand outside like this in Manhattan? Hear the quiet night sounds, pull in the pure night breeze?”
She felt more than heard him grunt under her. “No.”
“But there’s probably other things that make Manhattan beautiful at night?”
“I suppose.” He traced his finger over her hand at her waist. “There are people who love the city for a variety of reasons. Because it never sleeps, because there’s always bustle and something to do, because one is right in the middle of action every day. That’s not me. I’m there because it’s the best place for my business. Not because I love it.”
She was content with that answer.
“Where would you be if you could be anywhere?” he asked again.
This time, she turned in his arms. Their bodies pressed together, and she looked up at him, sincere. “With you.”
Something flared in his eyes. His hands tightened at her waist. “Anywhere?” he prompted.
She nodded and knew with all her heart it was true. “I feel like this is goodbye.”
“I’m not going to let it be goodbye.” He pulled her close and tucked her head under his chin. “We’ll figure something out.”
His heart beat strong and steady under her cheek and his arms felt solid and real around her.
She wasn’t sure how long they stood like that before his voice came out of the darkness. “I was married before.”
Surprise made her stiffen. “You said ‘was.’”
“Yeah. Didn’t work.”
A soft breeze blew and the field of wheat beside them rustled and bent beneath it.
“What happened?” she asked, without lifting her head. She hadn’t known he was married. Roxie had warned her that he’d had a lot of experience with women, maybe his marriage was a part of that.
“I guess it’s easy to blame her.”
She liked that he didn’t seem like he was going to.
“It was almost ten years ago. I suppose I was just as much to blame as her. What you’d said about Michelle wanting love because eventually the money wouldn’t be enough made me think that maybe I’d made mistakes without knowing it.”
“You didn’t spend time with her?”
“I guess I just thought it was more important to build the business. I thought she should be able to see that.”
“She wasn’t a part of it?”
He shifted and she lifted her head.
“Should she have been?” he asked, like he’d never thought of it.
Nell shrugged. She didn’t know. She hadn’t really thought about marriage, with her mother and Vinton and the ranch and everything in her life. But, “When you get married, it seems like you’d want to build something together, rather than be isolated in your own world. Shared goals, shared dreams, shared workload. I mean, I know it’s not possible all the time, but don’t you feel a special, stronger, connection with someone that you build something with? Wouldn’t that make a marriage stronger?”
He grunted. “If you can stand to be together with each other that much.”
“I guess that’s just learning to get along.”
The moon went behind a cloud and she couldn’t see his face, but his hand came up to brush her hair back before trailing down her cheek. “She demanded a big settlement, and that made me feel like all she wanted was money all along, but maybe the money was her way of getting what she wanted from me, but never got.”
He swallowed. The moon shone brightly once more, but his face was shadowed as he bent his head toward her. “And that was my fault. I never felt this burning desire to be wherever she was. What you said about building something, I get that. I want that. I want to be beside you, working together.” His breath came out softly. “It’s my fault for marrying her in the first place when what I felt for her is just a tiny shadow of what I feel now.”
Nell ran her hands up his rib cage and around his shoulders. “I think marriage is about working together, being together, but also lifting your partner up, making them look better.”
“When being with your partner makes you a better person. When they cause you to be something or someone you couldn’t be on your own. Someone better.”
Nell ran the tips of her fingers through the short hair on the back of his neck. Her stomach cramped, but the words on her lips came out anyway. “Kissing is good, too.”
He snorted and his teeth shone in the moonlight. “Actually, I don’t think that’s funny. What do you know about kissing, and who have you been learning it from?”
“You almost kissed me twice. It leaves a girl wondering what it would be like.” She could hardly believe she was saying it, but the darkness and the wild wind and the warm strength of the man pressed close to her made her want to step out, if only for tonight, and have the memories to cherish, no matter what ended up happening at the ball.
His smile was wolfish. “Really. Guess there’s only one way to solve that problem.” But his smile faded. “I don’t want there to be any regrets between us.”
“I think I would regret it if you never kissed me.” She tilted her head just a little. “But I don’t want you to have regrets.”
“I’d only regret I didn’t do it sooner.”
Their breath mingled as his head bent down. Their bodies pressed together.
Nell lifted her head, meeting his lips with hers, feeling the shock that went through them both as they finally touched.
The night sky became bright with shooting stars, or maybe it didn’t. She couldn’t tell. Her eyes were closed, her head spun, and she held onto the broad shoulders in front of her with all her might as her knees weakened and her heart whipped and rioted in her chest.
He tasted like moonlight and shadows mixed with the sweet spring of the North Dakota flatlands. Her home and her heart woven and tied to the man before her.
Long moments later when he finally lifted his head, breathing hard, his hands trembling on her back, pressing her closer to him, she could barely open her eyes, didn’t want to do anything but stand in his embrace and feel his strong arms holding her all night long.
His cheek whispered past hers. She pressed into it, wanting every bit of contact she could draw from him.
“Nell,” he whispered, “what have you done to me?” His breath whooshed out. “My legs are shaking and my heart is pounding so hard it’s shaking my car.”
She laughed, a little wobbly sound. “I appreciate your car. I think it’s holding us both up.”
“It’s probably not manly to admit it, but yeah. Kissing you is dangerous to my equilibrium.” His hands floated up her back and she shivered.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For kissing you? Don’t thank me.”
“So I just tell you to do it again?”
He chuckled. “I still haven’t recovered from the first one.”
“I was thanking you for telling me about your first marriage and what you’d learned from it. I think it takes growth and a certain amount of maturity to not always throw the blame completely on someone else.”
“I don’t want to make that mistake again.”
“I think the knowledge of what you did wrong, will help you keep from doing it again.” She tilted her head. “Maybe if you didn’t need to inherit the money, you’d never get
married again.”
“A month ago, I would have said a resounding yes to that statement.” He settled her body more deeply between his legs as another stiff breeze blew, this one a little colder than the others. “I wasn’t kidding about how I feel about you.”
“You’d ask me where I would want to be. What about you? Where is the best place in the world for you?”
Would he say New York City? He claimed not to love it. She held her breath.
He looked out, past her shoulder, to the deep, dark sky and the waving fields of young grain that would help feed an entire country come winter. “I’m falling for a farm girl from North Dakota, and I’m feeling like her home is a place where I could put down roots, too.” His voice held wonder, like he couldn’t quite believe that he might be able to be happy in a place like North Dakota, but she didn’t doubt the sincerity of his words.
His chest moved in and out. “But my brain’s a jumble right now. Just let me hold you for a little bit please. Let me enjoy the peace and rightness that comes from having you in my arms.”
It was a long time before they drove home.
Chapter 17
The next day was filled with last-minute preparations. Nell was everywhere, from hanging lights in the ballroom at the back of the house to helping chop vegetables in the kitchen. She didn’t sit down from the time she got up in the morning until Will dropped Beth off at eight that evening.
“You’ll be off early tomorrow afternoon. Then you’ll have time to break until around five. All the servers get a half an hour off during the ball, so keep that in mind. There’s probably enough time for you to slip a dress on and sneak in a dance or two.” Roxie wiggled her eyebrows at Nell. “There will be a lot of east coast businessmen here.”
Roxie neglected to mention, but Nell had figured out, that there would be a lot of east and west coast ladies who hoped to be chosen by billionaire business tycoon Ryder Peterson as his fiancée.
Maybe she really was out of touch, since the ball had been advertised on both coasts, and ladies and gentlemen were coming from all over the world to participate in the event of the season.
Cowboys Don't Believe in Fairy Tales Page 14
