“Being feminine isn’t about what you wear.”
Nicki smiled. “I’m independent, too. I can milk a cow, change a tire, fix a tractor engine, do my taxes.”
“I get the picture,” Garrett agreed. “And none of that makes you any less of a princess. It’s good that you can take care of yourself. I just think you should be cherished like a princess.”
Nicki blushed. “You don’t have to say that. I’m feeling a little better about my mother.”
“This isn’t about your mother.” Garrett didn’t think his proposal was going very well. If he’d learned anything about women from his aunt Rose and Chrissy, it was that he shouldn’t get involved in a mother/daughter problem. He needed to turn a corner here quickly.
“Well, I appreciate you trying to make me feel better anyway.” Nicki smiled.
“I’m not trying to make you feel better.” Garrett felt his voice rise in frustration. “I’m trying to propose.”
“Oh.” Nicki looked stunned. She jerked her head up so fast, some of the dust even fell out of her hair. “To me?”
Garrett figured a proposal couldn’t go much worse. “Of course, to you.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t mean for it to be so abrupt. I tried to give you a hint earlier with the whales.”
“Oh.”
Garrett thought Nicki looked a little white. “You’re not going to faint on me, are you? If you hang your head down between your knees and take deep breaths, it will be all right.”
Nicki closed her eyes. “That only works if you’re sitting in a chair. I’ll be fine. Just give me a minute.”
“I’ve got all kinds of time.”
Nicki took two deep breaths. “You mean marriage. You and me?”
“That was the general idea.”
Nicki wondered when her world had gone crazy on her. She’d never expected to meet a man like Garrett. He could be in a fairy tale with all his talk of wanting to be a hero for his bride. A hero was a notch above a prince any day.
Garrett had to talk. “I made you something—I know they’re not real and you deserve ones that are real.” He opened the bag and offered Nicki the bouquet of roses. “Your mother assured me you’d remember what these are.”
“Cowboy roses,” Nicki said softly as she accepted them. “They’re perfect.”
Nicki put the cloth roses up to her nose just as though she could smell them. “I used to dream about cowboy roses.”
“That’s good then.” Garrett decided things were going a little better. “Well, I just wanted you to know how I feel. I’ve never met anyone like you.”
Nicki smiled. “I’m glad.”
“And I want you to remember me,” Garrett continued. “Even if you get married to Lester, I want you to remember me.”
“I will.”
Garrett looked at Nicki. He’d keep the picture of her eyes looking up at him in his heart forever. Quiet glowing emeralds. “I’ll remember you, too.”
“I’m going to kiss you now, so I don’t want you to faint on me.” Garrett leaned toward Nicki and she didn’t move away.
A kiss can be about a million things, Nicki thought. But not every kiss made a woman feel as if she was a princess. It was too bad that every fairy tale didn’t have a happy ending.
“I can’t go with you,” Nicki whispered finally.
“I know.” Garrett drew her into his arms anyway.
“I need to be sensible.”
“I know.”
Garrett kissed her again. He was beginning to understand why the prince had been willing to search the whole kingdom for his princess. There would be no one else like Nicki in his life.
Mrs. Hargrove looked at Nicki’s tearstained face. “Explain it to us again, dear.”
Nicki had come running into the kitchen with tears streaming down her face. Lillian and Mrs. Hargrove had finished washing the last Thanksgiving pot and were having a cup of tea at the kitchen table.
“Life isn’t like some fairy tale,” Nicki said, and started to cry in earnest. “I have responsibilities. I can’t just run off with any man who comes along who thinks I’m a princess.”
“He thinks you’re a princess?” Mrs. Hargrove said brightly. “That’s a good sign.”
“But I have chores to do,” Nicki wailed. “I can’t fall in love.”
“Well, someone else can do the chores,” Lillian said as she leaned in to hold her daughter. “That’s no reason to stay.”
Nicki stopped crying and hiccuped. She pulled away from her mother’s reach. “I’m not like you. I keep my commitments.”
Lillian sat back in her chair. “I see.”
“Dear, I hope you’re not talking about a commitment to Lester,” Mrs. Hargrove said. “I’m not sure he’s the right man for you.”
“I’m not talking about Lester. Well, not much. I mean the land. I’m committed to the Redfern Ranch. Dad gave it to me and Reno. He meant for me to stay.” Nicki dried her eyes and looked at her mother. “I’m not going to leave everything like you did.”
Nicki sat up straighter in her chair. She was a strong woman. She had her land. She had her boots. She could do what needed to be done in life.
“Oh, dear, is that what you think?” Lillian finally spoke. “That you need to stay because I left?”
“Dad was never the same after you left. He loved you and you left him. I’ve learned a person can’t count on love, but the land stays with you.”
There was silence in the kitchen.
“Lillian, you have to tell her what happened,” Mrs. Hargrove finally said as she rose from the table. “I’ll go wait in the living room so you have some privacy.”
“You don’t need to leave.” Nicki smiled at Mrs. Hargrove. “She doesn’t need to tell me anything. I know what happened.”
“No,” Mrs. Hargrove said as she stood up. “You don’t.”
Lillian waited for Mrs. Hargrove to walk into the living room. “Do you want some tea?”
Nicki shook her head. “What does Mrs. Hargrove mean? You left Dad—that’s all there is to it.”
Lillian shook her head. “What Mrs. Hargrove wants me to tell you is why I left. I’m still not sure it is a good idea. And I’m not saying that it excuses my leaving. If I’d had as much character as you have, I would have stayed and worked the situation out. But I just didn’t know what to do but leave.”
“Dad said you left to pursue your dancing career.”
Lillian smiled wryly. “That’s what I did, but that’s not why I left.” Lillian looked down at her hands. “Do you remember Betty, Jacob’s wife?”
“Of course. The two of them used to be over here all the time.”
Lillian nodded. “Betty and your father were having an affair.”
“What?”
“I didn’t believe it when Jacob first told me, but then I asked your father and he admitted it.”
“Jacob knew?”
“He knew. Mrs. Hargrove knew. And Elmer. Except for Betty and your father, that was all. I left the day after he admitted it to me. Jacob asked us all to keep it quiet because he was fighting to save his marriage.”
“I never knew. I thought you left because you didn’t like me anymore,” Nicki said.
“Never,” Lillian said as she leaned toward Nicki to give her a hug.
This time Nicki didn’t move away.
“Don’t give up on love if he’s the one you want,” Lillian whispered into Nicki’s hair. “Don’t make my mistake. If you love him, you can work it out.”
“But he moves all over and I stay in one place.”
Lillian smiled. “You’ve never heard of compromise? Maybe you could move a little and he could stay a little.”
Nicki frowned a minute then smiled. “That doesn’t sound so hard.”
Lillian kissed her daughter on the forehead. “It won’t be. Now go. I heard the truck start up ten minutes ago.”
“He’s leaving?”
Nicki stood and started walking t
oward the kitchen door. She grabbed a coat off the rack before she opened the door and went outside. Even when she shaded her eyes with her hand, Nicki could barely see the truck down the road. It was a dot disappearing on the white horizon.
She slipped the coat on over her pants suit and started running toward the barn. The keys were in the pickup. Nicki opened the side door to the barn and stopped. The pickup stood where it always did, right in front of the double doors that led outside. But it wasn’t going to be easy to move it. Several of the older men from dinner had set their folding chairs around the truck. Someone—Nicki thought it might be Jacob—was even taking a nap in the back of the pickup.
Nicki turned around and walked out of the barn. It would be easier to take Misty.
“Sorry,” Nicki said as she helped the last of the twins down from the saddle. “I’ll bring her back in a few minutes.”
“She blows smoke in the air,” one of the twins announced. “I think she can fly.”
The other twin nodded. “She just doesn’t want to fly because she’s afraid she’ll scare the chickens. That’s what Reno says.”
“You can get the kids to the house all right?” Nicki asked Reno and Chrissy who had been leading Misty around in circles until Nicki came.
“Of course.” Reno looked offended. “They’re my pals.”
Nicki swung herself up into the saddle. Some days it paid to wear boots. She turned Misty around and nudged the mare with her knees.
Misty gave a happy snort and galloped for the gate.
Nicki kept her head down and her collar pulled up. The wind had a bite to it, but it also smelled fresh. A few sprinkles of snow were falling. Nicki watched as the gray and white clumps of ground sped past Misty’s feet. Nicki looked up once to see Garrett’s truck. She wondered what he was thinking.
Garrett was beginning to wish he’d taken his swing at Lester when the man had stepped out of the barn as Garrett was walking back to his truck. Instead, Garrett had shaken the man’s hand and confused him by congratulating him. Not that hitting Lester would change anything, Garrett told himself, but he was itching to do something.
Garrett decided he should have had real flowers. Maybe when he got into Miles City he could stop at a florist and ask them to deliver a bouquet of roses to Nicki. Just so she’d know he wanted her to have them.
From Miles City, he would head out to—Garrett realized he didn’t care where he headed out to. He’d already been most of the places he’d ever hoped to see—some of them four or five times.
Still, he had the freedom to go anywhere he wanted.
Yeah, he thought as he turned on his truck’s radio, he might be unlucky in love, but he was a lucky man because he could drive Big Blue anywhere his heart desired.
What was wrong with him? Garrett thought to himself. He didn’t have the freedom to go where he wanted. The only place his heart wanted to go was five miles behind him and he was headed away from it with every turn of Big Blue’s tires. What kind of luck was that?
The road Garrett was driving down was a country dirt road with shallow ditches between it and lines of barbed-wire fence. Cows watched him as he drove by, and the road was narrow. There was no place to turn around until he came to the main road a couple of miles ahead of him.
Garrett pressed a little harder on the gas pedal.
Nicki thought she’d never catch Garrett. Just when she thought she’d make it, he sped up as if he was in some kind of a race. She wondered if he saw her in the rearview mirror. She probably looked a sight, like a madwoman, with her coat flapping about her as she and her horse charged after him. She’d been trying to tell him she wasn’t a princess—at least now he might believe her.
Garrett blinked. He saw a flash of green in his mirror and then he hit a bump and the vision vanished. He craned his neck to get a better look. He was catching glimpses of a cape or a jacket flapping in the wind. His best guess was that something was following directly behind him and a piece of cloth was flapping about. He strained his neck even farther. He should be able to see if it was a car. But it was something thinner than a car. A bicycle couldn’t go that fast so it must be some kid on a motorcycle.
Garrett slowed down. He had no desire to race a kid on a motorcycle on Thanksgiving Day in the cold and snow. He’d let the kid pass him.
Garrett pulled the truck over to the edge of the road and stopped. He checked the mirror to see how far back the motorcycle was and saw it wasn’t a motorcycle at all. It was Misty. And Nicki.
Garrett rolled down his window. The wind was gusty and more snow flurries were beginning to fall.
Nicki reined Misty in. Finally. She and Misty were both breathing hard and their breath was making clouds around their faces. But they were here.
Oh, no, Nicki thought. They were here. She’d concentrated so hard on catching up with Garrett that she hadn’t thought of what to say to him when she actually caught up with him.
“You left,” she accused him. The wind carried Nicki’s words away and she leaned closer to yell inside Garrett’s truck. “I didn’t know you were going to leave.”
“I said goodbye.” Garrett wondered if the sun had come out from behind a cloud. Even with the wind and the snow, the day seemed warmer and brighter than before.
“Well, you should have told me you were leaving. And you didn’t get any leftover pie,” Nicki yelled into the truck, her hands cupped around her mouth.
“Oh.” Had he heard right? The day dimmed again. He rolled his window completely down. “You came to bring me pie?”
“Well.” Even in the cold, Nicki felt her face flush. She took a deep breath. “No, I forgot the pie.”
“That’s okay. Tell Lester he can have my piece.”
Nicki forced herself to take another breath and then she spoke loudly. “I came about the whale. You said you’d take me to see a whale.”
Garrett knew now why a deaf man would sing. He leaned out the door window and felt the bite of snow on his skin. It could have been a caress. “You don’t need to go anywhere you don’t want to go. I was going to turn around when I got up to the country road.”
Nicki wasn’t sure she had heard all of that. “You were coming back?” Nicki straightened herself on her horse. “Did you forget something?”
Garrett leaned out the window so he could see Nicki’s face. The wind had whipped her hair around her head and put red blotches on her face. “I forgot you. You’re my princess.”
Nicki started to grin. The man was completely blind. “A princess would have waited at the castle for her hero to come back.”
“Not in my fairy tale,” Garrett said as he leaned far enough out of his window to kiss Nicki.
Epilogue
Nicki hated to admit it, but her mother was right. Compromise did make everything possible.
When Nicki admitted to Garrett that she had always wanted rose petals to line her bridal path, he swore that’s what she’d have even though she had added that she didn’t need them. She knew there wouldn’t be enough roses in Dry Creek until Mrs. Hargrove’s flowers started to bloom in June.
“June!” Garrett had sounded stunned when she told him that. Then he swallowed. “I didn’t know it would be that long, but if that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do.”
Nicki smiled. “There’s nothing so special about roses. Maybe I could have carnations or something. Then we could get married in February.”
“Carnations don’t have any smell, but I like the sounds of February. We’ll ask Matthew if the church is available.”
“Matthew said any time we picked, he’d make sure it was available.”
Nicki was surprised how much her feelings about the Dry Creek church had changed. She’d grown up in that church, but it wasn’t until she forgave her mother that she was able to feel God’s love wrap around her. Now she felt that love every time she walked into the church. She wouldn’t want to be married in any other place.
Garrett seemed to feel the same way.
He was silent for a moment.
“I had no idea God cared about me the way He does,” Garrett finally added.
“I know what you mean,” Nicki said. She used to think God didn’t care about the Redfern family, but now she saw His blessings everywhere.
Earlier that day, they had walked around the site of the home they were building on the other side of the bunkhouse. Garrett had pulled enough money out of his savings account to pay for the complete three-bedroom house.
Nicki had never thought she could have her own home and stay on the ranch, as well. But then, Nicki was looking forward to many things she’d never thought she could have.
For their honeymoon trip, Nicki wanted to take a trip with Garrett in Big Blue.
“We’ve got the bed right in back,” Garrett reminded her and winked. “In case we want a nap.”
“We won’t make it out of Dry Creek if all we do is sleep.”
Garrett leaned over to hug Nicki. Garrett never thought he’d know the kind of contentment he had these days. Maybe half of his desire to see new places was just a way of looking for a community. Now that he’d found that community, he didn’t need to keep looking.
“But I still want to see the ocean.” Nicki sighed as she felt Garrett’s arms wrap around her.
Garrett wondered if the compromise he and Nicki had made had flipped them both around. They had agreed that Garrett would make short hauls during the winter months to make money and then help around the ranch during the rest of the year. Nicki had done the financial calculations and figured they’d double the income of the ranch that way. Garrett was happy with the arrangement and was discovering he liked the time best when he was on the ranch.
Nicki, on the other hand, was sending away for travel brochures and making her list of places she wanted to see.
“You promised me the ocean,” Nicki whispered with her head snuggled on Garrett’s chest.
A Rich Man for Dry Creek / a Hero for Dry Creek Page 32
