Her Last First Kiss: Christian Cowboy Romance (Last Chance Ranch Romance Book 1)

by Liz Isaacson

  “Well, I’ll be right in.”

  He tipped his hat, somehow turned in the impossibly small space, and left the camper shell, closing the door behind him. Scarlett changed quickly and went inside his cabin, which was cooler than outside and smelled deliciously like coffee and Hudson’s cologne. Hound got up and approached her, that wonderful smile on his doggy face.

  “Hey, boy,” she said, scrubbing him behind the ears.

  She’d already been in the tiny, single-room space last night, but her confidence that what she could offer her people took another boost. This cabin was all one room, with the only separate area the bathroom. Hudson climbed a ladder and slept in a loft at night, and he said he wouldn’t miss that.

  “Coffee?” he asked as she poured herself a cup.

  “Yeah, I’m feeling like a lot of cream and sugar this morning.”

  “Oh? Didn’t sleep well?”

  “I’ve had a stressful few weeks.” She flashed him a look. “I still need to find an accountant, and I’ve got a couple of people coming next week.”

  “That’s good news.”

  “And now that you’ll be back, I’m really going to have to pull together a party on short notice.”

  “You don’t need to have a party for me,” he said.

  “Of course I do.” Scarlett mixed in a healthy amount of cream and three spoonfuls of sugar. “You only turn forty-six once.”

  “Forty-six is nothing special.”

  “You’ve survived another year,” she said. “And at your age, that’s something.” She turned and looked at him, glad the atmosphere between them was back to flirty and fun.

  “Ha ha,” he said, setting his cup in the sink. “You wanna take that to go?”

  “Sure.” Scarlett took a sip of her coffee and followed him out the front door. Hound didn’t make a move to come, so she closed the door and left him inside the cabin. “So I’ve been working mostly in the blue stables and the green stables.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Clean the stalls, work with the horses, feed them, all of that.” He walked slowly down a dirt path, seemingly in no hurry. “Now, don’t tell Trixie, but I’ve taken a shine to a horse out here. Her name’s Moonbeam, and she belongs to a young couple who just got married and live in an apartment. So Moonbeam’s here with us.”

  “Ooh, Trixie is going to smell this Moonbeam on you so fast.” Scarlett laughed, glad when Hudson joined in with her.

  He showed her the stables, explained why his great-great-grandfather painted them different colors and how the operation worked.

  She drank her coffee and listened to the pride in his voice as he spoke about the boarding stables. “You sure you don’t want to be here?” she asked.

  “Definitely sure,” he said. “I’m hoping you’ll let me marry you and move into the homestead with you.” He ducked his head when he spoke. “I don’t mind waiting however long it’ll take you to have the wedding of your dreams, as long as I can kiss you at night and we can talk about serious things.”

  “I’m okay with that,” Scarlett said, committing to it on the spot. “Really, Hudson, I just…it’s hard for me to believe that you love me.” She choked out the last two words. “Vance, he, well, I haven’t been loved in a long time. Sometimes I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to feel that way about me.”

  “I know,” he said. “I mean, I think I have some idea of what it feels like to wonder what is so wrong with me that Jan couldn’t love me.” He squeezed her hand. “So, let’s just reassure each other when we need to, all right?”

  “I can do that,” Scarlett said.

  “What made you believe that I liked you?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you went to Three Oaks, then Johnson Oaks, and then here, not even knowing that I’d be at any of them. Why’d you do that?”

  Scarlett let her now-empty coffee mug hang at her side as they walked. “I wanted you to come back to the ranch.” She tucked her arm into his. “I got your text about ten minutes before I pulled up, and I sat in my car and prayed and prayed that this place would be the right one. Then I took a deep breath and went to knock on the door. And then there you were.” She wanted to be honest with him in all things.

  “I’ll admit I was kind of a mess,” she said. “Adele tried to get me to call you a bunch of times. I didn’t go to church, because I couldn’t go by myself.”

  Hudson tipped his head back and looked up into the trees. “I understand, Scarlett. I felt like God had led me to Last Chance Ranch and then abandoned me. I didn’t understand, well, a lot of things actually. But then you showed up, and everything made sense in my life.”

  Scarlett caught sight of his cabin in the distance, and she sensed this tour was almost over.

  Hudson’s step slowed. “Scarlett, I wanted to talk to you about something.” He sounded serious, and Scarlett’s heart skipped a beat.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “It’s about having a family,” he said, his eyes focused on the horizon.

  “Oh.” Humiliation filled Scarlett. “Well, I’m past being able to have children, Hudson.”

  “I’m aware,” he said. “Though I think women have babies at age forty-three, but what I was thinking about was actually adoption.” He paused and turned toward her. “I know I’m the old man here, but I’ve always wanted a family.”

  The weight of his gaze on her drew Scarlett’s eyes to his. “I wouldn’t mind adopting,” she said, the thought rotating around inside her head as it tried to find a place to take root.

  “No? Have you thought about it before now?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “So maybe something to think about,” he said, stepping slowly and capturing her hand in his.

  “Yeah, I’ll think about it,” she said.

  “How long do you think it will take you to plan a wedding?” he asked next, his voice full of false casualness.

  Scarlett shook her head and laughed. “Let’s get through your birthday party first, okay?”

  He agreed with a chuckle, but Scarlett’s mind started down a path she’d forbidden it to go down previously.

  The wedding of her dreams. What would that look like, exactly?

  In a past life, when she was a different Scarlett, it would’ve been a huge affair, with the best of everything. But she’d already had that wedding.

  And what she wanted this time was simplicity. Her family. Hudson’s. Good food made by Adele. A pastor in a small church at the bottom of the bluff.

  And her and Hudson, dancing in their finest clothes. She could definitely plan something like that by springtime. Oh, yes, she’d be married in the spring.

  The thought didn’t hold any fear, and she sighed as she gripped Hudson’s hand with both of hers and they went back to his cabin to pack up his stuff so he could come back to Last Chance Ranch with her.

  Chapter 24

  Hudson woke as he usually did on August fourth, but he knew instinctively that something was amiss. “Hound?” He lifted his head off the pillow and looked for his dog, who never slept more than a foot away from Hudson.

  Until this morning.

  Something was definitely wrong.

  Hudson’s first thought was that his dog—an eleven-year-old golden retriever—had finally crawled away in the night and passed away. His heart started pounding like a bass drum, and he hurried to get his old bones out of bed.

  “Hound?” he called louder, praying that if the dog had died that it had happened peacefully while the canine slept.

  The clicking of claws came down the hall as Hudson pulled a T-shirt over his head. “Hey, bud,” he said, his adrenaline still soaring through his bloodstream. “There you are. Did I sleep too late? Need to go out?” He scrubbed the dog behind his hears and under his jowls. “Let’s go get breakfast, okay?”

  He stepped into the hall, a new smell meeting his nose. Bacon.

  Someone was in his house, and his heartrate
picked up again, hoping for the curvy auburn-haired woman he was in love with.

  Sure enough, Scarlett stood in the kitchen, sliding a fried egg out of the pan and onto a plate. Hudson leaned against the wall, a grin on his face. “Well, aren’t you the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen?”

  She grinned at him and danced over to nestle herself into his arms. “Happy birthday.”

  “It’s certainly starting out that way.” He leaned down and kissed her, tasting cream and sugar and coffee.

  “Bacon and eggs,” she said, stepping back. “And you’re really something, luring Hound away from the bacon. He’s been guarding me since I pulled it out.”

  “Well, he loves bacon.” Hudson pinched off a piece and gave it to his dog.

  “He loves you more,” Scarlett said, looking up at him through her lashes as she picked up a couple of slices of bacon. “Obviously. You called once, and he went on down the hall.”

  “We’ve been through some things together,” Hudson said, smiling at her. “Thanks, sweetheart. This is great.” He sprinkled salt and pepper on his eggs and enjoyed breakfast with his girlfriend.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Scarlett said, and Hudson looked at her.

  “Yeah?”

  “I have always wanted a family,” she said. “It was really hard for me the older I got and I never got pregnant.” She looked at him with raw emotion in her expression. “So I’d really like to adopt or foster or whatever with you. We could build a decent family, don’t you think?”

  “I know we could build a good family,” he said.

  “We have the dogs already,” she said. “But I think we could add a baby or two.”

  Hudson smiled at his almost-empty plate, his emotions swirling up and down. Joy radiated through him, and he felt like the luckiest man in the world when he looked at Scarlett again.

  “Have you thought about what else I asked?”

  “Oh, you mean the part where you want me to wear a diamond. That part?” she asked, her tone playful and light.

  “Yeah, that part,” he said. “We could go down to town today. Get a ring. Now that would be the best birthday present on the planet.”

  “You’re impossible.” She shook her head as she giggled and scooped up another bite of eggs. She pointed her fork at him. “And so manipulative. Using your birthday to get me to go to the jewelry store?”

  He grinned at her. “Fine. I’ll go myself. I asked for the day off, and my boss gave it to me.” He’d proposed to her twice now over the past week but she still hadn’t said yes. She’d claimed she wanted to go to the jewelry store with him, pick out her ring, and then she’d become his fiancée.

  So him going alone wouldn’t fly with her, and he knew it. Still, he leaned away from the counter and folded his arms, watching her.

  “You don’t need to go yourself,” she said, her eyes glittering with a secret. Hudson knew that look, and he leaned forward.

  “What have you done?” he asked, half hopeful and half afraid of the answer.

  “So I happen to have gone to town a couple of times this week. I may have stopped by the jeweler myself.”

  Hudson blinked at her, sure he’d heard her wrong. “You did not.”

  Scarlett left her uneaten food on the counter and moved down a few feet, where she opened a drawer and took out a ring box. Hudson gaped at it, his blood feeling like ice in his veins.

  “Scarlett,” he said in a dangerous voice. “What is that?”

  “I would like to be married in the spring,” she said. “Gramps showed me a few pictures of this ranch when all the trees are in bloom, and it’s gorgeous. That’s eight months from now. I think I can wait that long to be your wife.”

  She swallowed, the first sign she’d shown him that she was nervous. His anxiety blipped, and his eyes dropped to the ring box again. “Eight months. That’s a mighty long time, Scarlett.”

  “I know,” she said. “But it’s the wedding I want.”

  He thought about what he wanted, and that was to wake up next to Scarlett or find her in this kitchen every morning. But he could wait—because ultimately, his greatest desire was for her to be happy. And they wouldn’t be living in this cabin anyway.

  The cracking of the ring box brought his attention back to her, and he expected to see the ring she wanted sitting there.

  Instead, he saw a men’s wedding band, and she said, “Hudson Flannigan, I’m hopelessly in love with you. Will you marry me?”

  Hudson blinked. Had she seriously just asked him to marry her?

  “Don’t be mad,” she said, pulling the ring out of the box. “I know you don’t wear this during the engagement, but I wanted to ask you.”

  Their eyes met, and all of Hudson’s frustration drained away. “This is what our life is going to be like, isn’t it?” He grinned at her. “You taking charge.”

  “I mean, maybe.” She shrugged as she set the ring back in the box. “But I like it plenty when you take charge.”

  Hudson got up and gathered her into his arms. “So if I say yes, can we go to town today and get you a ring?”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary,” she said, opening another drawer.

  “How long have these been in my house?” he asked as she pulled out another ring box.

  “Just a couple of days.” She handed him the box. “This is what you bought for me.”

  “Oh, I did, huh?”

  “I may have taken your card out of your wallet.”

  “You did what?” Hudson stared at her, trying to decide if he was just shocked, or if he was upset, or if he couldn’t wait to get this ring on her finger and call her his fiancée.

  “Well, I couldn’t buy my own diamond ring,” she said, pushing against his chest playfully. “And you just leave your wallet lying around the cabin. Hound was here, and he said I could.”

  Hudson started shaking his head, laughter bubbling up from deep inside him. “All right, then. I suppose you want to wear this today.”

  “Yes, please.” She looked from him to the box and back. “But you still haven’t said yes.”

  “It’s a yes from me, Scarlett,” he said, opening the box and finding a beautiful diamond ring inside. He didn’t know anything about cuts or shapes, but if she liked it, so did he. “It’ll always be a yes from me.”

  Hours later, with the diamond on her finger and after plenty of kissing, they walked with Hound down the road from his cabin.

  “Are you sure we can’t cancel the party?” he asked.

  “I’m sure.”

  “I’m just not great at being in the spotlight,” he said.

  Scarlett cocked her head and said, “Well, too bad. It’s one day a year, and it’s happening.”

  He went with her, surprised when they bypassed the homestead. “Where are we going?”

  “The horse barn,” she said. “Everything’s set up in there.”

  As they approached, he could hear music and chatter, and his hand tightened in Scarlett’s. She gave him a reassuring smile and pushed open the doors to reveal a huge banner that said, Happy Birthday Hudson on it.

  “He’s here,” she called, and a cheer went up from everyone inside. He spied his parents and his brothers—all three of them—all the ranch hands and a half dozen volunteers. Gramps stood right by the door, a wide smile on his face, and Hudson leaned down and hugged him first.

  “Welcome to the family,” Gramps said.

  “Happy to be here,” Hudson said, and it was the absolute truth. As he smiled and shook hands, gave hugs, and loaded his plate with smoked brisket and baked beans, he didn’t forget to send a prayer of gratitude to God for leading him to Last Chance Ranch.

  Eight months later

  Scarlett turned and looked at the back of the dress in the mirror. “I think it’s okay.” She met Adele’s eyes. “What do you think?”

  “It’s the best we can do,” she said. “There’s no time to run down and get a new button, and no one will be able to tell.”

  Scarle
tt had lost another fifteen pounds over the course of the last eight months, but she’d still popped a button on her wedding dress. She pushed the negative thoughts out of her head. Hudson didn’t care what she wore to marry him. All he wanted was for her to show up, say I do, and sail off into the sunset with him.

  Literally. He’d literally rented a boat—a yacht, really—for a month and they were going to take their own private cruise down to Mazatlan and back. He was paying a staff of three to cook, clean, and drive the yacht, so they could simply relax and spend time together.

  No dogs. No horses. No robot mailboxes. That was what he’d said, always followed by, “We work hard, Scarlett. You work so hard. Let me take you on vacation.”

  And because she did work hard, she’d said yes. She’d even bought four new swimming suits, and she wasn’t going to be afraid to wear them in front of him.

  Someone knocked on the door, and Scarlett spun away from the mirror. Her mother came in and scanned the dress. “It’s beautiful.” She hugged Scarlett and added, “Everyone’s ready.”

  “Gramps?”

  “He’s standing right outside, every seam pressed.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” Scarlett took a deep breath of her mother’s perfume, a scent so familiar it made her throat close.

  “No crying now,” her mom said. “I’ve seen Hudson, and he’s so happy he’s glowing.”

  Scarlett stepped back and smoothed her hands down her stomach. They’d spent more time with his family over the eight months of their engagement than hers, but this certainly wasn’t the first time her parents had met Hudson.

  “All right, I’m ready.”

  She left her bedroom and the homestead and headed across the lawn toward Horse Heaven and LlamaLand. Along the south side of the fields there sat a long row of cherry trees, and they’d bloomed last week into bright pink blossoms.