When the Cowboy Said ''I Do''

by Crystal Green

  That he loved her.

  The air in his lungs felt so thin and sharp that he thought it might cut right through him.

  Now that the threat of losing Holly and the baby was here, Bo couldn’t lie to himself anymore.

  They really were his everything.

  Behind him, he heard the sliding hospital entrance doors open. When he glanced over his shoulder, Rose was there, running to him with open arms.

  He’d called her as soon as the hospital staff had taken Holly behind those doors, leaving Bo stranded.

  Rose must have seen how tortured he felt, because she pulled him in for a hug.

  “How are they?” Rose asked.

  “No progress reports yet.”

  She tightened her arms around him. “Holly’s got a core of iron running through her, Bo.”

  “I know it.” And he prayed it would be enough.

  “I told you that I’d call her dad, so all the Pritchetts should be here soon, along with Erika and half of Thunder Canyon. I also called—”

  Before she finished, the doors slid open again. His dad and mom walked in, circumventing the dull green waiting chairs.

  Bo’s father got to him first, the crags of his face even deeper now, furrowed with concern as he pulled his son in for an embrace. Without a word, his mother gave Bo a remorseful attempt at a greeting smile right before she took up Bo’s other side, cradling his head against her shoulder.

  She was wearing a fashionable red cape-coat, no doubt a dramatic purchase from her Italy trip. Her blond hair was dyed to perfection and her nails manicured. After the divorce, she’d left behind the country girl, seeking bigger travels and adventures that the ranch had never afforded.

  But she had on the same perfume Bo had been smelling since he was knee-tall. Jasmine. It brought him back to a time when they’d all been together. It drove home the fact that he had his own family now, and if Holly and the baby came out of this, he was going to fight to the death to save it.

  Rose had already gone to the nurse’s station, where a few Halloween decorations still remained. His manager was probably going to crack the whip to see if she could get better information.

  Meanwhile, Bo’s mom framed his face with her hands, getting a good gander at him. “You look like you’re about to drop. Come sit with us.”

  “I can’t sit.”

  His dad patted Bo’s arm. “Of course not. And I told your mom…”

  His father stopped himself, and Bo knew it was because he didn’t want to start any arguments with his ex-wife. Even in Bo’s fog of anguish, he saw how his parents still couldn’t be around each other.

  Wrinkling his brow, he finally got his mind in gear.

  He wouldn’t end up like them. There wouldn’t ever come a day when he’d want Holly out of his life. He was sure of it.

  And he felt sorry for his parents because they’d never had the luxury of being so certain.

  “I didn’t realize you’d be in town, Mom,” he said. “I thought you were coming for my inauguration. Dad, I thought you’d left after the wedding.”

  His dad cleared his throat. “Actually, we came to terms with our situation…for now. After a good phone discussion, we both decided to come to Thunder Canyon to be with you for the election results, but we didn’t make up our minds soon enough to arrive on time. Then we got calls from Rose, and we just came straight here.”

  His mom tucked her hand into his. “I returned home from my trip yesterday, but I’d already decided that I was going to be here for you, since I made the wrong choice about attending your wedding. Forgive me, Bo?”

  He looked at them—his parents. Two people standing apart, miles between them.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” he said. He didn’t have the energy to tell her he wished she and his dad had gotten it together earlier, because that’s not what mattered now.

  Holly and the baby were his everything, just as he’d believed that night when he’d gotten to his knees before he and his wife had made love. And he was going to prove it, if he had another opportunity with Holly.

  Yes, there was going to be a change in Bo, even though it meant risk. Change had been easy to talk about in politics, but when it came to personal alterations, it was scarier than hell, and Bo had never been willing to chance it until Holly had come along.

  A doctor emerged from the swinging doors, and Bo strode over to her, just as Rose came over from the nurse’s station to join him and his parents.

  The scrub-garbed doctor was smiling, and Bo nearly collapsed. There wouldn’t be smiles if they were in dire straits, right?

  “I’m Dr. Aberline, Holly’s practitioner.” Then she laid it out. “We stopped her labor. Holly and your baby are doing well—tired, but in good shape.”

  Holly and his baby.

  Bo took hold of a chair to steady himself. He was shaking with relief, a well of emotion ready to burst out of him now that he knew they were okay.

  Rose asked what he couldn’t. “What was wrong?”

  “There were some contractions, all right, but the baby needs more time to develop inside Holly. We gave her medication to relax the uterus. Holly’s a healthy mother, yet I’m sure the stress of the election and a little dehydration did its part in this. Now that it’s over, Mr. Mayor,” she said, her smile growing as she glanced at Bo, “I hope you’ll see to it that Holly gets plenty of rest and fluids.”

  “I’d bring the moon down from the sky for her.”

  Even as he said it, he realized that he’d always meant the romantic quotes he’d fed to the public and press about Holly and his family—that they had never, ever been an act.

  With a start, he realized that change wasn’t coming.

  It had already arrived.

  “Can I see her?” he asked.

  “She’s asleep, Mr. Clifton, but I can take you back there.”

  He left his hat behind with Rose and followed Dr. Aberline past those swinging doors down the hallway, to the left, into a big room with sectioned off gurneys that were mainly empty except for a man hooked up to a breathing apparatus and an older woman surrounded by doctors, her leg crooked, no doubt broken.

  When he came to Holly, who’d been put into a hospital gown, she was indeed sleeping. An IV sent fluids into her arm.

  After drawing the curtain around them, Bo slumped into the chair next to her, heartsick.

  What if, when she woke up, she still wanted to leave?

  He took her warm hand in his, placing his other palm lightly on her belly.

  “Glad to see you both,” he said softly. Maybe the baby could hear him, although Holly couldn’t. And maybe the child could persuade her to stay, through the umbilical cord that connected them.

  “You don’t know how rough it was, standing out in that waiting room,” Bo added. “Thinking of your mom and you in here, remembering her face on the way to the hospital because she was so afraid for you. And I was scared, too.”

  He rubbed Holly’s tummy. It was so fascinatingly round, firm. There was a little human in there—his son or daughter.

  “Thank God it’s over now, and all that’s left is to say how sorry I am for being such a bullheaded jerk.” The words caught in his throat. “I wasn’t half the dad I could’ve been. Or half the husband. And I was so afraid to even make an attempt to do better than that.”

  He brought Holly’s hand to his lips, not sure he could talk anymore without losing it altogether. But the vulnerability didn’t stop him from trying.

  “I’m never going to go anywhere, not after the six months end, and not now. I’m here to stay.”

  Bo didn’t say anything more, because he couldn’t.

  Besides, he knew he had gotten the point across, especially with the tears that blinded him as he leaned his head against Holly’s knuckles, so grateful that she was alive and well, still carrying their child.

  He only prayed that, when she woke up, she would tell him she would stay.

  Holly hadn’t been sleeping at all—not after
Bo had sat down.

  Even as exhausted and woozy as she was, it was as if she had some kind of radar that awakened her to his presence, an alarm that trilled through her every time he was near.

  And that meant she’d heard Bo pouring out his soul to the baby.

  Now, she held back the burning in her closed eyes, the push of heat up her chest and throat.

  Bo had been able to spill his guts while she was supposedly asleep, but would he have been so forthcoming if he knew she was listening to his confessions?

  Or would he have gone back to being Public Bo, where everything he said was designed to keep everyone at a distance, even though they thought they knew him?

  Holly was afraid to open her eyes because she feared something even worse: that she would encounter Wounded Bo—the bruised son who thought all marriages were shams.

  Maybe he was only capable of revealing his true feelings when he thought she wasn’t hearing them, but his naked admissions still sent tremors through her.

  He’d wanted to be a better dad, a better husband.

  Did that mean he loved her though? Why couldn’t he say that?

  She risked a glance through her eyelashes. Bo was clinging to her hand, looking so distraught, looking…

  Like a man in love.

  Caught between not believing it and wanting to with all her heart, Holly opened her eyes all the way.

  He seemed to sense it, too, and his gaze linked to hers, sending a barrage of love, trepidation, puzzlement through her.

  “Holly?” he said, resting her arm down on the bed.

  Her knuckles were damp from…his tears? Yes, she could see from the red of his eyes that he’d been sharply affected. A tough man, driven to despair.

  It twisted her up. But his unchecked emotion began to heal her, too, although she didn’t know how long that would last if Bo started dancing around their issues again.

  She waited, because if he didn’t make the first move, telling her what he had just told the baby, that would be it. She would know that he would never change, and she couldn’t bear to live with that.

  But then he started talking, his tone raw.

  “I was just speaking with Hopper.” She nodded. Talk to me. Please, Bo.

  He stroked her arm, seemingly gathering his courage.

  Damn him for keeping her on this hook, damn him—

  “I’m going to take better care of you from now on,” he said. “I only wanted to keep all of us safe and happy.”

  Because he couldn’t do the same for his own family back when his uncle and Steph’s dad had been killed?

  “But,” he added, “I also tried to keep myself safe all these years, too. Too safe. And in the process, I messed things up with you and the baby.”

  No, you didn’t, she thought, because he still had the opportunity to take what he’d started with them and run with it.

  Yet it sounded as if he might be setting her up for a fall, and she braced herself.

  “I have no idea how to be a good father, but I swear to you, Holly.” When he looked into her eyes this time, she saw a different burning there—a determination, a soul-deep vow. “I’m going to be a real husband and father.”

  “And what does that mean?” Her voice sounded like a croak. “‘Real’?”

  “It means just what it sounds like—that I’m going to learn how to keep you guys happy forever. I’m going to give everything I’ve got to you, including my trust.” He ran his hand up her arm. “I just hope you see fit to take me, after what we’ve been through.”

  He still hadn’t said the words she really wanted to hear, and she began to close her eyes again until…

  “I love you, Holly, more than I thought I could ever love anyone.”

  A sob racked her from the middle of her chest up, making her hitch in her breath and grab the sheet.

  He got out of his seat, his gaze wide.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I’m… Oh, Bo.”

  Bo carefully slid his arms around her, obviously mindful that she was in a hospital bed. But from the way he held her head in one hand and lovingly covered her mouth with his, it was obvious that he wished they were at home, with her happy and healthy.

  As he kissed her, it was as if the sun exploded behind her eyelids, in her head, in every part of her. He made her walk on air, on rays of light, above all the failures she’d tried so hard to rise above.

  Bo had helped her up just when she’d been at her lowest and now, as his lips sought hers—warm, loved—Holly knew that she would never sink again.

  Then he ended the kiss by brushing his lips over hers.

  “You forgot something at home,” he said, his breath warm, intimate.

  He reached into his shirt pocket, holding his grandmother’s ring out to her.

  As Holly’s smile grew, Bo got to his knee.

  “Marry me, Holly. Wear this ring for real this time?”

  Her mind swirled, but she felt more grounded than ever. “Yes, Bo. Yes, yes, yes…”

  She hauled in a breath as he slid the ring over her finger. It was tighter than the first time he’d put it there, but it was a much better fit.

  It gleamed under the hospital lights with such clarity, like a million golden days ahead of them.

  “I wish Hopper could see this,” he said.

  Now that he’d given her his all, she could do the same. It was safe now. It was…right.

  “Hopper has a name,” she said. “I asked Dr. Aberline the sex because I couldn’t stand waiting to know anymore…not after tonight.”

  As Bo held her hand to his chest, Holly smiled, a happy tear rolling out of her eye.

  “I thought we could call her Sabrina, after my mother.”

  He kissed Holly again, and she could imagine their child opening her own sleepy gaze, smiling in the womb, as if she couldn’t wait to come out and join the family that Holly and Bo would put together, day by learning day.

  And, in the future, night by moonlit night.

  Bo was really in it deep, but unlike last night, when his world had almost come tumbling down around him, he was getting the hang of what to do as a husband now.

  Instead of leaving notes for Holly, he served her breakfast in bed, since Dr. Aberline had deemed it safe for her patient to return home with a good dose of bed rest. And Bo was more than happy to provide for his wife.

  He set the rose-patterned tray on her lap, and she smiled while perusing the wheat French toast, cantaloupe, scrambled eggs and orange juice. A wildflower in a vase accompanied the offerings; Bo hadn’t been able to resist going outside to pick it for her since the sun had broken through the clouds and was already shining.

  “Wow,” she said. “You went all out.”

  He was learning how to give his all, as he’d promised, and damned if this morning wasn’t half as scary as he’d anticipated after saying the grand words.

  I love you.

  “Back in flash,” he said, returning to the kitchen to fetch his own tray.

  When he returned into the room, sitting next to her on the mattress, he said, “You know that all mayors don’t provide this kind of service.”

  “Only in Thunder Canyon,” she said.

  Yup, they were all moving forward: the town, Bo, Holly and Sabrina.

  Together.

  He took out the newspaper he’d tucked under his arm, showing her the front page while she nibbled on a piece of cantaloupe. As she scanned the contents, he watched her, loving how she did everything—from chewing the fruit to the way she read a paper.

  It was going to be hell refraining from doing much besides holding her for at least the next month in bed, but it was going to be worth it.

  She poked her fork at the picture that covered the front page in full color, then read the headline. “‘Eureka!’”

  He’d mined a fortune, all right, although the article was about how he’d been elected mayor, not about how he’d struck it rich by truly finding Holly last night.

  He played wit
h one of her curls as she smiled, still reading. When she’d finished, she grabbed his hand, holding it just over her heart. He could feel the beating of it, and the rhythm took up its place in him, too.

  And they would always stay this close—no one would pull them apart. They had talked, deciding that Sabrina’s parentage would be kept between them. If Alan ever came back, Bo would take him down.

  Sabrina was his, just as much as Holly was.

  She lowered the paper. “No mention of Charles and Di.” Even the news seemed to realize that he and Holly had become their own people, that they were a world away from the ill-fated royal couple and were living a true romance.

  Holly neatly folded up the paper, looking just like the woman who’d always had a plan, even if that plan only concerned how to dispose of the news each day.

  But when she saw him grinning at her, she tossed that paper away, reaching up to Bo and drawing him down for a kiss.

  As she lay on her side, her small juice glass shook on her tray, yet she didn’t seem to care about spilling it and creating a mess. Not after what they’d been through.

  Their kiss grew serious, slower, hotter, and pretty soon, Bo removed the breakfast trays to the floor, climbing back into bed.

  He scooped her against him, the baby bump against his stomach, his hand in the curve above his wife’s hip.

  She rubbed her nose against his. “Soon, we’ll have a real honeymoon.”

  “Being with you is honeymoon enough,” he said, repeating what she’d once told a couple who’d asked him and Holly when they were going to take time to celebrate their wedding.

  And Bo Clifton happily held his wife, intending never to let go, through good times and bad, for better or worse, for richer or poorer.

  Together they moved forward, into their own golden days, forevermore.

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Crystal Green for her contribution to the Montana Mavericks: Thunder Canyon Cowboys continuity.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-6989-1

  WHEN THE COWBOY SAID “I DO”