“You’re broke? As in nothing left? You knowingly gave up everything for Gray?”
She sounded so shocked, he worried that she wasn’t the same Reine he remembered.
“It makes that much of a difference to you?”
“It means everything to me. Far more than if you could easily have afforded to give it away.”
“I still own the business, which is rock solid,” he assured her. “Or will when I get two million dollars together. Payback,” he said, not wanting to elaborate. “I’ll just be strapped for cash for a long while. I may have lost most of my assets, but I’ve gained a brother.”
And, it seemed, her.
“Would you just propose already!” demanded an impatient voice from the other side of the curtain. “Don’t you know there are sick and injured people who need their rest in this hospital?”
Cash reached over to jerk open the curtain. Gray grinned at him from the other bed.
Unable to say the thing that was in his heart—that he was thankful Gray was alive—he asked, “Do I look as lousy as you do?”
“Worse. So are you serious about marrying this woman or not?”
“She’s the only woman I’ve ever loved or wanted to marry,” he told his brother.
“What about you, Reine?” Gray asked. “Will you marry this numbskull or not?”
She frowned at Cash. “You love me?”
“You know I do.”
“I know no such thing unless you tell me.”
“All right. I love you. Now what about the proposal?”
“Does it count coming from him?”
Cash grinned. “‘All for one and one for all.”’
“Then, yes,” she told Gray. “I’ll marry him!”
Grinning like a fool now, Cash pulled the curtain back in place so he could kiss Reine in privacy.
Some things, he was not willing to share.
Epilogue
“‘A cosmic joke’ is right,” Alex said when Zoe had finished telling her tale. “Two greedy men nearly impoverish themselves to see that someone they love is safe, and then all that money they stepped on so many people to make over the years gets blown away for nothing.”
Zoe sat up straighter. “Not for nothing. Remember, Cash got a lot out of the experience—a relationship with his brother and a woman who loved him. Not that he didn’t need some help along the way.” She patted the thick file. “Family counseling. Marlene Matlock even convinced her husband they all needed to participate. Together.”
“And old Jasper agreed?”
“When she threatened to leave him, he did.”
Alex was impressed. Love did seem to be the emotion with the most muscle. It made people do strange things against their very nature.
“Did Cash ever get his company back on solid footing?”
“Eventually, if on a more modest scale. His values changed. He had someone to live with and love, after all. And Matlock was able to recuperate some of his losses, as well, since Cash was no longer out to destroy him. Maybe someday he can admit to his true feelings for the son he’d denied.”
“If he has them.”
When she said, “People don’t always recognize what’s in their hearts, let alone express it,” Alex figured she must have some personal experience in that area herself.
Zoe Declue had lots of little facets that interested him, and Alex vowed that someday, he would learn everything there was to know about her.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-5140-3
COWBOY JUSTICE
Copyright © 1999 by Patricia Pinianski
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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