by Nika Rhone
“Do you want to sit down?” She indicated the cluster of leather chairs and love seats in front of the bay window.
“No, thank you.”
“Oh. Something to drink?”
“No.”
Out of polite hostess options, Amelia chucked the usual pleasantries. “Why are you here, Daryl?”
“I’ve been wondering that myself,” he muttered, running a hand through his shortened hair and sending it into familiar disarray. “I thought I had it all figured out. The time we spent together, I thought I’d gotten to know you, to understand you, but I spent that week with Amy. Amy cooked for the hired help and washed dishes and made love like a starving sex kitten.” He gestured around the slightly outdated but still clearly expensive room. “But Amelia…she belongs in this world, and I can’t compete with that. Seeing you here, knowing you deserve every luxury this kind of life can offer, everything that I can’t, I think I—”
“One month,” Amelia blurted.
Daryl looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “What?”
“I was waiting one month. And then I was coming after you.”
“Amelia, you don’t have to—”
She held up her hand. “I wanted to make sure two of the biggest things that might trip us up were taken care of before we saw each other again. One, that the senator made the announcement he promised, about the end of my engagement to his son.” After Charles’s little stunt at the ranch, the senator had become extremely cooperative, most likely in the hope that there would be no charges brought against his imprudent offspring.
“And two?”
She took a quick breath. “To make sure I wasn’t pregnant.”
If a man could be said to turn to stone, then that was what happened to Daryl. Amelia wasn’t even certain he was breathing.
“Are you?”
“No.” There had been mixed feelings over the arrival of her period. The same confused emotions flitted along Daryl’s expression. “Just for the record, I would have been very okay with it if I was,” she said quietly. “I just wanted you to know for sure that I was coming to you because I wanted to, not because I had to. And so I’d know that if you wanted me, it was for me, not because of some misplaced sense of obligation.”
“If I wanted you?” Daryl finally moved, crossing to her in swift, distance-cutting strides reminiscent of how he’d walked across the corral after calming that demented stallion. He grasped her shoulders and stared down at her with dark, serious eyes. “Woman, I’ve done nothing but want you since the minute you walked away from me three weeks ago.”
“I believe you walked away from me,” Amelia replied with a hint of teasing to mask her dawning hope. “If you want to be entirely accurate.”
“What I want is to not make the same mistakes I’ve been making all my life, turning my back on the things that matter most because I felt I didn’t deserve them.”
“What?” She shook her head slightly. Had he just intimated that she mattered to him? Or that she was a mistake? “I don’t understand.”
Sliding his hand down her arm, he took her by the hand and led her over to sit on the love seat. “I won’t get into the whole drama, but I was reminded, often, that my father and I were benefiting from someone else’s death. Kim had hidden the true state of the ranch so well no one knew how close to foreclosure she’d come, or how hard my father worked to drag the ranch back from the brink, and he wouldn’t ever think of telling them, not even to shut them up. I never knew most of this as a kid, of course. I only knew people were saying I’d gotten both a home and a mother that weren’t really mine, like I somehow didn’t deserve either of them. After a while, I started to believe it.”
“So you kept yourself from getting too attached to either one.” Amelia started to see the crazy sort of logic that would have made sense to a confused and insecure little boy. “That’s why you got so involved in the rodeo. It got you away from home. Away from Hayden.”
“But even that wasn’t mine.” Daryl rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. It was clear this wasn’t easy for him to talk about. “I felt like I was just following in my father’s shadow, riding the coattails of his reputation. It wasn’t until I got the job working security for the Fordhams that I started to feel like I was finding my own way, my own life.”
That didn’t sound promising for what Amelia had planned, but she held her tongue.
“But every time I went back to visit at the ranch, I came home to Boulder feeling dissatisfied with the life I was building there. So I started going back less and less often.”
“Until you finally stopped going all together.” She gave him a wry grin. “I’m something of an expert on avoidance techniques, remember? You weren’t ready to face the issue, so you ignored it instead.”
“Yeah, I did.” He sighed, tugging her a little bit closer. “Until I had no choice but to go back and face them down, ready or not.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He slid his arm around her shoulders, anchoring her to his side.
She could feel the rigidity in him, as though he worried she might push him away. Instead, she sank into the embrace, catching the familiar scent of him and only just resisting the urge to tuck her nose into the curve of his neck and shoulder and inhale as deeply as she could to fill herself with it. God, she’d missed him.
“And?” she asked.
“I think I finally know what I want.”
“And what’s that?”
“You.”
As thrilling as that one little word was, it wasn’t enough.
“Well, that might be a problem if you’re staying in Boulder because I’m moving to South Dakota.” She felt him go still and offered a quick, silent prayer she wasn’t about to screw everything up.
“Why would you do that?” he asked cautiously.
“I’ve been talking with Mrs. Mantooth, you remember, the principal at Winona’s school? It seems that if I can get my teaching credentials transferred in time, there’s a position at the school for the fall term that’s mine if I want it.”
“And do you?”
“Yes, I really do. More than almost anything.” Thoughts of getting to spend her days with the children had been the balm that kept her ragged nerves from fraying to the point of frustration these past few weeks. But she’d made those plans based on the way Daryl had been while they were on the ranch, how at home he’d been. She thought she knew where his heart lay. Now, though, after hearing about all of the reasons he’d had for staying away, she worried that maybe she’d made a serious miscalculation.
“But not as much as I want you. If you don’t plan to move back to Hayden, I’m sure there are plenty of schools in Boulder I can—”
“Two weeks.”
She stared at him in confusion. “I’m sorry?”
“Two weeks.” He pulled himself away from her so they could see each other clearly. “That’s how long ago I gave my notice to Doyle.”
“You…” The doubts started to give way to hope. “You’re moving back to the ranch?”
“I’m buying into the ranch, actually, once I can work out all the details with my father.” Daryl pulled a face. “He’s resisting the idea, but I think we can come to an agreement. Once we do, I plan to build a second house a little ways from theirs, so we’ll have some privacy. I’ve got a few ideas about it, but, well, I wanted to wait and see what you thought.”
Her breath caught. “About the house?”
“About the house. About the ranch. About us.” He seemed to steel himself, waiting for her reply, his expression an endearing mixture of hope and fear.
“I won’t marry you right away,” she said, feeling her own hopes and fears colliding with his. “I’ve only just gotten rid of one fiancé. I don’t want anyone to ever say to you that you got the bride that belonged to someone else. No one,” she said, fiercely, “is ever going to say you didn’t have to work to get me to say yes.”
Daryl laughed. “I get the feeling
you’re going to enjoy every second of it too.”
“Every single one,” she agreed before he kissed her. She gave a contented sigh and ran her fingers over his strong face, cupping his cheek in her palm. “One day,” she said softly.
“One day?”
“That’s how long it took me to fall in love with you.” Saying the words out loud sent her stomach into freefall, but she wasn’t sorry she said it. Never again would she hold back her feelings and wonder what might have been. She would take life by the horns and live it, even if it ended up kicking her in the teeth.
“Oh, Princess, I’ve got you beat. It only took me one night.”
“The night I came to your bedroom?”
Daryl shook his head slowly. “The night of the party back in Connecticut, when you walked down those stairs like a queen in that purple dress, thumbing your nose at everyone and not giving a damn what any of them thought, especially your mother. Not that I was willing to admit it to myself at the time,” he added with a chuckle, using his finger to close her mouth, which had fallen open in surprise, “but that was the beginning of the end for me.”
That night seemed like a million years ago. Twining her arms around Daryl’s neck as he pulled her into his lap, Amelia asked, “Are you ever going to stop calling me Princess?”
“Probably not.”
Smiling as she settled into his strong embrace, Amelia sighed. “Forever. That’s how long I’ve waited for someone like you to come into my life.” And how long she would keep him there now that she had him. Like it or not, he was stuck with her.
Forever.
A word about the author…
Nika Rhone has been fascinated with storytelling from the moment that first book was placed in her eager little hands, starting a lifelong love affair with the written word. Eventually, though, reading other people’s stories just wasn’t enough, so she started to write down her own.
She lives in her hometown on Long Island, New York, with her very understanding husband and their outrageously spoiled dog.
http://NikaRhone.com
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