by Maisey Yates
Her blue eyes widened. “You . . . love me?”
“So much. I have loved you for a while now. I think that’s why you scared me so much. I was all shut off, trying to keep from being hurt more. I thought if I didn’t trust anyone, didn’t depend on anyone, then I would be safe. But I wasn’t really living. You said that you felt like you could truly be yourself when you were with me. You do the same for me. You brought me back to life. And that’s just you, Kelsey. It’s not the baby, or satisfied honor. It’s you. I didn’t know who I was anymore, who I wanted to be. You led me back to myself.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close. “Oh, Cole, I do love you.”
He hugged her back, his chin resting on her head. “I won’t be perfect. I’ll let you down. But I will love you with everything I have. If I make a promise to you, I swear I’ll move heaven and earth to keep it. And I will never, ever betray you. I will be a better man than I am, so that I deserve you.”
“I’m not perfect either, you know. I hog the blankets. And my temper is quick. I get absorbed in writing projects and forget to shower.”
He laughed. “You’re not scaring me away.”
“I’m not trying to. I’m just saying that we both have flaws. I don’t love you in spite of what you’ve been through, Cole. I love the man you’ve become because of all the crap you’ve been through.”
He laughed and pulled her closer, kissing her lips, embracing every ounce of emotion that filled him. He would never turn away from it again.
“I love you,” he said again.
“I love to hear you say it.” She said, her lips turning up into a half grin. “And I love you.”
“And when we get married and you make Alexa your maid of honor, I won’t even fight with her.”
Kelsey threw her head back and laughed. “I’ll tell her you said that.”
“I hope you do.” He walked back over to the couch and pulled the ring off the coffee table. “Kelsey, I’m going to offer you this ring for a third time, with the disclaimer that if you refuse, I’ll only offer it again. And again, and again. Forever.”
She smiled, her eyes glittering. “Well, I’m not going to make you work that hard for it.”
Kelsey extended her hand, so ready for this now. So ready to share her life with him. Not because of the baby, but because of them.
He slid the ring onto her fourth finger, and it didn’t feel heavy, or strange. It felt right.
“I thought this mistake would ruin . . . everything,” she said. “I didn’t know what I would do when you showed up at my door. How I would manage to incorporate you into my life. And now I can’t imagine it without you.”
“Maybe we should send a thank-you note to the fertility clinic.”
She laughed. “I don’t know about that. I’ve always tried to plan, and organize. I’ve never liked the unexpected, but I’m rethinking. Maybe the unexpected isn’t so bad.”
“Me too, Kelsey.” He leaned in and kissed her, and heat spread through her, melting her, making her want to drag him upstairs and have her way with him.
But there was the small matter of telling Alexa she wouldn’t be leaving.
“Just a second,” she said, slinking out onto the porch. “Hey, Alex?” Cole followed her onto the porch, wrapping his arms around her waist.
Alexa, who was leaning against the car, looking bored, suddenly looked much more attentive. “You’re staying, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I am.”
“You,” Alexa said sharply. “Do you love her? Because she’s my best friend and she deserves someone who loves her more than anything.”
“I do.” Cole said, holding Kelsey more tightly against him.
Alexa nodded, a smile teasing her lips. “Great. Then, Kelsey, if you put me in yellow, I will make your life a living hell. So choose the bridesmaid dresses wisely.”
“Ready?”
They all turned and watched Tyler come from the direction of the bunkhouse, his suitcase in hand. He turned to where she and Cole were standing. “I need some time off,” he said. He looked back at Alexa. “At least, I think I do.”
She sighed heavily. “You do.” She turned back to them. “He does.”
“How long?” Cole asked.
Tyler shrugged. “I’m hoping I’ll be calling with a long-distance two weeks’ notice in a few days.”
“Don’t get cocky, Tyler,” Alexa said. “But get in the car.” Then she ran up the steps and threw her arms around them both. “I’m happy for you,” she said.
Kelsey hugged her friend back. “I’m happy for you too.”
“Keep me up to date on wedding and baby. I need to be here for both.”
“Will do.”
Alexa trotted back down to the car, and she and Tyler waved while they pulled away from the house. Cole and Kelsey watched them until the car was gone.
“Do you think they’ll make it work?” Kelsey asked.
“Stranger things have happened,” Cole said. “Look at us.”
Kelsey laughed. “Well, that’s true.”
“So, when do we need to have this wedding?” he asked.
A little thrill flipped Kelsey’s stomach. “The wedding . . . Well, it’s really important. And we’ll need lots of planning. And rehearsal.”
“Okay,” Cole said slowly.
“But right now . . . I’d rather practice for the wedding night.”
He swung her up into his arms in one fluid movement and dropped a kiss onto her lips. “I’m all for that.”
She snickered. “Ride ’em, cowboy.”
Cole rewarded her with a laugh. “Hang on, cowgirl.”
She kissed his cheek. “Forever.”
Epilogue
“So, Kelsey, when are you two having another baby?”
Kelsey looked from the well-meaning wedding attendee to her husband, and then to her nine-month-old daughter. “We haven’t thought that far ahead yet. But I promise we’ll send out announcements when the time comes.”
That seemed to satisfy the nosy guest, who moved on to another table. She and Cole had talked about other kids, in that distant-future kind of way. Even though Madeline was a mighty stealer of sleep, and could projectile vomit with the best of them, they were agreed they wanted more.
At least a year after Maddy started sleeping through the night.
“The bride wore black,” Cole muttered, looking at Alexa and Tyler, who were holding each other close on the dance floor.
“Yes, she did. But are you really that surprised?”
He shook his head. “I was just surprised she wore that lavender dress you chose for our wedding.”
“It’s what friends do. It’s why I’m sitting here looking like an angsty teenager’s closet threw up on me.”
“I think you look pretty cute.”
“Well then, that makes up for it.”
She and Cole shared a smile, and Kelsey felt like she would burst with happiness. But then, she felt that way at least once a day. Life on the ranch with Cole and Maddy and Lark and Cade was busy. And it was wonderful.
Cole reached out and took Maddy off of her lap, settling her in his arms. The love that Cole had for their daughter never failed to amaze her. Never failed to make her teary-eyed.
Cole lowered his head, his cheek resting against Maddy’s hair, and took a deep breath. “It’s a beautiful day,” he said, his eyes meeting hers. “Of course, every day has been beautiful since you’ve been in it.”
“Life is pretty beautiful,” she said, putting her hand over his.
He looked from Maddy to her, a smile on his lips. “Yes, it is.”
Read on for a sneak peek at the next Silver Creek romance from Maisey Yates
UNTOUCHED
Available January 2014 from InterMix
Chapter One
It wasn’t like she even wanted any of this for herself.
Lark Mitchell looked around the completely unconventional wedding being thrown in her yard, and fought
the urge to cry.
Which was dumb as rocks, because there was no reason to cry. Seriously, the bride was wearing a black wedding dress. It was ridiculous. And, okay, the bride was also marrying the man Lark had spent the better part of two years completely fixated on, but that was no reason to cry.
It wasn’t like she loved Tyler. And in the year since he’d started dating Alexa, his new wife, and moved to New York Lark had completely gotten over him.
No, this wasn’t heartbreak. She was just in the throes of that left-behind kind of melancholy that she was more familiar with than she’d like to be.
She’d felt that way when most of her friends had gone off to college and she’d stayed in Silver Creek to help out on the ranch. She’d felt it all through high school when other girls had gotten dates and she’d gotten the chance to tutor cute boys in English.
Just this sort of achey feeling that other people were going somewhere while she stood in the same place.
Or, in this instance, sat in the same place. At one of the florid tables placed around the lawn. This little wedding had come to Elk Haven Stables because Tyler was once a ranch hand, and because the bride in black was best friends with Lark’s sister-in-law, Kelsey.
Lark adored Kelsey, but she could honestly do without Alexa.
Which might be sour grapes. Maybe.
But damn, woman, marry a dude your own age. Tyler was in her demographic, and he hadn’t known her in high school, which helped, because as awkward as she was now . . . high school had been a biotch.
“Hey, sweetie.”
Lark looked up and saw Kelsey, holding baby Maddy on her hip and looking down at her with overly-sympathetic blue eyes. “Hi,” Lark said.
“Are you okay?”
“What? Yeah. I’m . . . so okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay? I had a crush on this guy for like two seconds, a year ago. I never even kissed him.”
“I remember how much you liked him.”
“Thanks, Kels, but I’m a grown up, as much as Cole doesn’t like to acknowledge it. I’ve moved on. I have another man in my life now.”
Because she was sure three rounds of cyber sex six months ago with a guy she’d never met counted as having someone in her life. And if not, it at least bolstered her lie. She needed the lie. It was so much better than admitting she was pathetic. And that she spent most days in her room doing tech support for various and sundry people while eating Pop Tarts and streaming Dr. Who through an online subscription service.
Yeah. Saying she was involved was better than admitting that.
“Oh. Do you? Because Cole . . .” Kelsey narrowed her eyes. “Cole doesn’t know.”
“No. And it’s okay if it stays that way.” The idea of her brother finding the transcripts from those little chats she’d had with Aaron_234 was ever so slightly awful.
Almost as bad as admitting that the closest she’d ever come to sex was a heavy breathing conversation. Over the net. Where you couldn’t even hear the heavy breathing.
The very thought made her cringe at her own lameness. It was advanced geekiness of the highest order.
At least she excelled something.
“I’m not going to keep secrets from Cole,” she said, sitting down at the table. “I mean, I won’t lie to him if he asks.”
“He shouldn’t ask. It’s not his business.” Of course, Cole wouldn’t see it that way. To Cole, everything in her life was his business. Thankfully, Kelsey and Maddy had deflected some of that, but then there was Cade. Cade who was the more wicked brother. The irresponsible one. The one who should be cool with her doing whatever and finding he way in life by making a few mistakes.
But Cade was even worse than Cole in his way. The hypocrite. She always figured it was because, while Cole guessed at what debauchery was out there in life. Cade had been there, done that, and bought the souvenir shot glass.
She’d considered ordering the shot glass online. So to speak. But she’d never done a damn thing. So all her brothers’ overprotective posturing was for naught, the poor dears.
Although, Cole had nearly torn Tyler a new one when he’d suspected they might have slept together. Alas, no such luck.
She’d love to have a mistake that sexy in her past.
All she had was a greasy keyboard and a vague, stale sense of shame that lingered a lot longer than a self-induced orgasm.
“Yes, well, you don’t want to keep your boyfriend from us, do you?”
“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s not. I exaggerated a little. It’s not like that.”
“Oh, so . . . is he someone in town or . . . ?”
“He’s on the computer. He’s not . . . I haven’t talked to him in a while.” Like they’d ever really chatted about anything significant. It was more like a straight shot to ‘what are you wearing?’.
“Oh . . . okay.”
“But the bottom line is that I’m fine. With this. Right now. Alexa and Tyler are welcome to their wedded bliss. I’m not in the space to pursue wedded bliss. I have other things to do.” Like sit on your ass and shoot zombies?
No. Real plans. To travel, someday. To have adventures. Maybe a meaningless fling here and there. In Paris? Paris seemed like a good place for a meaningless fling. Silver Creek certainly wasn’t. She knew all the idiots here.
Worse, they knew her. They knew her as a bucktoothed nerd who would do your calculus while you did the cheerleader. It was a poor set of assumptions to begin a relationship, so she just never tried.
It was better than doing the guy who was doing the cheerleader. Doing math was way less painful. Keeping it virtual was a lot less painful.
Otherwise you ended up watching the only guy you’d ever really thought you might have a shot with marrying another woman. Not that that was what was happening. Because she didn’t love Tyler, dammit.
But if she had married him, she wouldn’t have done it in a black dress. She was a gamer geek with limited social skills but even she knew major life events were the time to drop your freak flag a little bit. Wear some lace. A pair of pumps. Ditch the Converse All Stars for a couple of hours.
Not that anyone had asked her, of course.
“I’m glad, I was a little worried about you.”
Worry for Lark’s well-being was apparently a virulent contagion at Elk Haven Stables. Cade and Cole had a bad case of it, and Cole had clearly infected his wife.
“No need to worry. I’m golden. I’m not in a picket-fence place right now.”
“Yeah, neither was I,” Kelsey said, shifting Maddy in her arms and looking pointedly at the little bundle of joy.
“Unless you can get knocked up driving by sperm banks now, I’m not going to in your situation any time soon.”
Kelsey laughed, the motion jiggling Maddy and making her giggle. “Yeah, steer clear of those clinics or you might find yourself shackled to an obnoxious alpha cowboy for the rest of your life.”
“Already am Kels. Two of them. We’re related which means I can’t just ditch them. I’m not marrying a cowboy.” She looked back at Tyler. “I’m sick of cowboys, in fact. I’ll find someone metropolitan who knows that high fashion isn’t a bigger belt buckle and your Sunday go to meetin’ clothes.”
“Nothing wrong with wanting something different,” Kelsey said. “I guess Cole is my something different, so I can see the attraction to something you aren’t used to. I still rent out my house in Portland. If you ever want to go try something a little more urban . . .”
For some reason, the idea made Lark’s throat feel tight. “Uh . . . maybe another time. Cole is just getting all his social media stuff going for the ranch and you know he needs close help with that. He’s death to computers.” All true enough, but in reality she could do most tech help remotely.
She would leave someday. Just not today. Or next week. Or next month. But that was fine.
“Well, that’s true,” Kelsey said. “But I’m not illiterate so I can help him a little. I do work on my computer, so I’m pretty familiar with every da
y glitches.”
“But who would optimize your blog?” Lark asked. “It’s just starting to get huge.”
“True. The modern world is a wonderful thing.”
Kelsey was a health and wellness columnist, and she still had her column published in papers across the country, but since moving to the ranch, she’d started doing a lot of humorous posts about acclimating to life in the sticks, and thanks to her already established audience, it had become an instant hit.
And Lark was in charge of design and management of the website and its community.
Which was nice. It was nice to feel important. Nice to be needed.
“So you’re really okay?”
“Yes,” Lark said. “Stop giving me your wounded puppy eyes, I’m fine.”
“Great. I’ll be back in a minute, I have to go grab Cole.”
“Neat,” Lark said, reaching down beside her chair and pulling her phone out of her purse. She was itchy to check her email, because it had been a couple of hours and she hated the feeling of being disconnected.
She keyed in her pin and unlocked the screen, her email client immediately loading about fifty messages.
She opened up the app and scrolled through the new mail. She had another one from Longhorn Inc. She’d been negotiating with the hiring manager, Mark, for a few days now. She hadn’t told anyone in her family about the offer, because she knew her brothers would get all proprietary and think they had to do it all for her.
Like she wasn’t smart enough to handle her own job opportunities in her own field. And yes, she worked for the family by and large, but she’d also done websites for several local business and had become the go to IT Tech for Silver Creek residents.
This would be her biggest deal by far. And the first time she’d be signing a contract for a job, but she was ready for the challenge.
She’d be setting up computers, servers, firewalls, and web filters at a ranch for troubled boys. And then doing a little bit of tech training too. It was a big undertaking, especially with everything she already did at Elk Haven, but honestly, she could use something to mix up her life.
