by Ryanne Corey
“I know what you told me. Now I’m going to tell you something.” He fished something out of the pocket of his jacket. It was a small velvet box, Jenny saw, the kind one would expect some sort of ring to hide in. Like an engagement ring. Her mind froze on that little blue box. Her heart stopped. Her hands started perspiring, a deep-rooted chain reaction. Suddenly it was hunting season and Bambi was cornered.
“Tyler,” she croaked, “don’t you dare—”
He kicked the coffee table out of the way, going down on one knee. Then he winced, changing knees. “I forgot. Bad knee from an old rodeo injury. Ahem.” He gave her a cherub’s smile, sky-blue eyes crinkling engagingly. “I love and adore you, Jenny Maria Kyle. Yes, there it is, that four letter word—love. Will you do me the honor of—”
Jenny was battling for air like a swimmer heading for the surface. “Tyler! Don’t you—”
“Will you shut up and let me finish?”
“No! Absolutely not! You have no idea what you’re—”
He clapped his free hand over her mouth. It seemed like he was always doing that to her. Still, whatever got the job done. “Jenny, angel face, sweet cheeks, honey bun…will you please…please…”
Jenny waited, big eyed and paralyzed from the nose down.
“…not marry me?” Tyler asked sweetly.
She blinked. “What?”
“I said, will you please not marry me?”
“You don’t want me to marry you?” she echoed. “Did I hear you right? You just asked me to not marry you?”
“That’s right.” He waited patiently for his answer. “Well?”
“One of us is crazy,” she said. “Maybe both of us. You came all this way to ask me not to marry you?”
“You seem to be having trouble grasping the concept,” Tyler said cheerfully. “If you don’t marry me, you won’t be threatened. You’ll have time to get used to the idea of having me around. Whenever you get an urge to bolt, I’ll bolt with you. Wherever you go, whatever you do…I want to do it with you. You and me, free as the birds, nowhere to go and all the time in the world to get there. What do you think?”
“Think?” Jenny shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs out of her brain. “I don’t know what I think. If you don’t want to marry me, what’s in the box?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to marry you,” he replied patiently. “I have every intention of marrying you at some point. I just want to know my bride won’t break out in nervous hives on our wedding day. That may take some time. In the meantime…” He flipped open the velvet box with his thumb, presenting it to her with a flourish.
Jenny stared at the silver key nestled in the soft blue material. An engagement ring it wasn’t. “What is that?”
“Your Harley key. You left it, along with the Harley and me, back in Bride Falls on Her Head. I brought it—and me—all this way to you. Until the weather turns cold, we can play on it. After that, we’ll switch to a car. If you want, of course. Everything is contingent on your approval.”
“I can’t believe this,” she whispered. “I don’t know what to say.”
“That’s the beauty of the scheme,” he said. “You don’t have to do anything different. You just have to let me tag along. My old rodeo buddies used to say I was highly entertaining when we were on the road.”
“I just bet you were,” Jenny said dumbly. “Tyler…you’re forgetting Rosie. And the twins. And Ella. And your job—”
“That’s something else I have to tell you,” he said.
“I am currently unemployed. I quit my job. My deputy sheriff is filling in until the election, and enjoying it far more than I ever did. Rosie could very well end up in Los Angeles with Dearbourne. If not, she’s more than capable of looking after things. She grew up while I was busy being overprotective. Can I get up and sit by you? You’re too far away.”
Jenny nodded in slow motion, her vision misting as she tried to take it all in. She’d just spent a month trying to figure out a way to live without him. She had resigned herself to being a wretched, miserable spinster who knew exactly what she was missing. Tyler was a tough act to follow. Impossible, in fact.
Tyler sat down beside her, putting his finger beneath her chin and turning her to face him. “Sweetheart? You’re not saying much. I’ll try this one more time. Will you please not marry me?”
“What about your someday house?” She was crying now, the tears rolling down her cheeks and plopping on her hands. “You can’t leave that. You love it there. You wanted to get old there, that’s what you said.”
“And we will, Jenny. Together. But the beauty of someday houses is that they’re in the future. Whenever we’re ready, we can build our someday house. In the meantime, I really don’t want to miss one more day with you.”
She stared at him, chest heaving and her lower lip quivering. “It’s so scary. Needing you. It’s been just me for so long…”
“I know,” he whispered. “I know how scary it is. I’m not asking for anything but the chance to be there for you. The rest will come. We’ve got all the time in the world, angel.”
Jenny looked at the box still in his hand. She got a faint, lopsided grin. “Only you would do something like this, Sheriff.”
“Only you would make something like this necessary,” he said. “You’re quite a warrior in your own way.”
“I am, aren’t I?” She gave a watery giggle. “So much trouble. Tyler, are you sure you know what you’re getting into? You’re giving up so much—”
“I’m giving up nothing. I’m getting everything. I don’t want to chain your soul, Jenny Kyle. I just want to hold your hand while we find our place in this world. I’ll take you to Albuquerque and show you sunsets you’ve only seen in your dreams. We’ll make snow angels in Aspen at Christmas. We’ll laugh and we’ll love and we’ll live without a single regret or lost opportunity. And if you need me…I promise you I’ll always be there. Always.”
Jenny had never been asked not to marry someone before. It turned out to be a very emotional and moving experience. Without consciously making the decision, she threw herself in Tyler’s arms like a whirlwind, kissing every part of his face she could reach. The tears still came, but somewhere along the way they had changed to tears of relief and joy. Suddenly, blessedly, the reasons for her isolation weren’t so easy to see anymore.
Tyler was laughing and kissing her as if he weren’t going to stop anytime soon. The ring box rolled off his lap and onto the weathered wooden floor. The Harley key went sliding into a crack where the floorboard was missing. “Jenny? The suspense is killing me. Is this a ‘yes’?”
She pulled back, tears dripping off her chin, and the smile in her eyes said yes. “I will be happy not to marry you, Tyler Cook. And I will hold your hand wherever we go. And someday…someday I would love to help you build your ranch on the mountains above Bride Falls on Her Head. I’m very handy, you know. I wield a mean butter knife.”
When he could speak, he said, “No hesitation?”
“None,” she whispered, amazed that it was true. For so long she had been living with the grief of a child. With Tyler’s help she had found within herself the strength of a woman.
He had a permanent tightness in his loins and his body temperature felt like it was around a hundred and four. Jenny symptoms. “There’s one thing we should take care of right away. This apartment…really needs help.”
Her smile blossomed, dazzling him. “So did I, once upon a time. You handled that pretty well. Besides, we have to start somewhere, don’t we?”
Again a kiss, hungry, anxious and shudderingly sweet. “Now,” he whispered. “I think we’ll start now.”
Epilogue
The someday house had four walls and a roof.
It was a good thing, as it had been storming since early that morning. Jenny and Tyler had taken shelter, sitting cross-legged in what would be the living room. Or great room, as Tyler called it. He loved the idea of a great room, a place where only good
things would happen. From that point on they had called everything great—the great kitchen, the great bathroom, the great bedroom.
Jenny watched the rain dwindle, mists of low-lying vapor obscuring the little town far below them. She wore a heavy leather tool belt around her tiny waist, which Tyler thought was about the sexiest thing he had ever seen. Over the past six months he had said the same thing several times: she was sexy in Florida with zinc oxide on her nose, she was sexy in Colorado when she wore thermal underwear, and she was overwhelmingly sexy in a Cancun hotel room when she wore nothing but a floppy sombrero.
He was an easy man to please.
In the beginning Jenny had difficulty adjusting to simple happiness. It took her a long time to believe that she would be safe looking forward to tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. But gradually it had happened, she and Tyler began making plans for things to come—like weddings and children.
Patience had paid off. The wedding part had been nearly a month earlier, when they came home to Bridal Veil Falls to marry. It had been Jenny, in fact, who had gone down on one knee, asking Tyler if he would rethink his decision not to marry her. That’s when she saw the shimmer of tears in his eyes for the first time. Her cowboy wasn’t so tough, after all.
They had married on the exact spot where their house now stood. Grady Hansen had been Tyler’s best man, and Rosie Dearbourne had stood next to Jenny. Rosie’s husband, Eliot, had bought three new bow ties for the occasion. One for him, and one each for the twins. And their honeymoon, true to form, had been highly unusual and very entertaining—they had traveled to North Dakota to buy prime rodeo stock. Tyler intended to supply the Pro Rodeo Association with the finest bucking horses and bulls to be found in the United States and Canada. It was a way for him to stay involved with the sport without getting personally beat up.
Remembering her initiation into the finer points of breeding prize stock, Jenny smiled. Tyler noticed, as he noticed everything about her.
“What?” he asked.
“I like my life,” she said simply. She tucked her head against Tyler’s shoulder, rubbing her cheek on his shirt. “All the unexpected things…that’s half the fun. Take Rosie and Eliot, for example. Who would have expected those two to get together? And Rosie being pregnant already…that just goes to show you that you can’t anticipate people. You think you have them all figured out and then—wham, everything changes.”
Tyler kissed the top of her head, inhaling the sweet fragrance of her hair. “Eliot and Rosie had a little wham themselves this morning. I’ve been meaning to tell you. They went for Rosie’s ultrasound today.” He paused for effect. “It’s twins.”
Jenny’s head whipped back as she stared up at him. “You’re kidding me! Twins?”
“That’s what the doctor said. Of course, we’re talking about Grady here, so he could be wrong. For all we know, it could be quintuplets. I still doubt Grady actually went to medical school. I think he went fishing in Alaska for four years.”
“Twins,” Jenny echoed again. She sputtered with laughter. “Oh, my. It’s a good thing we came back here, Tyler. They’re going to need help with crowd control.”
Tyler smiled down at the love and light of his life. Her laughter came easily these days, and her demons had been long banished. She had become almost like a child again, seeing and learning and growing as if all for the first time. Her wounded soul had become whole. Now and then the sadness would come over her, and he understood her well enough to let her grieve. But inevitably she would find her smile again, and their life together would go on.
“You know,” Tyler said suddenly, “talking about Rosie and Eliot reminds me. There’s been something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
Jenny caught his chin in her hand, placing a soft kiss over his mouth. “Ask away.”
“You know how it took you five months to marry me after I asked you not to marry me?”
Curiosity wrinkled her brow. “Yes?”
“I figured I’d better plan ahead this time.” A pause here and a look that took Jenny’s breath away. “Sweetheart, will you please not have my baby?”
Jenny’s lips curled into a Mona Lisa smile. “Sorry. I can’t do that.”
Tyler raised his brows curiously. “And why not?”
“Because—” she took a moment to nuzzle the side of his face “—I’m already in a delicate condition. I think. I haven’t taken a test yet, but…I’m pretty sure.”
She watched his blue, blue eyes widen in shock, then curl at the edges with a slow smile that came straight from his heart. “Baby?” he whispered. “Ours? Now?”
Eyes bright as sequins, she nodded. “Yes, my love. Baby. Ours. Now. You have such a way with words.”
“This calls for a celebration.” Tyler felt weightless, hypnotized by the joy she brought him. He cradled her face in his shaky hands, dipping his mouth to her ear and whispering something softly.
Jenny blinked. “Here? Now? Us?”
“You have such a way with words, Jenny Cook.”
And he proceeded to remind her that he had considerable talents of his own, when it came to close encounters of the nonverbal kind.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0071-5
THE SHERIFF & THE AMNESIAC
Copyright © 2002 by Tonya Wood
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