by Vivian Arend
Over the years Josiah had learned there were a lot of ways to work with a skittish beast. When he’d first started at veterinary school he’d been too out of shape to physically intimidate the animals, so he’d learned to schmooze. To cajole. To convince them he was worthy of trust.
It had taken a lot of effort, but it had been worth it.
It’d taken a lot of work to get in shape, pushing his muscles to the limit. He’d done it—
Hell, he still did it. Every single damn day he put in the energy because it was worth it.
Josiah stood there in the cold, staring into the evening sky until no doubt remained.
Lisa loved him. Maybe she wasn’t ready to say it yet, but that didn’t matter. He was going to do the hard work. He was going to hang in there, and be there, and listen to her until she couldn’t help but say it back.
Because he knew she wasn’t leaving Heart Falls. Not without them finding a way to be together.
He hauled out his phone and made a call.
Lisa Coleman, no matter where you run, I’ve got a rope tied on you, he thought. It’s called love and there’s nothing stronger.
It felt as if she’d driven for hours and Lisa wasn’t sure her head had reattached itself to her shoulders.
So. That’s what a panic attack felt like. Interesting.
It was strange how it’d come completely out of the blue. Feeling warm and cozy inside one minute to being a second away from freaking out the next.
She wasn’t proud that she’d run, but the fact it’d taken over half an hour for her hands to stop shaking said at least part of her reaction had been right.
Josiah wasn’t supposed to have said that. Not yet. She wasn’t ready.
It was the only thought that kept going through her brain. I’m not ready.
When her phone went off, she considered ignoring it, but it was her dad. He’d come to visit Tamara and Caleb and the kids, and to attend the fundraiser. The open communication line between her and her father was still new and she didn’t want to do anything to mess it up.
“Hi, Dad. What’s up?”
“I was wondering where you were,” he said quietly.
“On a date. You knew that.”
A gentle sigh sounded on the other end of the line. “You’re not with him, so come and get me,” he ordered. “I want to talk to you.”
Great. First she ran out on a date and now she had to deal with her father.
There seemed to be no good reason to turn him down, so she swung past the bunkhouse where he was staying. Tamara and Caleb had offered him space in the house, but he’d insisted he’d be more comfortable letting them have their own space.
George Coleman climbed into the passenger side of her truck and sat there wordlessly.
This just got better and better. “Anywhere in particular we’re going?”
“Yeah. Your boyfriend’s,” he said sternly.
Oh hell, no. “Did Josiah call you?” she demanded.
“He’s called me a couple of times because we both have a lot of interest in horses and Caleb has spoken highly of Josiah’s skills,” her dad admitted. “Or are you talking about tonight?”
She wasn’t putting the truck in gear until she knew what was going on. “Tonight.”
George looked out the window as if sitting in a truck was a perfectly fine place to have a conversation. “He didn’t call me. I have a standing invitation to see his place. I thought I should take advantage of the opportunity before I head home.”
Dammit. First she didn’t know from one minute to the next what Josiah was going to do and now her dad was surprising her? She was losing her touch.
There seemed to be no plausible excuse she could make to not take him to Josiah’s house without having to offer up a confession she wasn’t ready for.
She kept her foot as light on the gas as possible, but they still made it to Josiah’s house faster than legally possible. And miracle of miracles, her father restrained himself from making any comments about women drivers. Huh.
There were no trucks parked outside—small mercies. She wasn’t ready to face Josiah yet.
Oh my God, he’d said I love you and she’d walked out on him. What the hell had she been thinking?
Right. She hadn’t been thinking, she’d been panicking.
Her dad got out of the truck and completely ignored her, letting himself into the house and wandering around quietly.
Lisa had to admit she was totally lost.
Her dad even found the door to the silo stairs on his own and Lisa followed him up, trying not to look at all of the things and places that were already full of memories.
How could she have made so many memories in such a short time?
“I know how much you did to get the Coleman ranches back together.” Her father’s words came out of the blue. He was standing beside the bookcase, running his finger along the shelf, pausing on one of the spines.
Lisa blinked. She was tempted to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming things up. “What did you say?”
He turned to face her. “The amalgamation. I didn’t see it at the time, but over the past while, every time someone made a comment, it hit home a little harder. You orchestrated that, didn’t you?”
Wow. This was not the conversation she expected to have with her father. Not tonight. Not any night, truthfully.
Maybe because her emotions had been stretched to the edge already, she simply confessed. “Yeah. I don’t get all the credit because I wasn’t the only one who saw that things needed to change. Lee did, as well, but considering he’s as young as I am, nobody was ever going to listen to the two of us.”
Her father had gone motionless. He was staring out the window, the sun drawing closer to the top of the mountains. “You’re probably right, but then again, not all my brothers are as stubborn or as stupid as I am.”
“Dad—” she chastised.
“What, I’m not supposed to call myself stupid? I mean, when the boot fits.” He took a deep breath. “I wish I’d been smart enough to see it, but I wish a whole hell of a lot more that I’d been the kind of father that you felt you could come to. So I could’ve…”
His words trailed off and a rush of frustration hit. “So you could’ve been proud?”
His gaze snapped to hers “Oh, don’t you do that. I have always been proud of you. You and both of your sisters. It’s never been about your skills.”
“But it sure as hell felt like it, Dad. And I don’t want to flog a dead horse, but it sure felt that if we’d been sons, things would’ve been a whole lot different.”
“Of course it would’ve been.”
Her stomach fell. Of all the things—he wasn’t supposed to say that.
But then he went on and exploded her world into a million pieces.
“Do you remember how your mother died? The stories you were told?” He stepped forward and grabbed her hands, trapping her so she couldn’t escape. “She wasn’t supposed to be on that tractor, I was. But I was late, and she knew she could do it. She’d done it a million times before, but the axle broke and the angle of the hill was wrong and all the things the investigators told us. Doesn’t matter, though, that they figured out how it happened. In the end, she was dead, and I didn’t have her and neither did you girls. She was gone and it was my fault.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Lisa began, but he cut her off.
“Is it? They said if there’d been more weight in the seat, the tractor would’ve stayed upright, but she was too light. If your mom hadn’t gone out to do my job that day, she’d still be alive.”
The guilt in his voice nearly took Lisa’s knees out. “You don’t know that.”
“I know it in my gut,” he insisted. “And it changed the way I treated you girls down the road when you started to want to help around the ranch. I felt so terribly guilty that your mom was gone and so afraid. I didn’t see that until Caleb told me he was doing the same damn thing to Tamara.”
Lis
a jerked upright. So that’s what had triggered the apology the other day. “Caleb’s a good man.”
Her father nodded. “He is. But when he told me what he’d caught himself doing, overprotecting Tamara, my first instinct was to smack him upside the head because none of you girls deserve to be treated like that. Not by the men who care about you and love you. But I was doing the same damn thing. I was so scared every time you girls walked outside, I would do anything to keep you safe. And after a while, it was just easier to try and box you in and keep you where nothing could hurt you.”
His confession explained so many things. “You can’t protect somebody like that,” she said softly.
His laugh was brittle. “I sure tried. And when ordering you not to do it didn’t work, I tried to humiliate you into stopping. That backfired in other ways. Tamara left the ranch and got her training as a nurse—and didn’t that give me just as many nightmares.”
Lisa stood silently, watching the sun closing in on the top of the mountains.
“I wanted to keep you safe. I figured if you weren’t doing tasks out on the ranch, but working in the house, nothing could harm you.” Her father squeezed her fingers to let her go, pacing toward the wall of windows and staring out. “Caleb was the one who put it into words, but the fact I was so scared when we heard Tamara had gone into labour—hell, that’s as womanly a task as you can get and I still couldn’t protect her.”
Oh my God. The hurt and sadness in his voice wrapped around Lisa, knocking away any smart-ass comments she might have regarding womanly tasks.
She stepped up and wrapped her arm around her father, leaning her head against his shoulder. “We don’t need you to protect us, Dad. We need you to love us.”
He nodded. “I know that now. Like I said, I’m working on being how you need me to be.” He turned to face her, smiling. “Which is why I’m about to give you some fatherly advice, and I hope you don’t just dismiss it because of all the stupid mistakes I’ve made in the past.”
“I’m listening.”
“Whatever spooked you today with Josiah—” He held up his hand when she would’ve spoken. “I didn’t lie earlier. He didn’t call me, he called the house, trying to track you down. And yes, I finagled this get-together to force you over here. But, sweetheart, the years I had with your mom were the best. You never actually got a chance to know her, but she was wonderful and I miss her every single day. Except, and now I sound like a fool, but the week I had with Julia’s mom had that same kind of perfection to it. It wasn’t long enough and it wasn’t deep enough, and if I could have another minute with either of them, I would jump on that opportunity and grab it with both hands.”
Lisa stayed motionless for a moment, staring up at his earnest expression. “I don’t know what I want,” she admitted.
“Truly? Or are you not certain of all you want?” he asked softly. “Because there’s nothing wrong with grabbing the part you do know while you’re figuring out the rest of it.”
And then, stubborn man, he pressed a kiss to her forehead and walked away.
She stood and stared out the window, watching as the sun slid into the distant notch.
No matter how much it pained her to admit it, her father was right. She totally knew part of what she wanted. She just didn’t see how she could have Josiah and everything else.
After all her years of coordinating behind the scenes sneaking and teasing people into doing things her way—the way that was best for the most people—she had no idea what came next.
She kept staring at the sky. At the sky’s pinks and purples, streaks of dark clouds gathering as the wind moved the clouds like in quick-motion reel.
What do I really want?
I want to be with Josiah. I want to experience life. I want a family, yet I want to stretch my mind in new ways.
It still seemed far too tangled and impossible. Like throwing darts at a map and then trying to arrive at all four destinations on different continents at the same time.
I want everything.
Even as she made the wish, the sun dipped lower, sliding from a quarter of an arc showing to vanishing behind the brim and for one brief second, she could have sworn—
A flash. Not neon green like she’d been imagining, but a rich, growing colour that matched a forest of mature spruce trees.
“Oh my God.”
She pressed her palms to the window, staring, but it was gone.
Had she imagined the entire thing?
She wasn’t sure how long she stood there when a warm body moved in at her back. The familiar voice and familiar touch of Josiah as he placed his hands over hers, cheeks brushing, and the bristles on his jaw scratching lightly. “You okay, darlin’?”
Lisa took a deep breath and turned. “I think my father abandoned me here.”
Josiah looked thoughtful. “Seems you’re right.”
She didn’t know what to do long term, but she knew what needed to happen today. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have run away.”
He tucked his fingers under her chin, stroking his thumb across her cheek. “Apology accepted, if you accept mine as well. I moved too fast.”
She shrugged. “Not really. You kind of started this whole thing by being pretty blunt and normally, that would have been okay. I am capable of telling you to slow down. I’m not sure why I got so scared.”
But her father’s story was maybe giving her a few hints.
George Coleman had been trying to protect them because he was worried about losing something precious, but in the process he’d still lost something.
How terrible would it be for Lisa to not learn from his mistake?
Lisa stroked Josiah’s cheek. “Can I have a couple of days?”
His smile remained, but his eyes no longer glowed. “Of course.”
Oh no. No. That was not what she wanted. Hurting Josiah any further was not on the agenda. “I love you.”
His eyes widened.
“I really do and that’s not up for debate. That’s not what my problem is.” She caught his collar in her fists and held on tight. “Just a couple of days, okay?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “Stay with me tonight?”
She curled her arms around his waist. “I’d like that. I want that.” She leaned up on her toes and lifted her lips to his. “I want you.”
They stole down the stairs hand-in-hand, then into his bedroom where he pushed open the curtains to let the sunset hues fill the room. Josiah proceeded to strip everything off her one piece at a time, pressing kisses on her skin, making her feel adored and cherished.
Right around the time her legs gave out, he scooped her up and carried her to the bed where he kissed her senseless, stroking and caressing until she was quivering with need before he pressed her legs open and slid home.
A quiet lovemaking. A joining together that was so right and so them. Unexpectedly tender, gloriously passionate. Honest…
Real.
Josiah cupped a hand to her cheek, their bodies twined and connected. “No expectations, no promises. But I love you. Stubborn, mischievous, drives-me-wild you.”
Lisa wrapped her legs around him and pulled him deeper. Closer. Meshed together as they rose over and over until they both fell into pleasure.
20
When Lisa woke in his arms, she wondered briefly if it was going to be awkward, but the only notable part was how very undemanding Josiah was. He didn’t push or prod or demand explanations.
He just held her.
In fact, he insisted they not talk about what had happened beyond generalities. “Your brain is figuring it out,” he insisted. “And I don’t want to toss something at you that later makes you feel as if you were coerced. Like you asked, we’ll give it a couple of days. But in the meantime, you need to know that I’m not going away. Extra time isn’t going to change the way I feel about you and you can count on that.”
He’d silenced her in one of the most fun ways possible before stealing out of bed and heading t
o work.
Over the next two days, she thought and poked at her problem from a million angles. Lisa spent all her free time with Josiah, Ollie curled up contentedly on their laps as they sat together on the couch or lay quietly in front of the fire in his room.
She loved Josiah. She truly did, so the idea of leaving him behind to travel for a few years to satisfy her wanderlust held little appeal. But giving up the travel to just stay home seemed like cheating herself out of a promise she’d made.
While Lisa thought, Josiah watched silently, his closest hand constantly stroking her arm, or back, or hair, as if reminding her he planned to always be there.
Ollie just loved on both of them as much as possible.
Lisa had almost figured out a solution she felt comfortable with, maybe, when suddenly the day of the fundraiser arrived and she didn’t want to do anything to distract from the event.
But as soon as the day was over, she was ready to do the next thing.
The truth was, at the core, while she wanted to do something for herself, Josiah had been right. Doing things for other people also made her happy.
She didn’t need to leave to find herself. She didn’t need to run away from the wonderful things happening right there in Heart Falls. But she also didn’t need to give up her dreams of adventure. Somewhere out there was a way to have it all.
The best part, though, was she didn’t have to figure out how on her own.
What she did need to decide was a way to absolutely and completely blow Josiah’s socks off when she told him. Because, hey, telling a guy that she wanted him forever should be big and bold and memorable, right?
But first, the fundraiser.
Positive energy and excited people milled around the new Heart Falls Animal Rescue. They’d hauled in a good number of media reps and the local community members had come out in full force.
Lisa and Josiah stood at the side of the modest stage that had been built in the arena, preparing to go up on the platform to run through their spiel to convince people to open up their pocketbooks, and possibly their homes, to one of the healthy, happy, and ready-to-be-adopted dogs.
