by Megan Crane
With him.
No matter what he felt about her.
“I can’t work for you,” she said, before she lost her courage and ran anyway. “And it’s for the same reason I’m crying, I guess. I didn’t mean to, Jonah. But I accidentally fell in love with you.” He blinked, and she pushed on, doggedly. “And I know that’s crazy. I know it doesn’t make any sense. It’s too soon and I hardly know you and you certainly don’t want to hear that kind of thing. I know all that. You don’t have to say anything. But it’s true.”
“Why?” She’d never heard his voice so harsh. “I’m the bad brother. Jasper is the obvious choice. He’s charming. Friendly. Hilarious, apparently, and—”
“Not you,” Gracelyn said simply. She followed an urge that she would have tamped down a few days ago, and moved toward him rather than away. She slid her hands up over his perfect chest, and felt his heart thud against his ribs. Then she kept going, until she was cradling his beautiful, dangerous face between her hands. “I like the dangerous one, Jonah. The shark. The wolf who walks down the center of Main Street, not the one hiding in sheepskin and a lazy smile. I like you.”
He stared down at her, those hazel eyes so dark, so wild, she thought he must be furious. That he must hate her for saying these things, for putting him in this position mere seconds after the engagement he hadn’t wanted had happened.
“I’m sorry,” she began, pulling her hands back. “I don’t mean—”
His hands slid up to hold hers fast, right there against his face.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice like gravel. “Don’t you dare apologize. You have nothing to apologize for.” His hands were warm over hers, and as she gazed up at him she realized that that thing in his eyes wasn’t fury at all. “I’m the one who should be apologizing, Gracelyn. To Jasper, to Chelsea, but most of all to you.”
She shuddered.
“I want you to love me,” he told her, his voice as intent as the way he looked at her. “I want you to teach me how to love you back, the right way, because the jury is in, ddarlin’, and I’m no good at it.” She shook her head, frowning up at him, and he turned his head to press his mouth into her palm. “The only person I ever loved was my brother and I almost alienated him for good. I can promise I’ll probably mess things up with you, too. You can count on it. And I get the impression you hold grudges the way I do.”
“I did,” she whispered, “but I’m starting a new chapter. I left the only people I ever loved ten years ago and vowed I’d never go back and when I did, Jonah, they treated me like they loved me just the same. Like they’d never loved me more.” She felt the tears like trails of fire along her cheeks, and she didn’t care. “So I’ll be working from that model, going forward. If it helps.”
“I’m not good with words,” he told her then, as the music started and the night pressed close. But he was closer, and he was what mattered. “But I want to do this over from the start. I don’t want you to work for me. I want you to be with me. I want a thousand things it’s way too soon for.”
“Much too soon,” she agreed, but she shifted closer as she said it.
“Date me,” he said, and his mouth crooked up into that smile of his that made her crazy. It made her believe anything was possible. It made her see it right there on his face. “Be my real girlfriend this time.”
“That’s the thing,” she whispered against his mouth. “I think it’s been real with you from the start. Like this really was magic, even then.”
“That’s you, Gracelyn.” He moved his hands to push back her hair, and his dark gold eyes were soft on her face. “That’s always been you.”
And for the first time in her life, looking up at a man so beautiful she thought he rivaled the Rocky Mountains all around them, she believed it.
“Once upon a time,” Jonah said then, holding her so tight it should have hurt, it should have felt claustrophobic—but instead it felt like the Montana sky, so big and so vast that no matter how small she was beneath it, she felt cherished. Beloved. His. “There was a beautiful princess and a terrible ogre trapped in a hotel suite far, far away. And he had absolutely no intention of letting her go, ever again.”
“She’s not going anywhere,” Gracelyn told him fiercely.
And like all good fairy tale endings, she sealed it with a kiss.
Chapter Nine
‡
The four of them met at Jasper’s place north of Flathead Lake for New Year’s that year.
Chelsea and Jasper drove up from Marietta and whatever family thing they did there for Christmas. Jonah didn’t inquire too closely, as he didn’t want to know if he involved those half-sisters he was still on the fence about, and Jasper, to his credit, didn’t push. Jonah and Gracelyn took his helicopter from the prairie, where her grandmother had stuffed him so full of her cooking, he thought he might lapse into hibernation for the rest of the winter.
“You really do only come here by helicopter,” Gracelyn teased him.
He smiled. He did a lot more of that these days.
“I like helicopters,” he told her.
He liked her more. He liked that she’d gotten herself a brand new job at a completely different sort of company, and at a much higher level, too. He liked that she refused to move in with him because, she said, he’d only asked her to do it for his convenience, not because it was the right thing for them.
And he liked that she was right about that, too.
The more he got to know her, Gracelyn Baylee Packard of the country-fried name, who still wouldn’t let him call her baby, the more he confirmed what he’d known from the start. She was his. She was meant to be his.
So they could take all the time in the world to get where they were going. He still knew how it was going to end.
The night before New Year’s, they sat in Jonah’s cozy den near the great, roaring fire while the snow came down outside.
Life didn’t get better than this, Jonah thought. His brother and his brother’s fiancée, his woman. And what he was fairly certain was joy, as present in the room as if it was another person there with them.
“I have something for you,” Chelsea said to Gracelyn, and pulled out a small parcel.
“I thought we weren’t exchanging gifts . . . ”
Gracelyn looked at him, worried. He knew things had been polite between the two women, if not necessarily warm. How could they be anything else? Gracelyn had asked reasonably only the night before. It doesn’t matter why I was horrible to her. I was, and I have to accept the consequences, whatever they are.
But she probably hadn’t expected consequences the next day. And Jasper only shrugged when Jonah caught his eye, giving nothing away.
Gracelyn pulled off the wrapping paper carefully, then blinked down at the box in her hands. “Is it a bomb?”
“Of course not,” Chelsea said serenely from Jasper’s side. “I’m sitting much too close to you.”
Gracelyn’s grin flashed briefly. “Noted.”
She opened the box and laughed, then pulled out an ornament. A little bit gaudy, Jonah thought, but that was probably the point.
“For your first Christmas together,” Chelsea said sweetly. “To remember our first meeting forever.”
Gracelyn held it in the air, letting it hang there and dance from her fingers in the firelight, the way her eyes did when he met them. And Jonah knew everything was going to work out exactly the way it should. That he and Gracelyn were forgiven, which he knew they’d both do their best to make sure they deserved.
Because Chelsea had given them their very own, miniaturized, ceramic rendition of a Doberman.
The Copper Mountain Rodeo Series
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About the Author
USA Today bestselling author Megan Crane writes women’s fiction, chick lit, work-for-hire YA, and a lot of Harlequin Presents as Caitlin Crews. She also teaches creative writing classes both online at mediabistro.com and at UCLA Extension’s prestigious Writers’ Program, where she finally utilizes the MA and PhD in English Literature she received from the University of York in York, England. She currently lives in California, with her animator/comic-book artist husband and their menagerie of ridiculous animals. For more info visit her at www.megancrane.com or www.caitlincrews.com.
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