Sofia briefly wondered if Camilla and Jordan were doing the same kind of cuddling that she’d been enjoying with Boone. It wouldn’t surprise her. After all, they were newlyweds.
“It’s just a nice day to stay home and get cozy under the covers.”
“I’d come and get you myself, but I heard that your thermostat was fixed. So I won’t worry.”
“I’m fine. Perfectly toasty and warm.” She stared at the roaring fire. Nothing but the truth.
Sofia hung up, having dispensed all her familial obligations. In no hurry to get her car, or get back into her clothes, she buried herself under the covers.
Now all she needed was Boone, and whatever home-cooked dinner his mother had brought over for him.
* * *
Boone ran down the steps and found Spot already sniffing at the front door as if he could smell a newcomer. He swung open the door in time to see his mother coming up the porch steps carrying a bag. Behind her was the golf cart she used to occasionally get around the ranch to her sons’ different cabins. Barefoot, he hopped over the ice-cold walkway and closed the distance between them, taking the bag from her. Spot did his yappy and yippy thing at the door but wisely stayed inside.
“What are you doing? You didn’t have to bring dinner. I could have come over to pick it up. It’s snowing.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” She stepped inside the foyer, dressed like a hardy ranch wife, in snow boots, a Western hat and a blue parka that came to her ankles. “Why are you barefoot?”
“When you texted, I was...upstairs. I just took a...um, a shower.”
Damn, he’d never been able to lie to his mother. Not convincingly, anyway.
“Uh-huh. And why isn’t your hair wet?”
“I didn’t wash it.” As if he was still eight and caught in an obvious lie, Boone still couldn’t give up. He just kept digging his own grave with a plastic spoon.
“You’re no better at this than you were as a child.” She shook her head and pursed her lips in mock disapproval. “Holt told me what happened at the Harvest Festival earlier. You two left very suddenly.”
His darn brother, snitching on Boone. “Okay, well, if you’re worried, Sofia is fine. No damages. I just brought her here so she could wash up. It was closer than her apartment.”
“Right.” His mother looked behind him. “Is she still here?”
Good grief. He didn’t answer, then she surprised him. She reached over and took the bag from him.
“Hey!”
“I decided you should come over for dinner tonight. I can’t actually remember the last time you made dinner with the family. Holt and Morgan come by semi-regularly with their kids.”
She’d conveniently forgotten that Morgan hadn’t always joined them for dinner, either, before he’d met his new bride. Before he and Neal had reconciled.
“Is this your way of inviting Sofia to dinner with the family?”
“If she’s here, then yes.”
“Great, if she’s here, I’ll invite her.”
“Fine, and if she’s not, I do still expect to at least see you for dinner. I’ve been wrong allowing you to stay away from your father. I think it’s called enabling. Reconciliation between you two is long past overdue.” She pointed her index finger at him. “Dinner is in thirty minutes. A prime rib roast and my creamy mashed potatoes, your favorite.”
With that she turned to get back on the cart and took herself and her dinner back down the hill.
Boone shut the door. So close and yet so far. He could still smell the delicious prime rib that had been in his hands seconds ago. His fantasies of eating in bed with Sofia, or in front of the fire, were squashed like a bug. When he made his way back upstairs, the most gorgeous woman in the world was pulling pants on past her curvy behind.
“What are you doing?”
“Your mother was downstairs. I can’t be naked when your mother is in the house!”
“It’s not like she has X-ray vision.”
“You don’t know that! Well, okay, she doesn’t have X-ray vision, but she has mother’s intuition! That’s a dangerous thing.” She took a breath. “Did you leave the food downstairs?”
He came to her side, pulling her into his arms, and inhaled her light and sweet scent. “I’m afraid she changed her mind and invited us to dinner tonight instead.”
She blinked. “Does she know I’m here?”
“She suspects. I swear she’s the one who’s really psychic.”
“It’s that mom’s intuition thing, I’m telling you!”
“I had wanted you to meet the rest of my family. My two idiot brothers. My mother. She’s a sweet woman when she’s minding her own business. I swear.” He smoothed back her wild mane of hair.
Personally, he loved this look on her. Those tight stretchy pants and a sweater. Her hair in the decidedly tousled look she seemed to like so much on him. He loved that he was the one responsible for that rumpled and tangled hair, as if he’d branded her. Changed her.
Made her his own.
“Boone, I can’t meet the rest of your family tonight. I have no clothes!”
“What do you mean? You’re wearing them.”
She gave him a “men are so hopeless” stare. “You saw how I dressed for dinner at my folks’. I wouldn’t want to give your family anything less than my best.”
“And you think your best has to do with the clothes you wear?”
“Presentation matters.”
“I know, you’ve said that. But I don’t believe it. You’re not that shallow.”
“Boone,” she said, sounding like he’d wounded her.
But they were going to have this talk. Fully clothed and therefore a lot more clearheaded, he walked her back to the bed, sat and pulled her into his arms.
“I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Sofia. But tell me why all this means so much to you. There’s a lot more to it than you let on.”
“What makes you think that?”
It did seem odd, but some days, he could almost read her thoughts. At times, he strangely felt that he knew her better than he knew himself.
“Because I know you, and you have a lot more to offer than a beautiful, as you put it, presentation.”
“I don’t want to bother you with this. It’s nothing, really.” But her shoulders lowered. “I know I seem totally confident all the time, and I really am.”
“But...?”
She pulled away from him and stared at the hands she’d folded on her lap. “I don’t even think Camilla knows about this. I never told her, or anyone else. Growing up in a family with five children, you can imagine money was tight. My parents did the best they could, but I wore Camilla’s hand-me-downs. I remember feeling so beautiful because I got to wear the dresses and outfits my big sister wore until she gave them to me. She took good care of them. Whenever she’d get a particularly nice outfit, I counted the days until she grew out of it. I had a favorite dress, a blue-and-yellow one that had been washed so much it slipped on me like a piece of silk.” She hesitated and ran a hand over her face. “Oh boy, this is so stupid.”
He tugged her hand away. “No, it’s not. Tell me.”
“I was in fifth grade when I first wore that dress to school feeling like a princess. Really working the dress, you know? It fit me perfectly, and I loved wearing it. And then one of the mean girls came up to me and said the dress had looked better on Camilla. Why couldn’t I get my own clothes and stop being such a copycat? Was I poor, or what?”
The image of a young Sofia feeling hurt and embarrassed for wearing hand-me-downs made his stomach tight as a fist. “I hope you told that girl where she could stick it.”
She laughed. “Something like that. That was the beginning of my realization that style is something you’re born with. Not always something you can put on like a coat. And that�
�s exactly what I told that girl. That I felt sorry for her because she needed new clothes for style, and I made every outfit my own. But I told myself that when I got older and could afford to buy my own clothes, I’d always have only the best.”
“All I can tell you, baby, is that my family is not going to judge you.”
“Yeah, I know. Good people never do. Maybe I’ve let my love for fashion take over my life too much. I don’t know. You reminded me of that little girl, and that style isn’t always about clothes. You, Boone Dalton, have the kind of style that money can’t buy.”
“Yeah?”
“You own it. You don’t apologize for who you are. Even if you’re wearing a simple pair of jeans and cowboy boots that I’ve seen a million times before.”
“Thank you, but this is about you.” He cupped her face with his palms and looked into her brown eyes. “What happened to that little girl who had her own style and didn’t need any fancy clothes to show it?”
“She’s in there, but has a better clothing allowance now.”
He chuckled. “Are you okay going to dinner, or do I have to make an excuse?”
“I’m fine. Like you, I’ll just have to work what I’m wearing.”
Then it hit him. This confident woman, this beauty that he’d never seen the slightest bit insecure, was worried about meeting his folks.
“You’re nervous.” He tugged on a lock of her hair.
“I want them to like me.”
“They’re going to love you. Are you kidding?” He studied her. “I mean, you’ve met Cornelius. Even you told me that my dad isn’t half as bad as him.”
“Yeah, well, maybe when I met Cornelius, I didn’t care what he thought of me.”
“Another way in which we’re alike. You notice there are a lot of those ways, right?”
“You do seem to have every song on my playlist.”
The words hardly needed to be said, but it was always good to speak the truth.
“I probably don’t need to say this, I mean, I hope I’ve made myself clear from the moment I met you. Because this isn’t business as usual for me. You and I, we’re...we started something real, and it means a lot to me. I’m not fooling around. I love you, Sofia. I can’t believe it happened so fast but there it is. Now, you can run away from me, or you can just see where this goes.”
As he stared into her stunned dark eyes, he calculated whether she would bolt now, or not until after dinner. If she made that choice, best that she did it now and he could avoid a greater heartache later.
Instead, she blinked a few times, smiled and cupped his jaw.
“I’ve fallen in love with you, and it feels pretty wonderful. It’s the first time for me.”
He reached for her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “Man, do I feel lucky.”
Chapter Fifteen
It was official. Boone’s older brother, Morgan, was the most like him.
Morgan had also claimed to fall in love at first sight with Erica. Boone never thought it would happen to him, but he’d now come to terms with the fact that he hadn’t been the same man since the moment he met Sofia. She’d wound herself around his heart without even trying. Plenty of beautiful women had come after him in the past, professing their undying love and devotion, even before the money windfall. But never anyone like Sofia. He knew without a doubt that there could never be anyone else for him.
After they’d both cleaned up a little, Boone grabbed the golf cart he kept in the barn behind his stables for the short ride to the main house. The distance between the homes made for a good walk, but not in this weather. He’d walk or ride a horse, but he didn’t want either Sofia or Burrito to get too cold. Bundled up in jackets and hats, he drove with Sofia, her hand on his thigh.
Her head turned to admire the hills and mountains dotted with snow. “So pretty out here.”
The snow had let up, but considering the sun had set, none of it had melted away. It wouldn’t last long on the ground, and in terms of Montana snowfalls, this one was an infant. They’d get a true snowstorm for the first time next month, and likely a white Christmas, too. He looked forward to spending many days in his warm bed with Sofia.
Erica greeted them at the door, holding little Josie. “Hey, you two! Glad to see you again. What’s it been, a few hours?”
He didn’t take his hand off Sofia’s lower back, guiding her through the entryway and toward the stone hearth with another roaring fire. Holt, Morgan, Shep and Dale were gathered in front of it.
Morgan turned from where he’d been poking at a log, and his face lit up when Erica rejoined him, as if she hadn’t only been gone for a few seconds. And to think Boone, Thing 1 and Thing 2 used to make fun of him privately. Speaking of his younger brothers, introductions were finally made between Sofia and the two people who’d underhandedly orchestrated their first meeting.
“These are the two bozos who wrote the letter that played on your heartstrings. Meet Shep, over there. He’s the short one.”
“Hey!” Shep said, but smiled. He was around six feet or so, only a little shorter than Boone.
“And that’s Dale. He’s the funny-looking one.”
Then his mother bustled in the room and offered her hand. “Hi, I’m Deborah.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Sofia Sanchez.”
“I know your mother, Mrs. Sanchez. She cuts my hair on a regular basis.” Deborah briefly touched her hair.
“What? You didn’t tell me that,” Boone said.
“I don’t tell you everything, honey.”
“And you’ve already met my father, Neal Dalton.” Boone introduced them without looking at Neal.
“Yes, we’ve met. How are you, Mr. Dalton?” Sofia asked with the smoothness of someone used to dealing with difficult men.
“Good, good. Nice to see you again.” Neal lazily put a hand around Deborah’s shoulders.
“Everything’s ready,” his mother said. “Let’s go sit down.”
She led them to the dining room with the twelve-person farm table. The place setting looked as if it were already the holidays. Boone hadn’t eaten at this table since last Christmas, but he knew his parents held dinner here at least once a week, though not always on a Sunday. Lately he’d made his excuses—too much work, problem with a horse—and Mom brought him leftovers. Apparently, that might be over now, and he’d need to sit with Neal or risk no more home-cooked meals.
As they ate and chatted about the first snowfall, Boone watched his father. He sat at the head of the table, a place Boone wasn’t certain he deserved. His mother should be there, the woman who’d single-handedly kept their little family together while Neal had been off gambling, drinking and...well, his mind didn’t want to go there. Because of her, and her alone, they were still a family.
He wanted to forgive Neal. Carrying around all this resentment inside wasn’t hurting anyone but Boone. Clearly, Neal continued to be unaffected by the fact that not all of his sons had forgiven him. As long as he had his wife, and she’d forgiven him, he seemed satisfied. But if that were true, would Neal still be trying to do something nice for Boone? If only it didn’t feel like his father was trying to buy Boone’s forgiveness.
“So, tell us how you two met,” his mother said. “I want to hear the whole story, Boone.”
“For that, you should ask Dale and Shep,” Boone said, his arm draped around Sofia.
Sofia smiled. “He won a contest.”
“We thought Boone could use a new wardrobe, so we entered him in that drawing BH Couture was having,” Shep piped in. “It was funny. Admit it.”
“That how you met Sofia? Through the contest you won?” Mom gaped.
“She was the stylist fitting me with the new wardrobe.” Still not quite believing his good fortune, Boone inched closer to her.
“I didn’t think he would actually win,” Dale said
, taking a heap of mashed potatoes. “Guess I’m that good.”
“We explained in the letter how much Boone needed a new wardrobe, because we all know that he does,” Shep said. “He has one pair of boots that he uses until they wear out.”
“Good grief, Shep,” Mrs. Dalton said.
“It was a good letter.” Sofia squeezed Boone’s thigh.
“We didn’t write anything that wasn’t true,” Dale said. “We’re not spending like those lottery winners who lose it all in the first year. And we’re ranchers, especially Boone.”
“What do you mean, especially Boone?” Morgan said. “I know my way around the ranch.”
“Take it easy,” Boone joked.
“I think it’s kismet,” his mother said. “Destiny. Would you like to hear how Neal and I met? I went to my first rodeo, where I got stood up by a blind date. Neal said the same thing had happened to him. He asked whether I’d like to join him for the day, so my first rodeo wouldn’t be a total waste. We were both there anyway, right? Turns out Neal had no date. He just wanted to spend the day with me. And the rest is history.”
“Dad, you sly dog,” Morgan said.
“We’ve all heard this story about a million times,” Holt said, taking the butter knife away from Robby.
“I saw a beautiful woman that I wanted to get to know better,” Neal said. “She didn’t know a doggone thing about the rodeo. I walked around pointing, ‘that’s a horse, that’s a bull.’ Really, it was almost that bad.”
“Oh, Neal! You’re exaggerating.” His mother playfully swatted her husband. “True, I didn’t know much about the rodeo, or ranch life, for that matter. But after that day, my life certainly changed. For the better. It was meant to be.”
“Kismet,” his father said, cutting into his prime rib.
Guess Boone wasn’t the only man in his family who’d ever lied to a woman just to get a chance to know her.
For a long time, Boone had a vision in his mind of marrying a woman just like his mother. Someone devoted to her family. Yet he’d fallen for Sofia, a woman so different from her. Yet there was something to be said for a woman like Sofia, who wouldn’t put up with the kind of crap his mother had over the years. Loyalty and devotion would only go so far to save a rocky marriage. His parents were lucky. The gambling windfall had certainly gone a long way to ease tensions. And his mother’s heart attack had been a wake-up call.
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