Ellie nodded. "I was miserable. I tried not to be."
He kissed her slowly, savoring the taste of her, wanting her now, but wanting more to tell her what had happened. "Whichever it was, he decided to do something about it. He told me he'd made a mistake about me. He said he was sorry." Rance marveled at the kid's guts. "He said Spike told him it wasn't bad to be wrong, but it was bad not to admit it if you knew. And then—" Rance smiled "—he asked me if I'd come home and marry you."
They looked at each other, then. Their eyes locked, sharing a joy so pure and so perfect that tears brimmed and spilled over.
"I love you," Ellie whispered against his lips.
And Rance whispered back, "I love you. All of you."
The tour bus was back.
"I am not goin' on a honeymoon in any damn neon pink tour bus!" Rance was nearly apoplectic, pacing a rut in Ellie's big, braided rug, glowering out the windows at the offensive vehicle, which was idling and fouling the pure mountain air with diesel fumes.
"It's not for you." Trey came down the stairs two at a time, looking brisk and cheerful and not at all like a man who had agreed to watch four children for two weeks while Rance and Ellie got away.
Rance hadn't wanted to "get away," at all.
"I just got here," he complained. They'd only waited a week before tying the knot. Just long enough to assemble his friends and hers, for Ellie to make Carrie and Clarissa bridesmaids' dresses and for a scab on Daniel's forehead to heal.
"We can't go anywhere," he'd told his pushy father.
"We might not be an old married couple, but we've got four kids."
"I'll watch them," Trey had volunteered.
Rance had agreed, only because he didn't think even his old man would be fool enough to do that.
"Never underestimate a Phillips," Trey said now, smiling beatifically at Ellie and Rance. Then he turned and hollered upstairs, "Come on, kids."
And the next thing Rance knew, Josh and Caleb and Daniel and Carrie—with Lone Bear and Clarissa snug in her arms—came down the stairs wearing backpacks and looking, for all the world, like a production number from The Sound of Music.
"Here comes Sandra now. So we're all set," Trey said, glancing toward the door. "We've made plans, the six of us. Do you know these children have never seen the ocean? They've never been to the redwoods? They've never ridden on a trolley car or crossed the Golden Gate Bridge?" He was almost rubbing his hands together in anticipation. "Say goodbye now," he told the kids. "Then go hop on the bus with Grandma."
Rance barely managed to get his mouth closed before Carrie planted a smacking goodbye kiss on his lips.
Over her head he stared at his father. "You and Sandra are taking the kids to California in a neon pink tour bus?"
Trey just grinned. Caleb and Daniel ran to get on the bus. Josh stopped long enough to roll his eyes and grin. Then he looked at Ellie and at Rance and nodded with satisfaction and gave them a thumbs-up.
"I don't believe it." Rance was still shaking his head when the bus pulled out. Four little heads appeared in the back window. Four hands waved madly. From the front Sandra and Trey waved, too.
"I believe it," Ellie said. "Your father always has a plan."
"He does?" Rance felt a stab of apprehension. "What plan?"
Ellie waved one last time and then, as the bus disappeared over the rise, she slipped her arms around him and lifted up to kiss his lips.
"What plan?" Rance insisted.
She took his hand and, smiling, drew him after her toward the bedroom. "Come along now and I'll show you."
"Oh." Rance grinned. "Well, even I'll go along with that."
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Cowboy on the Run Page 21
