by Joanna Sims
I’ll just try on a few pairs turned into Casey happily surrounded by a wonderful fort of boot boxes. Brock sat across from her, his big frame stuffed into the standard-issue shoe-department chair. He couldn’t be comfortable, but to his credit, the man just sat there scrolling through his phone while she tried on one style of boot after another after another. She lived on a teacher’s salary, so she knew that once she did have a family the shoe obsession would have to be tamped down—but as she didn’t have kids at the moment, shoes were part of her family.
She left Macy’s with three new pairs of fabulous boots—one ankle boot to fill the empty void left by her ruined Jimmy Choo boots, may they rest in peace, and two pairs of knee-high boots, one black and one tan and brown ombre. Brock carried her bags for her while she chatted happily about stumbling upon such a great shoe sale. It wasn’t right—she knew it wasn’t right—but shopping always gave her a wonderful shot of endorphins.
Brock opened the truck door for her and she climbed up into the cab of his truck. She was still talking about their shopping excursion when he cranked the engine.
“Aren’t you happy that we found a new mattress for you?”
The ranch foreman nodded.
“Yeah—me, too.” She sighed, pleased with how the morning had worked out for the both of them. She was on a talkative streak, which could be attributed to the new boot cache in the backseat and the giant high-octane coffee she had power guzzled for energy prior to her search-and-rescue mission through the shoe department.
The most she was able to get out of Brock was a couple of grunts and nods.
“You aren’t saying much,” she finally complained.
He glanced over at her as they came to a red light. “I’m listening to you.”
“A conversation usually includes two people.” She held up two fingers. “I say something, then you say something... Where are we going?”
He wasn’t taking the road back to the ranch.
“I made an appointment to get a haircut and a shave. You wanted me to get that taken care of, didn’t you?”
Casey turned her body toward Brock—the man never stopped surprising her. He really didn’t.
Bone’s Barber Shop was the next stop on their “just divorced” victory lap. When the barber asked Brock what he wanted to have done, the ranch foreman had nodded to her and said, “Whatever she wants.”
Casey had to admit that she was mesmerized by the slow transformation of Brock McAllister from a mild-mannered mountain man to a straight-up hunk. The barber started with the shaggy hair. Brock’s hair had grown in unruly waves down to his shoulders, but when the barber was finished cutting, the rancher only had an inch of hair on top. The barber then cleaned up the line around Brock’s ears, ears that Casey couldn’t remember seeing before, and cleaned up the edge of his hair just at the nape of the neck.
The beard—a beard that could require its own zip code—was tackled next. The hot towel came off Brock’s face and the straight razor came out. As per her request, the barber kept the beard, but trimmed it down considerably. Totally trusting the process, or maybe he just wasn’t concerned all that much by his appearance in general, Brock had his eyes closed while the barber worked with a straight-edge razor and shaving lotion beneath his chin and neck.
Brock had almost dozed off when he felt the barber wipe down his face with a lukewarm towel; the barber applied aftershave and then sat him upright. He opened his eyes and stared at his reflection in the mirror—he didn’t look like himself anymore. At least not the man he had been for the last several years. His eyes sought out, and found, Casey’s eyes in the mirror. He was hoping she would look pleased, but her reaction was far more gratifying. It was as if she were seeing him, truly seeing him, for the first time. Perhaps she was.
“Do I meet with your approval, Ms. Brand?” he asked her.
She walked around to the front of his chair, surprise and, yes, attraction, there for him to easily see in her wide green eyes.
“You are handsome,” she told him plainly. And he knew she meant it.
He paid the barber a generous tip then asked the redhead of his affection out to lunch. It felt like their first date...even though they had been meeting at the chapel every week this summer, this was the first time they were “going out” together. He felt proud, very proud, to have Casey walking beside him. And now, with his new image, he hoped she was proud to be walking beside him.
“I’m am so hungry!” Casey sat opposite Brock.
He had brought her to his favorite pizza spot—Bullman’s Wood Fired Pizza. The pizza oven was right there for all the customers to see—and the name wasn’t false advertisement, either—a wood-burning fire heated the pizza oven.
“It smells so good in here.” Casey’s stomach, which had been rumbling before, started to hurt from the hunger.
She scoured the menu and decided that she had to be adventurous and try the Bitterroot. She’d never eaten a pizza with the interesting combination of pistachios, red onions, rosemary, mozzarella, olive oil and sea salt. Brock ordered the Bitterroot for her and the Crazy Mountain for himself and added two bottles of Montana-made cider.
“What should we toast to today?” Casey asked him. “To freedom?”
Brock stared at her so intently that it made her squirm in her chair.
“I don’t want my freedom,” he told her. “I want to be with you.”
“Brock...” she said gently. “I think it’s too soon. You’ve only been divorced for one day.”
“That’s true,” he agreed with her. “But I’ve been separated for years.”
She wanted to change the subject. She had always liked to keep things light and upbeat—and this conversation was heading into territory that made her uncomfortable. Some, like her sister, would call her commitment-phobic. She had diagnosed herself as chronically cautious with her heart.
He must have read the resistance on her face and in her body language, because his next words were designed specifically to make her laugh and smile. And they worked.
“How about this? Let’s toast to the buy-one-get-one-half-off shoe sale at Macy’s.”
Casey laughed and willingly held out her cider bottle. “You’re a very quick study, aren’t you, cowboy? Cheers to that!”
She tried to pay her portion of the bill, but Brock wouldn’t hear of it. Casey couldn’t believe how much pizza she had stuffed into her face. And she said as much to Brock when he climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Look at this...” Casey pulled up her shirt and showed him her belly. “I ate so much of that pizza that I actually have a food baby.”
“Not too many women will put food away like you do.”
She frowned at him. “I think you meant that as a compliment...?”
“Of course I did.”
“I’ve always been hyper as all get out. I burn through my calories and need to fuel right back up again. I usually go up and down about ten pounds—so I have two different wardrobes in my closet—but it’s not my weight that gives me trouble, it’s the cellulite. It just shows up, unannounced, now that I’m in my thirties. It’s very annoying.”
Brock was smiling at her minidiatribe about the woes of cellulite.
“That was the cider talking.” Casey laughed. “I have no idea how my cellulite entered the conversation.”
“I like to listen to you talk,” Brock told her. “Today is a good day.”
* * *
That day, the first official day of Brock being a free and clear man, was the beginning of a new chapter in the evolution of her relationship with the ranch foreman. His resolve, his focus and his quiet persistence on the matter of their future eroded most of her resistance. His appeal to her now, an appeal that had always been about who he was as a man—who he was as a father and a protector—had shifted. His mak
eover allowed her to see him in an entirely new light. He had always been hypermasculine and burly in his appearance—which wasn’t repellent by any means—but the short hair and the groomed beard had transformed his face. She could see his teeth when he smiled, including the bottom two teeth that crossed just a little, which she now found endearing. She could see his eyes—clear eyes that admired her and had nothing to hide.
Over breakfast, she found herself staring at him. On their frequent rides together, she found herself staring at him. At the dinner table, more staring. He was so handsome to her eyes. So handsome. Inside and out. The real Brock had been hidden behind all of that hair for years.
Every morning, after breakfast, Brock would always ask her, “Are you going to meet me at the chapel today?”
In the beginning, they would plan a picnic at the chapel one time a week—but that wasn’t enough for Brock anymore. He wanted her to meet him at the chapel every day. At the start of this new routine, she felt as if she were doing it mostly for Brock. Over time, she began to realize how important those picnics at the chapel were to her.
“You’ve got your hands full! Do you need a hand?”
Casey had been so intent on getting the picnic basket, Ladybug the Labrador and Hercules the all-time greatest poodle from the vintage VW up to the chapel, that she hadn’t noticed the young cowboy tending to one of the mares in the foaling barn. She had discovered the short cut through the barn only last week.
“Wyatt Williams!” Casey stopped in her tracks to give her startled, racing heart a chance to recover. “Why do you always do that to me?”
Wyatt was hanging his arms over the stall gate, grinning at her as he always did. “Do what?”
“Scare the living daylights out of me! That’s what!”
Wyatt came out of the stall to stand next to her in the barn aisle. “I don’t mean to.”
“I know. I know.” She let him off the hook. Wyatt didn’t have a mean, or serious, bone in his body. He was like an overgrown playful puppy.
“Let me give you a hand.” Wyatt reached for the basket.
Casey didn’t know how Brock would react to seeing Wyatt walking her up to their picnic spot. On the other hand, her hands were too full and there was a pretty steep hill to climb up to the chapel.
“All right.” She handed him the basket while she managed Lady’s leash and Hercules’s carrier.
“I haven’t see you in a while,” the cowboy said. “You settling into fifty-three okay?”
“Very funny.” She smiled at him.
She hadn’t seen Wyatt since he had taken her dancing on her birthday. They’d texted a couple of times, but she knew that he was having fun and playing the field, and would get bored pursuing her without results.
“I didn’t know you were Brock’s girl. I wouldn’t have taken you dancin’ if I’d known that.”
“I wasn’t Brock’s girl then.”
He looked down at her with that perfectly symmetrical, chiseled, golden face. “But you are Brock’s girl now.”
The sound of that made her smile again, but this time it was a shyer, more self-conscious smile.
“Yes.” She nodded her head. “I am Brock’s girl now.”
* * *
Brock had been thinking about this day for weeks; today was the day that he was going to kiss her. And not the kiss on the cheek that she had been holding him to for far too long. He had been wooing Casey Brand slowly and gentlemanly so he wouldn’t spook her. He’d spent enough time with her now to figure a few things out—Casey wanted to have a husband and a family, but she was scared to death of taking a chance and risking failure. They had held hands and snuggled on the couch. They had gone for long, romantic rides and picnics at the chapel. But whenever he got close to going in for that first kiss, he always ended up holding Hercules instead. Casey could sense that the all-important, barrier-breaking kiss was upon them and she would find a reason to exit stage left. He didn’t know how he had been maneuvered into this corner—a teacup poodle was regularly blocking his romantic mojo. How could something so tiny cause him so much trouble?
“Hi!” Casey called out to him breathlessly as she reached the top of the hill. “Wyatt was kind enough to help me.”
Brock covered the distance between them in a few long strides. “I’ve got it from here. Thank you, Wyatt.”
Wyatt handed the basket to the ranch foreman, tipped his hat to both of them and then jogged down the hill and back to the foaling barn.
“Well, that was a lot more civil than I thought it would be,” Casey said of the interaction between the two cowboys.
Brock took the blanket out of the basket and spread it out in their favorite spot. “I had a talk with him.”
Casey was about to sit down but snapped upright instead. “You talked with him? Like you staked your claim?”
“We talked.”
Her hands were on her hips. “Well, that was mighty 1890s of you.”
“Quit your bellyachin’, woman,” Brock teased her, “and fix me my lunch.”
They unpacked the picnic—she had brought a brand-new, giant-sized Milk-Bone for Lady and a miniature-sized Milk-Bone for Hercules. Once everything was unpacked and the four of them were settled in, Brock turned on one of her favorite classical pieces.
“What kind of wedding do you want to have?” Brock had finished his food and was lying on his side petting Lady. Hercules was sitting on the top of Brock’s boot, so the ranch foreman was careful not to move his legs and launch the mini-poodle.
Casey wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Small. Intimate.”
She hadn’t always dreamed of her wedding like many of her friends had—but she had dreamed of the children who would follow the wedding.
“I think I’d like to marry you right here,” Brock told her. “In this chapel.”
In her mind, she saw herself, in a simple antique white lace dress, standing hand in hand with Brock, inside the chapel. And the thought didn’t scare her.
“I think the chapel would be the perfect place to get married,” she agreed.
He reached for her hand. “If we kept it small, Hannah would be able to attend.”
Casey rubbed her finger over the nail of his thumb. “I miss her.”
“So do I.”
Their minds turned to Hannah and neither of them spoke for a couple of minutes. Then Brock brought up the subject that had been on his mind all morning.
“I’m going to kiss you today, Casey.”
His comment had shifted the topic pretty dramatically and it made her laugh. He could never do anything in the conventional way.
“I’m giving you fair warning,” he added.
“Why do you think that I need fair warning?”
He gave her a look. “You know why.”
She did know why—every time Brock had even remotely acted like he was going to kiss her, she managed to find a reason to stop him. She had never been a fan of the first kiss—it was built up so much and what if she hated it? It was hard to imagine marrying someone you didn’t like to kiss. That one kiss could ruin everything. And she hadn’t been ready to risk it.
“Okay.” Casey made a decision; she stood up and held out her hand to Brock. “Come on.”
Brock smiled up at her. “Where are you taking me?”
“I’m going to kiss you.” She shook her hand for him to take it. “Are you coming or not?”
“Sorry, buddy, but you need to stay here.” Brock picked Hercules up off his boot and put him on the picnic blanket.
When the ranch foreman was standing, Casey took his hand in hers and led him decisively over to the chapel steps.
“You stay down there,” she told him while she walked up the first couple of steps. She turned around, and now that she was standing on the chapel steps, t
hey were almost the same height.
Without hesitation, Casey put her hands on either side of Brock’s face and pressed her lips to his.
It wasn’t a deep kiss, but it was the kind of kiss that left an impression. She liked the feel of his beard beneath her fingertips and the firmness of his lips as they were pressed against hers.
“There!” she said when the kiss was over. “Now that’s done.”
Brock seemed glad that they had broken that barrier. But she could see that he wasn’t satisfied with just one short kiss.
“You’re beautiful to me.” Brock pulled her closer. “I love you, Casey.”
And then he kissed her. His way. Slow. Deep. Sensual.
He held her so close that she could feel his heart beating against her breast. The first kiss confirmed that she loved him. The second kiss convinced her that she wanted to make love with him.
When they came up for a breath, Brock kissed her forehead and her cheeks and her neck.
“Tell me that you’ll marry me here one day, Casey,” he said into her neck.
She hugged him tightly, resting her head on his chest, so she could still feel his heart that was beating so strongly for her.
“I promise that I will marry you here one day.”
She said it and she meant it.
Brock let out a whoop and tossed his hat in the air. He picked her up off the step and swung her in a circle until they were both a little dizzy.
They were laughing and out of breath when he stopped swinging her and let her slide down his body until her feet were safely on the ground.
Now that he could kiss her—now that she was willing to let him kiss her—that’s all he wanted to do. There, in the sunlight, in front of the Bent Tree chapel and beneath the bright blue expanse of the Montana sky, the ranch foreman kissed the woman he knew would one day be his bride.
