A Dark & Stormy Knight: A McKnight Romance (McKnight Romances)

by Quint, Suzie

  There was no way he could explain how that had felt, but he tried anyway. “It was the most wonderful thing I could imagine because it was you. But it was also scary as hell.”

  “Why would that scare you?” Georgia asked softly.

  He couldn’t tell if she was patronizing him or not. “It was my job as a man to take care of you, to make sure we had a roof over our heads, food to eat, a car to get around, and I’d never done anything but work for Daddy on the ranch.”

  “Sol, we were never going to starve or be homeless,” she said. “Your parents wouldn’t have let that happen.”

  He’d known this was going to be hard to explain. What he hadn’t known was that it still touched a sensitive spot inside him. He stood and paced across the kitchen. Five whole steps. It wasn’t far enough. He spun around. “I know that.” His voice came out too loud. He throttled it back. “But it wasn’t their job to give us those things. It was mine.” He pounded his fist against his chest on the last word. “My job.” Another blow. “My responsibility.” And again.

  “I was the man. Except I’d never even taken care of myself. How was I supposed to know whether or not I could take care of us? Hell, we were living here, in a trailer my folks own.” He held out his hands, encompassing the walls that surrounded them. “We didn’t even have to pay rent. It felt . . .” His hands fell to his sides. He couldn’t begin to explain how many times he’d felt like a little kid playing house. How he’d felt so unsure of himself in the role he’d so badly wanted to fill. “I wanted to be a man for you. One you could count on.”

  Lightning flashed outside. A second later, the lights inside flickered. Even their breathing seemed to hang in suspense as they waited to see what would happen. Then the power stabilized.

  “You never said anything,” Georgia said.

  “Geez, Georgia, I couldn’t even articulate it to myself back then. I just . . . felt it.”

  “So . . .” She hesitated and bit one side of her lower lip.

  Sol waited for the ax to drop. What was going through her mind that she needed to phrase so carefully?

  “How did riding bulls help?”

  Sol drew a deep breath. This was the part that wasn’t going to make sense to her. He knew because it barely made sense to him. “I thought bull riders were real men. When I hung out with them, when they accepted me as one of their own, I didn’t feel like such a fraud. It felt like proof I could be the man I wanted to be. For you.”

  “Well, that was pretty dumb.” Georgia’s hand leaped up to cover her mouth, her eyes wide.

  Sol barked a laugh. Leave it to Georgia to call him on that. “Yeah, it was dumb. But it also worked.” He leaned his butt against the counter. “I was out there, taking responsibility for myself. When I got thrown, Daddy wasn’t there to pick me up. When I was broke from not winning, Mama wasn’t there to feed me. I picked myself up, managed to keep body and soul together, and I always made the next rodeo. Knowing I could survive made me a man. I could take care of myself and anyone else I needed to.”

  He risked a glance at her, but her face told him nothing except that she was listening intently to what he was saying. “If I’d quit rodeoing for you . . . If I’d lived inside the safety net of the ranch, I’d have always wondered how I’d manage if everything went wrong somehow. Would I be able to take care of you and the kids we’d’ve had? I don’t think I’d’ve liked myself if I couldn’t answer that question. I don’t think I’d have been the man you deserved.”

  He swallowed once, hard, then said the most difficult words of his life. “You were right to leave me.”

  ###

  Sol thought she’d done the right thing.

  Georgia felt as if her lung capacity had shrunk by half. Odd, that, because her chest felt hollow. There should have been plenty of room to draw a deep breath, but it still felt beyond her ability.

  How? How could he think that?

  Had he really been that afraid?

  She flashed on one of the more memorable moments in their marriage, one she’d treasured at the time. Sol had come home for the midday meal, but they hadn’t eaten. Instead, they’d ended up in the bedroom. Afterward, as Georgia was tucking her T-shirt into her jeans, she’d looked up to find Sol sitting on the edge of the bed, his lips parted slightly while his eyes slowly scanned her as if he’d never really seen her before.

  She cocked her head at him questioningly.

  “I can’t believe it,” he’d said softly.

  “Can’t believe what?”

  “You really married me.”

  “Ten days ago. In Las Vegas. You were there, remember?”

  “Yeah, but . . . You really did it.”

  She knelt on the bed, straddling his lap, and looked down into his eyes, so soft a gray, they made her think of the burned-out embers of a campfire. “Yes, I really did. Why are you acting so surprised?”

  “I don’t know. It just hit me. Georgia Carsten married me. Georgia Carsten McKnight is my wife.” He took a deep breath. “I’m her husband.” He traced her jaw with his fingertips, his touch so light, it felt like a whisper. “I keep pinching myself ‘coz this has to be a dream, but then I do, and it’s not, and it kinda takes my breath away.”

  Georgia smiled, remembering their first kiss when she’d literally knocked the breath from him by falling on top of him. “Should I give you mouth-to-mouth?”

  His smile widened. “Yes, please.”

  So she’d kissed him. And he’d started taking off the clothes she’d just put on, and their usually athletic lovemaking had instead been tender and gentle as Sol had touched her with adoring hands and taken her excruciatingly slowly to the highest mountaintop before he’d let her free-fall under him.

  And now, all these years later, she had a glimpse of what that really meant to him.

  So maybe she’d had a clue.

  Lightning lit the sky outside, the thunder following almost immediately. Georgia jumped, returning to the present and the big question that still remained. Was it too late for them?

  A second later, the power went out. Damn, it was dark out here in the country.

  “Fuck,” Sol muttered. She heard him push his chair back, then a drawer slid open, and she could hear him stirring things around inside.

  She’d convinced herself she needed to see his face when they finally got to this point, but now she wasn’t so sure. He thought she’d been right to leave him. What if he thought they should stay apart? Could she really stand to see that on his face? The darkness suddenly felt like a friend.

  Now was the time to say the things she needed to. She started softly. “All summer, people have been telling me I was still in love with you.”

  The sounds of Sol’s fumbling in the drawer stopped.

  “Tommy, then Bethany, even Daniel.” Yes, even Daniel, who’d never met Sol before Eden’s rodeo, had known. “I thought they were all nuts. I mean . . . Wouldn’t I have known?”

  In the darkness, the small sounds she hadn’t been aware of before seemed amplified. The rain hitting the window, the wind curling around the trailer. But nothing from Sol’s direction. A lighting strike gave her a strobe-lit view of him standing in front of the open drawer.

  “I meant to marry Daniel. I told myself he’d make a good father for Eden. That we could show her how men and women should be together.”

  The drawer shut. Not a slam, but in the dark, the sound cracked.

  “It was a silly idea. It didn’t even occur to me until after Mama’s stroke.” She swallowed. “Until I knew I was coming back here for the summer.” And she’d never even wondered why it was suddenly so appealing.

  Without light, the space inside the trailer felt amplified and hollow. She almost expected her words to echo.

  “I used Daniel as a shield because I needed someone standing between us. Maybe that’s what Tommy was, too.”

  Finally, a sound from Sol. The scrape of a match, followed by a yellow flame. The flame doubled as it caught on the wick of
a taper.

  She watched as he shook out the match and threw it in the sink. He tilted the candle over a saucer, letting the wax drip into a puddle. Without looking up, he said, “He has a ring for you.”

  She drew a breath. “No. The ring was never for me. He’s back with his ex-wife. He . . . He thought you needed your chain yanked.”

  Sol’s head turned toward her, but in the candlelight, his expression was unreadable. Sitting beyond the circle of light, she doubted he could read her face any better.

  After another few drips, he affixed the candle to saucer and brought it to the table, the flame flickering, sending wild shadows everywhere.

  She looked out the window, but all she could see in the dark pane was the reflection of the candle. The flame steadied, flickering only a little every once in a while.

  She touched the flame’s reflection, almost expecting to feel heat, but she found only cold, smooth glass.

  “It turns out everyone was right. I’ve never stopped loving you.”

  Lightning flashed again, erasing the candle in the window.

  Unable to bear the silence from his side of the table, she said, “I went to the rodeo Saturday to see if I could stand watching you ride.” She didn’t want to look at him, but she couldn’t stop herself. His eyes were dark pools, impossible to read. “It wasn’t easy but I did it. And I can do it again. As often as I need to.”

  What more was there to say? Begging would only embarrass them both. So she waited.

  For what seemed forever.

  At last, in a tentative voice, he said, “Are you saying . . . ?”

  “Yes,” Georgia said, surprised by how strong her voice was. “I want to come home.”

  ###

  “You want to come home?” Sol felt like an idiot, repeating Georgia, but after everything they’d been through this summer, she couldn’t mean that the way it sounded. Was that hope in her eyes? The lighting made it hard to tell, but why would she doubt that he’d take her back? He had to be misinterpreting her meaning. “You mean you want to move back to Hero Creek?” he asked tentatively.

  “Sol, I—” She wet her lips, and her voice softened. “I want to come home. To you.” She dropped her gaze to the candle. “If you’ll have me.”

  “If I’ll have you?” There he went again. Repeating her words like some half-witted echo. “Are you sure?”

  Her eyes locked on the candle. Why was she looking as though she expected him to turn her down?

  “I’ve never been more sure,” she answered, her voice soft. “Riding is important to you, so I’ll support you. I’ll be in the stands if you want me there. Or I’ll wait for you here. I’ll—”

  “Georgia, shut up.”

  “What?”

  He rose to lean across the table and caught her face in his hands. “I love you.” His voice came out sounding rusty from twelve years of suppressed emotion. From not being free to say those words. “I love you. Riding bulls is an eight-second high a couple of times a week. But you . . . You were everything else. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. I never valued that handful of seconds more than you.” His reward was the glow in her eyes. “I’m done riding. I got what I needed from it years ago. What I need now”—his voice choked—”is you. Until the day I die.”

  EPILOGUE

  Georgia picked up Sol’s aluminum coffee pot. She glanced around, making sure he was nowhere in sight, held it over the trash, and let it fall. There. She’d never have to drink coffee brewed in that horrid thing again.

  Her own drip coffee maker, along with everything she’d moved from Dallas last week, including Eden’s cat, was already sitting in a box in their new home. The house on the old Gunderson place, the one Sol had shown her the day they’d skinny dipped at the swimming hole, needed some remodeling, but like most ranchers, Sol was more than capable of making it a house she and Eden would be happy in. It wasn’t as though she wanted the Taj Mahal after all.

  Georgia pulled the half-empty can of Maxwell House from the cupboard and considered letting it accompany the coffee pot to the local landfill, but like Sol, she’d been raise with the waste-not-want-not philosophy. She’d convert him to her brand of coffee when this was gone.

  A thump came from the bedroom where Sol was breaking down his bed. A few minutes later, he appeared in the doorway. “Well, that’s done,” he said as he crossed the living room to meet her in the kitchen. “The bedroom’s ready to go.”

  She greeted her husband with a kiss, which he enthusiastically returned. They both leaned back, arms looped around each other’s waists, grinning like fools.

  “Are we ready to move to our new home, Mrs. McKnight?”

  “We are, Mr. McKnight.”

  Their wedding had been small with family and close friends in attendance. Eden had stood as Georgia’s maid of honor. Zach had been Sol’s best man. It had been perfect, though they’d had to rush a bit so Ephram could attend before he left for basic training.

  Georgia’s mother had even behaved herself, though Georgia expected that was the result of serious talks with both her father and Bethany. Georgia had invited Tommy, who’d brought Lydia as his date, and of course, Daniel and Deanne. She’d finally met Tracy, who sported the ring Daniel had taunted Sol with. Tracy had also thanked Georgia for giving Deanne the motherly support Tracy hadn’t been able to while she’d fought her addiction.

  Giving up her job in Dallas had been hard, but the grade school in Tyler had an unexpected opening for a fifth-grade teacher. Georgia nailed the interview, and the job was hers. She’d been working like crazy on her new lesson plans, but she was looking forward to the challenge.

  All in all, life was pretty perfect. That wouldn’t last, of course. She and Sol were both too bullheaded to float joyously through life for long, as he proved when he scanned his boxed-up kitchen.

  His face crinkled as though he’d seen the inexplicable. “What’s my coffee pot doing in the trash?”

  She should have buried it under the other refuse. “I have a newer one—”

  He held on to her with one arm and reached for the pot with the other. “But this is still good.” His mouth pursed. “Maybe Zach and Maddie could us it.”

  “No.” She put her hand over his to keep him from salvaging it. “No, Sol. This makes the world’s worst coffee. I’m not letting you create problems in Maddie and Zach’s marriage.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “Yes, it is. You could tar roads with this coffee. Trust me. This is a deal breaker. If you love me, you’ll let it go to its final resting place.”

  Sol grinned. “Well, I do love you. If this is the sacrifice I have to make to prove it . . .” His grin faded and he eyed her speculatively. “I’ll give up the coffee pot on one condition.”

  “What’s that?” Was he really going to bargain with her on this minor point? Couldn’t he give it to her because he loved her?

  “I’ll give up the coffee pot if you give up that tin can you drive and let me get you something better. Something safer. A Humvee maybe.”

  “A Humvee?” She laughed. Dear Lord, if that wasn’t overkill, she didn’t know what was. “I’ll give up the Kia, but no Humvee.”

  His grin came back. “Good enough.” His hand opened and the coffee pot fell back into the trash.

  Had the Humvee merely been a point to negotiate from? Not that it mattered. She’d already decided to agree the next time he brought up her car.

  A pickup with a horse trailer behind it pulled up outside and parked beside her car. Sol gave her a quick kiss before opening the door for Gideon and Zach. Eden was with her uncles, and Georgia put her to work carrying smaller boxes while the men hauled furniture out to the trailer.

  Their daughter was excited to be moving into a new home and having her parents together for the first time in her life. She was riding horses again and helping Daisy train them, but so far, she showed no interest in competing. Georgia was satisfied with that, but if Eden changed her mind, Georgia had
promised herself she’d be okay with that, too.

  After Eden and the boys left with the last load, Georgia swept the kitchen. Even though this had been Sol’s home, she felt a proprietary need to leave it spotless for Gideon, who would be moving in next. She left the broom for him as well.

  Sol caught her in his arms and kissed her when she was done. Still holding her, he looked around. “I didn’t think I’d be sorry to leave this place, but I am a little. This was our home when we were married before, and it’s got some nice memories tucked in the corners.”

  “I know.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “But we have a new home now, and it’s big enough for you, me, and Eden. And anyone else who comes along.”

  Sol pulled back to look at her. His gray eyes shone like silver. “Anyone else?”

  “You wouldn’t mind, would you?”

  A grin spread across his face. “I think that would be great.” His grin disappeared to be replaced with mock severity. “You do know you never get to walk away again.”

  “I tried that once. It didn’t work so I guess I’m here for life.”

  He shook his head, the grin returning. “You are a goose.” He said it as though it was a delightful revelation.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Well, I always knew I was a goose,” he said with a smug smile, “but I wasn’t so sure about you.”

  “And this is a good thing?”

  “Yeah, Georgie, it’s a very good thing. Geese mate for life, you know.”

  And he kissed her.

  If you enjoyed this, you might also like All’s Fair the prequel to Sol & Georgia’s story.

  Other books in the McKnight romance saga include:

  A Knight in Cowboy Boots

  Knight of Hearts

  Short stores by Suzie Quint:

  Snow White & the Eighth Dwarf

  Come visit me at my website or on Facebook. I love hearing from readers

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