“You don’t see, and why should you when I’m doing this all wrong? The truth is that I came because I wanted to see how you were. I needed to know how you were doing, if you were okay. I realized—after someone pretty much kicked me in the head—that I’d left things unfinished and unsaid. In the past…well, I made assumptions with Gillian and Pamala, thinking that they cared when they didn’t. I didn’t ask. I just assumed. Maybe because I didn’t really care enough.
“But with you…Ivy, I don’t want to make assumptions. I have to know. I have to ask if you’re happy. That’s what I came for. You had so many selfish people in your life who didn’t even care whether you were happy or what you wanted. I came…for you.”
Ivy closed her eyes. She knew she needed to free him from the torture of worrying about her. She had to say that she was all right, so he could be all right, and—
“But even though I was in such a hurry to get to you that I kind of rushed into this trip, I didn’t want to just look like some nosy cowboy,” he told her. “I wanted to give you some…proof that you and your feelings matter to me one hundred percent, so I remembered that you loved daisies and dark chocolate and teddy bears with white fur.”
He turned, and the assistant who had let him in handed him a bouquet of daisies, a box of gourmet chocolates in a gold box and a teddy bear with white fur and a red ribbon around its neck. “I know you can easily buy any of these things for yourself, but the point is…you shouldn’t have to. You should know that someone cares enough to make the effort, someone who cares about more than just what your face looks like.”
Tears were threatening. Ivy took several steps toward Noah. “You like me for more than my face?”
“Yes, I do, even though it’s a beautiful face. And even more beautiful without the makeup.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “Would it be all right if I—?”
“No!” the photographer and makeup artist both yelled.
“Yes,” Ivy whispered, tipping her face up as Noah gently wiped the makeup from her lips, from her eyes and her cheeks. Then he kissed her, slowly, sweetly. He made her ache. “Alicia said you looked distant in your photos, but you don’t look distant at all to me. You look wonderful.”
Ivy smiled. “If I looked distant, it was because I was thinking about you on the ranch. And Lily.”
“Well…about the ranch…”
Ivy waited. Something hesitant in Noah’s voice made her tense. “Is something wrong at the ranch? Is someone…sick or injured?”
“Shh, no. No, Ivy.” He reached out and touched her cheek. “It’s just that…I wanted you to be the first to know that I’ve been thinking about moving. Maybe to New York.”
Ivy couldn’t stop herself. She took hold of both his hands and stared up at him. “Noah, are you serious? But…I don’t understand. Why would you do that?” she whispered. “You need the ranch. You love the ranch.”
He gazed down into her eyes. “I do. But I love you more, and you’re…here.”
Tears filled Ivy’s eyes. “You said that you wanted me to know that you cared enough to remember the things I liked. I want you to know that I remember what you like, too. You love music and dancing and riding Bruiser like the wind and telling stories to children, and you love Lily’s giggles.”
He slid his other hand into her hair and cupped her face. “I noticed that you left yourself off that list.”
Ivy bit her lip. “That’s because I’m afraid to believe.”
“Believe,” Noah said, folding her into his arms and kissing her. “I’d never lie to you, Ivy. Even if you don’t love me, I’m not going to stop loving you. I can’t do that.”
“And you’re going to leave the ranch?”
“I can’t be happy there without you, so I’d rather be happy somewhere else with you. If there’s a chance you could care, I’d like nothing better than to ask you to live with me and Lily forever, to marry us.”
Rising on her toes and looping her arms around his neck, Ivy returned his kiss. “Marry me,” she said. “You and Lily please marry me. We’ll live on the ranch.”
He shook his head. “You hate the ranch.”
“No.” Ivy shook her head hard. “I don’t hate the ranch. I just didn’t want to be sacrificed to it.”
He swore. “I’d burn it down before I’d hurt you. I—the thing is that I can’t sell Lily’s birthright, but we don’t have to live there.”
Ivy smiled up at him. “Unless we want to.”
He looked at her, a question in his eyes.
“Loving you and Lily has opened the world to me, not closed it off,” she explained. “I love you, Noah. Take me home to the ranch. Marry me and live with me and Lily there forever,” she said.
“I don’t want you to give up your life’s work for mine.”
“Hey, I love being a cowgirl! Besides, I’m sure I can find some way to mix modeling and ranching. I’ll never feel cheated as long as I have you.”
Noah gave her a kiss that took her breath away. “How on earth did I live without you all those years? Thank you, sweetheart.”
“For loving life on the ranch?”
“Yes, but mostly for not listening to a hardheaded rancher every time I told you that I wasn’t going to hire you. If you’d listened I would have missed loving you so much.”
She laughed and stepped back. “You wouldn’t even have known what you missed.”
“I know. It would have been a tragedy. Instead, it’s a love story that’s never going to end.”
“Finally we agree on something, rancher man,” she told him as she launched herself back into his arms.
Ivy stared around her table at all the friends gathered there. “Happy birthday, angel,” she told Lily, picking her up from where she’d finished eating her cake and gently wiping her mouth. “I love you.”
Lily smiled and hugged Ivy’s neck. “Wuv,” she whispered in Ivy’s ear, and Ivy thought she might break down in happy tears right there.
“Come on, pumpkin, Marta needs some help in the kitchen,” Noah said, taking Lily, giving her a kiss and letting Marta take her away.
There was whispering at the end of the table. “What are you all talking about?” Ivy asked.
“This is an absolute perfect picture of you and Noah and Lily,” Alicia said, holding up a magazine cover of the three of them standing next to Bruiser’s pen on the day of their wedding. “It may only be a local publication, but you all look so happy.”
“That’s because Noah finally met his match,” Brody teased.
“It’s because we are happy,” Ivy said. “I’m finally right where I belong.”
“And I’m with the woman who hangs the sun in the sky every morning,” Noah said, looping his arms around her waist.
Everyone looked at where Noah’s hands were on her abdomen. “So…have you seen the doctor? Do you know what it’s going to be?” Melanie asked.
Noah smiled. “It’s going to be loved,” he said. “No matter what sex the baby is or what he or she looks like. This baby will be loved and cared for and cherished and protected and…”
Ivy turned in his arms. She placed her fingertips over his lips and then rose and replaced her fingers with her mouth, to the delight of everyone in the room. “I adore you,” she said when she came up for air. “And I’m so glad no one else in town hired me. Otherwise I might have missed…you. This.” She gazed up at him with joyful tears in her eyes.
Noah was pulling her close to kiss her again when Gerald cleared his throat.
“I’m glad you two are so happy, Ivy. Things are working out grand, but, Ivy, I really want to talk to you some more about that line of outdoor wear you’re developing.”
Ivy blinked. “Tomorrow, Gerald. In my office. I’ll look forward to it. I’m really going to enjoy that project. But right now I’m in the middle of something important.”
“What is it? A different project?” His eyes lit up.
Ivy smiled at her agent. “Gerald, I like you, I admire
you, I’m grateful to you, but sometimes you miss all the best stuff. The really important stuff. My husband was about to kiss me. This is a happy day for us. Our daughter is three. We’re pregnant. We’re…”
“Ecstatically happy,” Noah offered with a lazy smile.
“Oh, yes,” Ivy agreed, smiling back at him. “I’m feeling very…ecstatic right now. So, Gerald, no shop talk today. And Noah, my love?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Please kiss me. Now. Right now. I don’t want our baby to be born before I get my kiss.”
The rest of their guests sighed, laughed and applauded.
Noah chuckled. “Oh, you are a sassy woman, Ivy Ballenger. I knew you were going to turn my life upside down the moment I met you. I knew you were going to be trouble.”
“Is there a problem, Mr. Ballenger?” she asked.
“Not a chance. I love trouble. I love you. You’re—”
“All yours, Noah,” Ivy said.
“All mine,” he agreed. “Forever mine. I’ll take my kiss now.”
“Take two,” she said.
So of course he took three. No one minded, least of all Ivy.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6996-9
COWGIRL MAKES THREE
First North American Publication 2010
Copyright © 2010 by Myrna Topol
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