by Liz Isaacson
About halfway to her house, Ward said, “I don’t know where I’m going.”
“Oh, right,” she said, leaning forward to point. “Up here, turn left. I’m over on Washington Terrace.” She sat back, glancing at Ranger. He held up his phone, and she caught the glint of the light in his eyes.
She dug in her purse for her phone and checked her texts, the brightness of the screen burning her eyes. She quickly turned it down and tapped on his name.
Do you have a car I could borrow to get back to the ranch tonight? I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes, and I don’t want my brothers to have to wait. We get up early on the ranch, no matter what day of the week it is.
Oakley’s pulse pounded in her chest, the reverberations moving up her throat and through the bigger veins in her neck. He’d like to talk to her? About what?
After his rejection a month ago, she’d tried texting him a few times, and he’d never responded. Her old, unanswered texts sat right above his new one, in fact. Her thumb hovered over her keyboard as she contemplated what to do.
Finally, she tapped out yes and sent the text. She stuck her phone under her leg and looked out her window. She didn’t know what he wanted to talk about, but Oakley sure did like the sound of his voice, and she needed to end this night on a high note.
She continued to direct Ward to her house, and he finally pulled into the driveway of the one that sat at the back of the cul-de-sac. The house hulked in the night, as it was ten times too big for a single person who lived alone. Most men she went out with commented on it, and the one real estate agent she’d been to dinner with had actually looked up how much she’d bought it for, then texted her obnoxious questions about her financial situation.
Needless to say, that relationship had lasted for one dinner and one dinner only.
“Thank you,” she said as she opened her own door and got out of the truck. She heard Ranger say something in a low voice, but she couldn’t quite catch the words. A conversation ensued, and she closed the door and started toward the garage. The motion-sensor lights kicked on, flooding the driveway with light.
She hadn’t even reached the garage yet to tap in the code to lift the door when Ranger got out of the truck. Oakley kept her back to him and continued walking. She started pressing in the code as Ward backed out of her driveway.
The door rumbled up as the truck rumbled off, and Oakley finally turned and looked at Ranger Glover. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Why you didn’t have a ride home.”
The man knew how to go right for the jugular, that was for sure. He tucked his hands in his jacket pockets, and it should’ve been illegal to sell him that leather jacket. He’d cause traffic accidents if he walked down the street looking so good, with broad shoulders and tight, strong muscles everywhere she looked.
“Do you want to come in?” she asked. “It’s kind of a long story, and I’m going to need caffeine if I’m to tell it.”
“Coffee sounds great,” he said, a small smile riding on his mouth.
“Great,” she said. “You can make it then. I’m terrible at it, and the last thing I need to do is poison you tonight.” She stepped into the garage as he chuckled. Oakley paused, because his light laughter was one of the most magical sounds she’d ever heard. In that moment, she realized her crush on this man was wide and deep, and Oakley wasn’t even sure how it had happened.
She managed to reach the entrance to the house at the back of the garage, and he reached past her to hold the door while she went in. She hadn’t been lying about the coffee, and if he asked how she found the time to keep her house so clean after a long day at the dealership, six days a week, she’d have to admit to having a cleaning service.
Nothing wrong with that, she told herself as she stepped into the mudroom and hung up her jacket. He copied her, and she finally eased out of the way when he tucked those hands back into his pockets.
He went first down the hall and into the kitchen, which was more of a cave than a comfortable place to be. Sure, it had high-end appliances—a fridge she could see into without even opening the door—and plenty of upgrades in the quartz countertops, the cherry-wood cabinets, and the matching, coordinating art on the way.
Ranger started opening cabinets, and it only took him three tries to find the coffee. Oakley sighed and retreated to the couch. He finished getting the coffee started and came to sit with her in the living room off the kitchen.
This room had no TV, and she wanted to keep it that way. She liked the quiet sometimes, as the dealership was never truly quiet. The race track hadn’t been either. Oakley craved silence, but one look at Ranger, and she started spilling her guts.
“I was at the club with Dave Pratchett,” she said. “He picked me up, but he had to work late, so we didn’t get dinner.” Her stomach growled as if it just now remembered she hadn’t eaten since lunch. “Only a few minutes into the show, he got a text and said he had to go make a phone call.” Oakley shrugged, though her shoulders barely moved against the cushy couch. “I get it. I run a business too.”
Ranger said nothing, but he also didn’t look away from her. Oakley didn’t know what to do with the silent, brooding type. Her nerves screamed at her, and she pressed her fingertips together.
“He left, and he never came back. It was over an hour, and I decided to call him.” She shook her head. “He didn’t answer, but not ten seconds later, I got a text back from him. It wasn’t the one I wanted.”
“What did he say?”
“He said I was ‘fun and all,’ but that he didn’t think we should see each other anymore.” Desperation and tears built up inside her again, and Oakley determined not to hold them in as long as she had last time.
“That was that?” Ranger asked. “He didn’t come back to take you home?”
She shook her head. “I texted that I didn’t want to break up and could we please talk about it?” With some of her last remaining energy, she leaned forward and handed Ranger her phone. “He sent me that.”
Ranger took the phone, a quizzical look in his eye. He swiped on her phone, and she knew the moment he saw what she’d seen. His eyes rounded, and he looked up.
Oakley’s stomach had dropped out of her body, and she’d been so angry that tears had pressed into her eyes. So angry and so betrayed.
Dave had sent her a picture of him with another woman. He’d said he’d left the club, because he wanted to go out with Terelyn and not her.
Oakley had been broken up with before—heck, the man still holding her phone had ended things between them before they’d even really gotten started. But to see Dave with another woman and know that he’d left her sitting in the comedy club all alone, with no ride home, it was as if a dam had broken.
She’d felt betrayed and lonely at the same time.
She’d realized what she’d been asking the men she’d been out with that year to do. Share her. Allow her to go out with whoever she wanted, their feelings notwithstanding.
“So I needed a ride home,” she said, taking back her phone.
He studied the floor for a moment and then met her eyes. “Who are you seeing now?” he asked.
“No one, anymore,” she said. “I was….” She cleared her throat. “I did what you suggested, Ranger. I decided to try dating one man at a time.”
If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. “And?”
“And….” How much did she lay on the line? How brave could she be? How forthcoming and straight-forward without coming across as too confident or intimidating? “And honestly?”
“I would prefer honesty, yes,” he said, focusing back on the floor again.
“I only want to go out with you,” she said. “But you aren’t asking. I texted you a few times, and you didn’t respond. I figured I might as well start somewhere.”
“Well, Dave Pratchett was a bad choice,” Ranger said, a chuckle coming from his mouth.
Oakley scoffed as the tension in the room broke up a little. “
Yeah, no joke.”
Several seconds passed where the only thing that happened was the scent of freshly brewed coffee filling the air. Ranger finally lifted his head and met her gaze again, head-on. Strong. If anyone was exuding confidence and making her feel intimidated, it was him.
She sure did like that about him.
“Oakley?” he asked. “Would you like to go to dinner with me?”
Oakley blinked as her pulse skyrocketed. “Yes,” she managed to say. “Yes, I would.”
“Tomorrow night?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said.
He nodded and stood up. “Okay, great. I know where you live now, and I’ll have my brother follow me down in my truck so I can return your car.” He moved into the kitchen as easily as if he’d lived in this house his whole life. Oakley twisted as she watched him fix himself a cup of coffee.
He took one sip and called back to her, “Do you want some coffee, Oakley?”
“Yes, please,” she said. Was he really going to stay for coffee? What else did he want to talk about?
He brought her a purple mug, a bowl of sugar, and the carton of cream. “I don’t know what you like,” he said.
“Just sugar,” she said, picking up the spoon and adding three healthy teaspoons of the sweet stuff to her coffee. She took a sip and groaned. “I don’t know how you do this. It’s so much better than how I make it.”
He simply smiled, and when he took a seat this time, it was on the couch next to her. He lifted his arm, and she curled into his side, the motions so natural for both of them, Oakley felt like they’d sat together on the couch like this countless times before.
Ranger took another sip of his coffee and said, “Tell me why you came to Three Rivers.”
“Okay,” she said, drawing in a deep breath. “If you must know, it was on this dating app I was using in Florida. That’s where I lived when I trained for the racecar stuff.”
“Mm.”
“Anyway, the dating app had a Top Ten Cities to Fall in Love in Texas list, and Three Rivers was on it.”
“What number?” he asked.
“Two,” she said.
“What was number one?”
“Austin,” she said. “But I dislike Austin, so I packed up and I came north.”
Ranger leaned forward and put his mug on the coffee table in front of him. “You’ve been here a couple of years. Do you still think Three Rivers is one of the best places to fall in love?”
“Oh, it’s so overrated,” she said, her voice snappy but with an edge too. “I’ve been out with dozens of men, and I haven’t found a single one to love.”
“Maybe you haven’t been out with the right one,” he said quietly.
“Obviously.” She needed to keep this conversation light and flirty. Otherwise, she might fall too fast for him, and she knew what happened with fast falls. They hurt people. Hearts got broken and unkind words got exchanged.
After another several seconds of peaceful silence, Ranger groaned as he got to his feet. “You done?” He reached for her coffee cup, and she let him take it though she’d only had a few swallows.
“Let me get you the keys to my truck,” she said, getting up and following him into the kitchen. She pulled out a drawer and handed him a fob. “It’s easy. Push on the gas.” She grinned at him, but the spark in his eyes was borne from something besides playful banter and innocent flirting.
“Well, that’s what I’m hopin’ to do tomorrow night,” he said. “See you then.” He bent down and swept his lips across her forehead, put the truck keys in his pocket, and walked out of her house.
She stood in the kitchen for several long seconds, wondering if she ever had to wash her forehead again. She didn’t see why she should. That part of her body didn’t get very dirty….
It amazed her that she’d gone from a sobbing mess in the bathroom to having the man of her dreams—who’d already rejected her once—ask her to dinner. A squeal started in her stomach, but Oakley silenced it.
“Don’t freak out,” she said to herself. “This is the first step, and it’s going to take a lot to keep and hold the interest of a man like Ranger.” She continued to coach herself as she went down the hallway to her master suite.
“Get it together. You can do this.”
Ranger was a man among men, and Oakley knew she’d need her every wit, her every charm, and her every ounce of patience to win him over.
Oh, and the cutest dress for tomorrow night’s date with the dreamy cowboy she’d been crushing on for months now.
She faced her closet, her determination the strongest it had ever been. “The very cutest dress.”
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About Liz
Liz Isaacson is a USA Today bestselling author and a Top 20 Kindle All-Star Author. She is the author of the #1 bestselling Three Rivers Ranch Romance series, the #1 bestselling Horseshoe Home Ranch Romance series, the Brush Creek Brides series, the USA Today bestselling Steeple Ridge Romance series (Buttars Brothers novels), the Grape Seed Falls Romance series, the #1 bestselling Christmas in Coral Canyon Romance series (Whittaker Brothers and Everett Sisters novels), the Quinn Valley Ranch Romance series, the Last Chance Ranch Romance series, and the #1 bestselling Seven Sons Ranch in Three Rivers Romance series (Walker Brothers novels), the Christmas as Whiskey Mountain Lodge Romance series (Hammond Brothers novels), and the Shiloh Ridge Ranch in Three Rivers Romance series (Glover Family novels).
She writes inspirational romance, usually set in Texas and Montana, or anywhere else horses and cowboys exist. She lives in Utah, where she writes full-time, walks her two dogs, and eats a lot of peanut butter M&Ms.
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THE MECHANICS OF MISTLETOE
Book One in the Shiloh Ridge Ranch in Three Rivers series
by Liz Isaacson
Copyright © 2020 by Elana Johnson, writing as Liz Isaacson
Published by AEJ Creative Works
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book can be reproduced in any form or by electronic
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Interior Design by AEJ Creative Works
