She smiled, pressing her hand to his cheek.
Someone cleared their throat. And there was a laugh.
It was more than likely that most of Garrison had turned out for the day. And it was more than likely that most of Garrison was watching him kiss her. “I probably should have thought this through a little better,” he murmured. “Taken you someplace more private.”
“It’s not like this would have stayed a secret for long anyway.” She stared up at him. “I’m okay with everyone knowing I love you, Audy.”
Hearing her say that eased all the worry and stress and fatigue away. She did that for him—made the world better. “That’s all I ever need to know. As long as I have that, as long as I have you, I have everything.”
Joy had wedged herself between them. “Ma Dee.” She patted his chest.
Another throat clearing. “Um...” Tess stepped forward. “So, I’m going to take Joy now. And...” She leaned forward to whisper, “People are totally watching, like, everyone.” She leaned back. “So, you two keep on doing...whatever it is you two are doing.” Her laugh was nervous.
“Thank you.” Audy dropped a kiss on Joy’s cheek and handed her to Tess.
“Okay. So, hi, Audy. Just so you know, I totally knew you were going to be here.” She leaned forward again and whispered, “I totally knew you were in love with Brooke.” With a triumphant smile and a little wave, she and Joy headed back to where Beau waited on a picnic blanket beneath The First Tree.
“Beau’s keeping you two company?” Audy asked, knowing this was a struggle for Brooke. “How are you doing with that?”
“I just want them to be happy. Safe. Careful. And happy.” Brooke shrugged, staring up at him. “It’s not like I have a choice. Love isn’t a choice...it picks you.”
“It’s a gift.” He loved the smile she gave him. “You are a gift.” He cradled Brooke’s face in his hands. “You’re braver than I am, Brooke. You gave me a chance to prove myself—to me and you. Not just once, either. Over and over, you gave and gave and I never once told you how much I love you. Mostly because it scares me.”
“That scares you?” Her laugh was soft. “You? The risk-taker?”
“Yeah, well, this is the biggest risk I’ve ever taken. If I mess up, I lose you. And nothing, nothing scares me the way thinking about that does.”
“Then don’t think about it.” Her smile warmed him through. “We’re both too stubborn to give up on us.”
“That’s true. I feel better already.” He smoothed the hair from her shoulder, running the strands between his thumb and forefinger. He pulled her in tight, holding on until all the stress and worry and insecurities he’d been battling the whole ride home no longer existed.
Audy would have been content to stay as they were, but the music started and they were blocking the way, so he caught her hand and led her back toward Tess, Joy and Beau under The First Tree.
“It took you long enough.” Beau was holding Tess’s hand. “Tess and I were wondering if you were ever gonna come clean with Brooke.”
“Everything is okay? No pressure or anything but, well...I really like this... Our family.” Tess held Joy close, her gaze bouncing between Audy and Brooke.
“Everything is okay.” Brooke sat on the blanket, a sweet smile on her face. “More than okay.”
Audy sat, too, close enough that he could touch Brooke. “I like this, too.” Audy brushed his fingers along Brooke’s cheek. “Our family.”
Brooke nodded, leaning into his hand.
“Ma Dee.” Joy clapped. “Ma ma.” She pointed. “Teh. Boo.”
“That’s right. You know who’s important, don’t you, Joy?” He laughed when she nodded, her little curl bouncing. “And don’t you ever forget it. Make sure they know how much they matter to you, Miss Muffet, and hold on tight.” Brooke took his hand, threading their fingers together. “And never let go.”
He turned to find Brooke watching him, so beautiful she near took his breath away. He shook his head. “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine Brooke Young looking at me like that.”
“Like what?” Brooke asked.
“Like you love me.” He shook his head, his heart full to bursting.
“Well, I never, ever expected for Audy Briscoe to fall head over heels in love with me.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Talk about a surprise. A good surprise.”
“Good surprises are the best kind.” He was right, love was a gift. “I look forward to surprising you for years to come.”
* * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Rancher’s Unexpected Twins by Trish Milburn.
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The Rancher’s Unexpected Twins
by Trish Milburn
CHAPTER ONE
The last thing Sunny Breckinridge expected to do while driving toward Jade Valley, Wyoming, was laugh so hard she snorted. But she dared anyone who knew the owners of the only two restaurants in her hometown to not do the same. The two small signs advertising Trudy’s Café and Alma’s Diner that had once stood on opposite sides of the rural highway had graduated to full-size billboards throwing shade at each other.
Visit Alma’s Diner, Best Food in Jade Valley.
Trudy’s Cafe, Where the Locals Eat... For Good Reason.
It seemed the ladies’ mysterious, long-standing feud was still going strong.
But that wasn’t surprising, for various reasons. Things didn’t change much in Jade Valley. Sure, the names on the teachers’ rosters were different from year to year, but not that different. Generation after generation of the same families had called this valley home since Samuel Tillson had first settled here in 1842, deciding he’d had enough of a trip westward along the Oregon Trail. When he’d chosen a name for his new home, he’d selected it because of the color of area vegetation, having no clue that actual jade would be discovered in Wyoming decades later and become the state gemstone. Of course, that little historical tidbit didn’t keep shopkeepers in Jade Valley from selling jade items to the occasional tourist who wandered through as if it was the source of the town’s name all along.
She slowed down when a coyote dashed across the road ahead of her, allowing it to pass to the other side, then proceeded on into town. As she drove into the small business district, it felt as if she’d entered a time capsule. Sure, there were a couple of noticeable cosmetic changes since she’d visited at Christmas. The bank had a new sign and the corner lot where the long-out-of-business movie-rental store had been now held a small farmer’s market.
Her best friend, Maya Pine, had said the abandoned store had burned down after some New Year’s fireworks went awry. When the rubble that remained was cleared away early in the summer, people started setting up impromptu tents to sell their extra garden items, from-scratch pies, handmade soaps and such. And thus the pop-up Jade Valley Farmer’s Market was born, with vendors and wares varying from day to day.
With no stoplights in town, she breezed through to the other side and headed farther into the valley, toward the Riverside Ranch. The happiness at being back in the valley where she’d lived until going away to college started to give way to the sadness that was inextricably a part of any visit home now.
Sunny shook her head. She couldn’t focus on the losses, even though they had led to this unexpected trip home.
Ten minutes later, she made the turn onto the gravel entrance road that ran along the western edge of the ranch and bordered the river where her dad had taught her and her brother, Jason, to fish. The number of times she’d sat beside that river while doing homework or reading for pleasure were immeasurable. With the mountains rising in t
he distance, some of them tipped with snow year-round, this really was one of the most beautiful places in the world to her, even considering how much she’d traveled around the globe.
She passed the small log home where the ranch foreman lived. Dean Wheeler held that post now, taking over when his dad retired from the job he’d held since before Sunny and Dean were born. She didn’t see either Dean or his truck, but since it was late afternoon he was probably still out working on the ranch somewhere.
Ranch work never stopped, and this time of year he could be directing the movement of cattle from one pasture to another, doing the first hay cut of the year, mending fences or any number of other tasks. Were it not for the cast on his leg, her father would no doubt be right there beside Dean working in the late spring flowing into early summer air.
Even with a foreman and ranch hands to handle the work, her dad didn’t show any signs of slowing down. At least not until he had fallen off his horse and broken his tibia, and had been forced to take it easy.
She followed the curve in the road and finally spotted the larger house that she’d called home until leaving for the University of Wyoming and then on to LA after graduation. Her heart filled with love and nostalgia...and with loss.
After parking, she took a slow, deep breath, determined not to bring any of the sadness inside with her. There had been too much sorrow within those walls, and she was determined that there would be no more. At least not the overt, heavily weighted kind that had threatened to suffocate her in the weeks following each loss of a family member.
When she stepped through the front door a couple of minutes later, two blond little heads turned her way from where they stood in their playpen watching a fishing show on the TV alongside their grandpa. Lily gave her a slobbery grin, but Liam returned his attention to the TV. Yeah, that little boy was going to be the spitting image of Jason, in appearance as well as personality. Sunny thought that might give her both comfort and heartache, in equal measures. And her dad probably saw it too, every day. Did the resemblance affect him the same way?
“I’d stand up and give you a hug, but I just managed to get comfortable,” her dad said from his perch in his favorite leather recliner.
She smiled. “Then I guess I’ll come to you, you klutz.”
“Hey!”
Sunny laughed as she crossed the room, then bent over to give her dad a hug.
“Did you forget how to ride a horse in your old age?” Anyone could have fallen off a horse spooked by a rattlesnake, but she liked to tease her dad nonetheless. It was better than thinking about how much worse his fall could have been. If he’d hit his head...
No, don’t go there. Don’t borrow trouble.
“I think you got extra sassy since the last time you were here.”
“That’s me, sassy Sunny.”
Lily started bouncing on her chubby little legs, her arms stretched above her head in the universal sign of babies who wanted to be picked up. Auntie Sunny complied and lifted the little darling into her arms, booping her on the nose with her own, eliciting a riot of giggles.
The fact that his sister had been sprung from the baby jail finally registering, Liam abandoned his TV viewing and started to whimper.
“Are you jealous?” Sunny asked as she bent over and retrieved him with her other arm. “Oh, you two are a lot heavier than I expected.”
“I swear if you sit and watch them for a few minutes, you’ll actually see them grow,” her dad said. “Bring him here.”
“He’ll be all wiggly. I don’t want him to hurt you.”
“Who do you think holds them when you’re not here?”
Sunny froze, and her dad’s eyes widened.
“I didn’t mean anything by that.”
She knew he didn’t, at least she didn’t think he did, but the guilt still ate at her. She’d spent as much time as she could helping out after Jason and Amanda’s accident, but she’d eventually had to go back to LA or risk losing her job. But as she’d sat at her desk that first day back, it had been all she could do to keep from crying—for the loss of her brother, her sweet sister-in-law, for the twins who’d have no memory of their parents and for her dad.
He’d lost the love of his life, then raised Sunny and Jason alone after their mother’s death. But Sunny had been thirteen then, Jason fifteen, old enough to take care of themselves. Twin infants were a different story altogether, and she’d left him there to fend for himself while he was also grieving the loss of his son and daughter-in-law.
Sunny remembered how she’d hidden in the company ladies’ room and called her dad, tears streaming down her face, saying she’d quit her job and come home. His response had bordered on angry as he’d told her she’d do no such thing.
“Where’d your mind drift off to?”
Her dad’s question brought her back to the present. “Huh?”
He shook his head and motioned for her to give Liam to him. As she carried Liam over to his doting grandfather, Sunny wondered if her dad also had those kinds of moments where his thoughts took sudden detours into the past. Of course he did. How could he not?
She glanced toward the kitchen.
“Did Judy leave already? I thought she’d wait until I got here.”
“Looks to the contrary, I do manage when she’s not here. It’s more difficult now, but I manage. I put them in the stroller and we all shuffle along. I told Judy to leave early. She’s been cooking for two solid days, stocking the fridge and freezer for the zombie apocalypse or something.”
Sunny laughed a little at the words zombie apocalypse coming out of her dad’s mouth. He was about as likely to watch a zombie film as she was to watch one of his hunting and fishing shows. She didn’t mind fishing, but she didn’t understand the allure of watching other people do it on TV. It seemed more like a sure cure for insomnia.
Lily grabbed Sunny’s nose as if it was a new toy.
“Hey, you little stinker.”
Lily grinned, showing two tiny front lower teeth. Sunny laughed.
“This is the only time you’re going to be cute with only two teeth.”
Her dad snorted. “Don’t let Elmer Fisk hear you say that.”
“How old is he now?” Elmer Fisk was one odd bird who’d held more jobs in Sunny’s lifetime than he had teeth in his head, even for a short time as one of the hands on her family’s ranch during calving season.
“No one knows, but he did finally retire. Now he just hangs out around town and talks to whoever will stop long enough to hear his opinions on anything and everything.”
Sunny could imagine Elmer doing exactly that, the same as she could imagine almost every one of the four hundred and ninety-nine current residents of Jade Valley doing things that were uniquely them. Being able to do that for the more than thirteen million people who lived in the LA metro area was literally impossible.
She tried not to think about the other reason she’d come home. Trying to convince her dad to sell the family ranch and move himself and the twins to LA with her wasn’t a conversation for her first night back. She was too tired from traveling, and she wanted some nice, heartwarming family time before the inevitable disagreement. It was going to take all the finesse she possessed to get her dad to see the wisdom of the move.
But she had to get him to agree. Taking care of the twins and the ranch, even though he had ranch hands for the latter, was a lot to handle without a broken leg. Right now it was too much for him, no matter how he claimed otherwise. Maybe if the twins were older and didn’t require constant care, it would be a different story. But they weren’t. Lily and Liam couldn’t even communicate with words yet, let alone feed, clean and clothe themselves. If they lived with her or even nearby, she could help with them while still being able to work. And she’d be able to spend time with her dad that didn’t require taking vacation days, air travel and rented cars.
Even knowing the change would be for the best, the thought of selling the ranch hurt her heart. It had been in her family since her great-grandfather started out with a few acres and gradually added to it, and each successive generation continuing to do the same. Her entire family loved this land, but sometimes life dealt you blows that necessitated unexpected change. Sunny hoped her mother and Jason would forgive her for what she had to do.
After catching up with her dad a bit, she made her way to the kitchen to see what Judy had fixed for dinner. As soon as she stepped into the other room, delicious scents greeted her. Lily wiggled in her arms, making Sunny smile.
“Smells good, huh?”
Lily grinned and waved one of her little arms as if to agree.
“You are just too cute for words, little Miss Lily.” Sunny planted a kiss on her niece’s forehead then approached the stove to find mashed potatoes, green beans with bacon and a meat loaf that looked and smelled as if it would convert even avowed meat loaf haters.
She headed back into the living room to return Lily to the playpen to free up both hands for setting the table. A knock at the door surprised her and it was comical how Lily and Liam looked toward the sound in unison. They had twinning down.
“You expecting someone?”
“Nope.”
Lily still perched on her hip, Sunny crossed to the front door. When she opened it, Dean Wheeler stood there, hat in hand, somehow looking taller than when she’d last seen him. Grown men didn’t grow taller past their teens, did they?
“Hey, Dean, it’s nice to see you,” she said. “Is something wrong?”
Dean hesitated for a moment before responding. “Oh hey, Sunny. Uh, no, nothing wrong. Some of your dad’s mail was just in my box.”
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