Second Chance at Sunflower Ranch

by Carolyn Brown

  “I imagine that Lylah is damning him pretty good tonight without my girlfriend heaping coals upon his head. So, as my best friend, do you really think my girlfriend is ready for me to say those words to her, or should I wait?” Jesse asked as he opened the door with his left hand and stood to one side.

  “Lylah should have been there with him rather than helping clean up the church cupcake vendor site,” Addy said. “I would never let my husband go to a dance without me.”

  “Oh, really?” Jesse raised both eyebrows. “What if your husband only has eyes for his beautiful wife and would never, ever, not in a million years, cheat on her?”

  “Because Patrick can’t keep his hands and eyes off other women, I suppose you’re going to wait for another perfect moment to say those words to your girlfriend, aren’t you?” Addy sat down on the sofa and pulled off her boots. This idea of being Jesse’s best friend as well as his girlfriend was fun, and she really wanted to hear him say those words to her as his girlfriend, not as his best friend—romantic time and place didn’t matter. “What’s the difference in saying that you love me and that you’ve fallen in love with someone?”

  “I love you as a friend, Addy. I have always loved you. That’s in the mind, but now I’m in love with you, and that goes deeper because it’s in the heart and soul. To have both is…” He sat down beside her and ran a fingertip down her cheek, “a miracle. I don’t think many people get that in their lives.”

  Sparks danced around the room as his lips found hers in a long, lingering kiss. A fancy dinner with candles and white tablecloths and roses, or dancing to an emotional song could not have been more romantic than sitting right there on the sofa beside Jesse and feeling his lips on hers.

  When the kiss ended, she gazed into his eyes and said, “I’m in love with you, too, Jesse Ryan, and everything is perfect right here, right now in this bunkhouse.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Everything was too perfect. Jesse had said that he was in love with her. The two of them were settling down into a routine that she loved, but Addy wasn’t a teenager living in a world of unicorns and rainbows. The other shoe would drop, and that terrified her. She didn’t want the sweet little world she and Jesse were living in to crumble.

  The temperatures were already in the high nineties that morning when she and Jesse headed into the office to finish up the week’s computer work. Jesse was getting restless, but even after the stitches came out of his hand, Cody had declared he needed another week of easy exercises before he went back to heavy lifting.

  “I’m sick of this office,” he grumbled. “I want to be out there with Cody building the new barn.”

  “It’s only until Monday,” Addy said. “We’ll be done with the office work by noon, and then we’ll drive into Bonham to get sheet metal for the roof. You’ll be out there in this miserable heat with him on Monday, so suck it up, cowboy,” Addy said.

  “Is that my best friend or my girlfriend fussing at me?” he asked.

  “Both,” she told him. “Weren’t you ever put on desk duty in the Air Force?”

  “Only once, and I bitched about it the whole time,” he admitted.

  Addy pulled a chair around to sit beside him at the desk. “You’re doing great with this, darlin’.”

  “I can do it, but I don’t like it. I wish Lucas would come home. He’s as great at this stuff as he is with training horses,” Jesse said.

  “Maybe he will sometime soon.” Addy had been around Jesse when he was in a foul mood, but that had been twenty years before, not recently. As they got the bookwork ready to go to the CPA to be checked for the next time quarterly taxes rolled around, she had to take the bad with the good, just like Jesse had to do with her mood swings.

  They had just emailed all the material off to the CPA when Pearl poked her head in the door. “Grady is here and wants to talk to you, Addy. He’s out on the front porch swing.”

  “What does he want?” Jesse asked.

  “He didn’t volunteer, and I didn’t ask,” Pearl answered. “I just took out two glasses of sweet tea for y’all. The temperature has hit the triple digits now.”

  Jesse stood up and flexed his wrist. “I guess if I was supposed to go, you would have taken three glasses of tea, right?”

  Pearl nodded. “You can come on in the kitchen and help me make sandwiches for dinner. Mia and Cody are going to be in here in half an hour, and they’ll be starving.”

  Addy kissed Jesse on the cheek before she left the room. “This won’t take long, and then I’ll come help get dinner on the table.”

  “Maybe we can stop off for some ice cream or a snow cone after we get the sheet iron.” He smiled up at her.

  “Sounds like a great idea to me,” she agreed.

  She tried to stay positive, but she felt like she was in one of those dreams where she was trying to run and her boots felt like they were filled with concrete. Something wasn’t right. She could feel it all the way to the bottom of her heavy heart. Hopefully, the other shoe dropping didn’t have anything to do with Sonny’s health, not now, not when he and Pearl were finally going to have some freedom to travel.

  “I thought when the other shoe dropped, it would be something between me and Jesse,” she whispered as she went out to the porch. “Hello, Grady, what’s going on?”

  “Please, sit with me.” He patted the place beside him on the swing. “Have some tea.”

  She picked up the full glass and sat down on the other end of the swing, keeping a couple of feet between them.

  Don’t prolong the issue. Come right out and ask him what the hell he’s doing here, the voice in her head scolded.

  Grady took a long drink of his tea and set the glass back on the small end table. “I need help in more ways than one, and we used to be friends, so I came to you.”

  Addy drank part of her tea and held the cold glass against her cheek. “Spit it out, Grady.”

  “I need to get away for six months,” he said, “maybe a year.”

  “Why?” Addy asked.

  He removed his glasses and cleaned them with a white handkerchief that he pulled from his pocket. “I called my new girlfriend Amelia when we were…” He stammered and blushed. “When we were…”

  “When you were in bed?” Addy asked.

  “Yes,” Grady said. “You were right. I was just trying to replace my wife with another woman. I’m not ready to move on yet and I’m confused, so I’ve agreed to a stint with Doctors Without Borders. Do you think I should go?”

  “That’s your decision, not mine, and even if we were still good friends, I wouldn’t make the decision for you.”

  “Addy, I’ve never been good at decisions. My folks decided that I should be a doctor. Amelia asked me on our first date. She’s the one who proposed to me and planned the wedding. She decided that we should stay in this area when we were offered jobs in big cities. Then Aurelia decided I couldn’t be friends with you, and now Crystal—I went out with her because she had a name that didn’t sound like Amelia—has dumped me. Tell me what to do,” Grady said.

  “I’d say it’s time for you to examine your life and decide what makes you happy,” Addy said. “Take control and learn to stand up for what you want.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that,” he almost whined.

  “Well, it’s your job to do if you’re ever going to be happy,” she said.

  “Are you happy? I hear that you’re living with Jesse now.” Grady’s tone turned a little cold.

  “Yes, I am, and I’ve promised Cody to help him with his new project,” she said.

  “Maybe you should check into Jesse’s past before you make up your mind. He wasn’t an angel those twenty years that he was in the military.” Grady tapped a folder that was lying between them on the seat.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Just a little research that I thought you might be interested in,” Grady said.

  Addy felt a chill chase down her spine in spite of the h
eat when she saw Jesse Ryan’s name on the outside. “What’s in it? You had Jesse investigated? Why would you do such a thing?”

  Grady’s smile looked more like a sneer. “I figured out a couple of years ago that Mia belonged to him, and then when I heard he was coming home for good, I thought you might be right where you are today—in love with him all over again. So I did a little background research on him. That’s what friends are for, right?”

  Addy stared at the folder as if it were a rattlesnake. The other shoe had definitely dropped. “That’s just wrong. You shouldn’t pry into his past.”

  “He’s got an exemplary military record, but his personal life is what you’ll want to take a look at. Do you want to spend your life with a man who hopped from one woman to another? He’ll grow tired of you in six months, and then you’ll be asked to leave the ranch. You don’t have a thing in common with him.”

  Grady stood up, but he didn’t pick up the folder. “You can take that thing with you, and if you hadn’t ended our friendship, I damn sure would today. What you did is inexcusable.”

  “Read that before you get too involved.” Grady crossed the porch and yard, and went to his SUV.

  Addy picked up the folder and went into the cool house. She sat down on the ladder-back chair right inside the door and stared at the bright red folder.

  “What’s that?” Jesse startled her when he peeked around the kitchen door.

  “Grady isn’t the friend I thought he was,” she said.

  “Okay, but what’s in that folder?” Jesse sat down in the chair beside her.

  “This is a full investigative report on your military and your personal life for the past twenty years. I’m not sure how he got all this, but here it is,” Addy said.

  Jesse inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. “Why in the hell would he do that?”

  “He says that he knew I’d fall in love with you, and I should know what kind of man you are,” Addy answered.

  “I have not been a saint, Addy,” Jesse admitted in a husky voice.

  “I didn’t think you had been,” she said. “I haven’t even opened this, but Grady read it and said that you hopped from woman to woman.”

  “I did have a few relationships, a few one-night stands, and some second and third dates. None of them lasted because I kept measuring all the women by your standard, and they all came up short,” he admitted.

  Addy stood up and headed for the office with him right behind her. “I’m all for leaving the past in the past, darlin’,” she said as she stuck the whole folder into the shredder. “I love you, Jesse. What either of us did or didn’t do the past twenty years is over and done with. We don’t need to hash out all that old news, and I’m not worried about the future.”

  * * *

  Jesse took her in his arms and held her close to his chest. “You are one amazing woman, Addison Hall.”

  “Thank you for that, Jesse, but just for the record, how many women are we talking about?” she asked.

  “Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine,” he teased.

  “Fair enough.” She giggled as she went up on her tiptoes for a kiss. “We’ll just nail that box shut with tenpenny nails.”

  “I agree, but I can promise you one thing,” he whispered. “There won’t be any children coming out of the woodwork.”

  “Other than Mia, you mean?” she asked.

  “That’s right, and I can promise you another thing. I’m right proud to be Mia’s father,” Jesse said. “Now, I hear folks coming in for dinner and the noise of Dad’s cane tapping on the hardwood floor. Let’s eat and get a visit before we head off to Bonham. I was right to measure all the other women by your standard.” Jesse took her hand in his and led her across the hallway into the kitchen. “You always put other folks before yourself.”

  “Hey, what was Grady doing here?” Sonny asked.

  “I’ll tell you all about it after you say grace.” Jesse was in a state of shock that Addy had shredded the file without even looking inside it. He doubted that the thing was as complete as Grady had thought because it simply didn’t look thick enough to have covered all his military commendations plus the women that he had spent time with through the years. Besides, how on earth would anyone know about some of those ladies? They were scattered all over the blasted world.

  Sonny bowed his head and said a short prayer, then reached for a couple of sandwiches. “I’m ready now. Did Grady have bad news about me?”

  “Nope, it was bad news about me.” Jesse chuckled and told them what Grady had done.

  “Sweet Lord!” Mia gasped. “That’s downright dirty of him, and to think I actually liked the man at one time. Why would he do that anyway?”

  Addy poured chips onto her plate and then passed the bag over to Jesse. “He wanted me to be his friend and tell him how to live his life. When I refused, he gave me that file.”

  “That makes him even worse,” Mia said.

  Jesse kept quiet and let Addy tell the rest of the story. With every comment from Mia, his heart got lighter and lighter. After those first few rocky days, it was great to see his daughter standing up for him and her mother.

  “If he goes through with joining Doctors Without Borders, he will probably get sent to one of the small African villages.” Cody reached for the pitcher in the middle of the table, refilled his glass, and then passed it around the table. “If he’s not fully committed to this, he’ll be miserable. When he puts his name on that contract, they don’t come get him until the time is finished.”

  “He deserves it,” Pearl said, “but he seemed so nice when he was treating Sonny and was Addy’s friend. I can believe he has trouble making decisions. He was one of those kids—one that his parents did everything for him, and he never really had any hard knocks in life. He was married to Amelia when his folks died. I guess he just never learned to take care of things on his own. Hard to believe he’d do something so shady as to have Jesse investigated.”

  “Yep, but then one never knows what they’ll do if they want someone to do something they won’t do,” Addy said and then focused on Jesse. “You ready to drive to the lumber yard and get these folks some more building material?”

  Jesse laid his napkin on the table and stood up. “Only if they’ll promise that they will slow down a little so I can, at least, say I got to have a hand in building our new barn. I’ll want to tell future generations that I helped build the barn the year I came home from the military.”

  Cody picked up another sandwich with one hand and the bag of chips with the other. “We promise we’ll save a nail or two special just for you. Mama, it’s so nice to be able to sit down to a meal in air-conditioned comfort. I’ll never take home for granted again.”

  “Me either,” Jesse agreed.

  Driving to Bonham, even with a trailer hitched up behind his truck, took fifteen minutes, barely enough time to cool down the cab. Jesse turned the radio to the station that played the older, traditional country music, and the first song the DJ played was Shania Twain’s “From This Moment On.”

  He braked and pulled the vehicle over to the side of the road, parked in the gravel, and turned up the radio as high as it would go. He hopped out of the truck, rounded the front end, and opened the door. “My name is Jesse Ryan, and I’ve been admirin’ you for a while now. May I have this dance?”

  Addy put her hand in his, slid out of the truck, and wrapped her arms around his neck. He two-stepped with her all around the truck and didn’t even miss a beat when two vehicles went by and honked.

  The lyrics said that life had begun from this moment, and that she belonged right beside him. Jesse breathed in the scent of her hair and hummed along with the song.

  Addy leaned back slightly and sang right along with Shania, saying that from this moment she had been blessed, and that she would give her last breath for his love.

  When the song ended, Jesse dropped down on one knee and took her hands in his. “I don’t have a ring, and this isn’t romantic, b
ut after listening to that song, I want to say this. I love you, Addison Hall. With my heart and soul, I love you. Will you marry me?”

  As luck would have it, the very next song on the radio was “Cowboy Take Me Away” by the Dixie Chicks. Addy dropped on her knees in front of him and nodded. “Yes, a thousand times, yes.”

  Jesse jumped up, scooped her into his arms like a new bride, and spun around in circles until they were both dizzy. Then he put her on the ground and began to dance to the music. “I’m so happy that my heart is pounding.”

  “I can feel it,” Addy said. “This song is from me to you. Like it says, cowboy, take me away and fly me as high as you can for the rest of our lives, Jesse.”

  “I’ll do my damnedest to make you happy,” he said.

  “Right back at you.” She nestled her cheek against his chest. “Someday, I want to tell our grandchildren about the day you proposed, and how romantic it was.”

  “I’m glad it doesn’t take much to please you.” Jesse knew that he was the luckiest cowboy in the whole state of Texas.

  “I love you so much,” Addy said as she sealed their new promises with a long kiss.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Addy would have been happy to go to the courthouse, get married in ten minutes, and go home, but Pearl and Mia weren’t having any part of that idea. They decided that the last day of July would be a nice day for a wedding. Henry would still be at the ranch and could attend. Pearl and Sonny had decided to drive to Colorado with Henry and help get him settled into his new home on the first day of August, so everything would work out just fine. Lucas even said that he could fly in for a couple of days to attend the wedding.

  Now, the day had arrived, and Addy was so nervous about the whole affair that she really wished that she and Jesse could run away and elope. For a whole five minutes, she was alone in the Sunday school room that they used for a bride’s dressing area. She sat down in a rocking chair and stared out the window at big fluffy white clouds. Twenty years ago, on the last day of July, she had taken a pregnancy test and found out that she had gotten pregnant that last night Jesse was home. Whoever said that a girl couldn’t get pregnant when she and a guy had only had sex one time had rocks for brains.