One Hundred Choices (An Aspen Cove Novel Book 12)

by Kelly Collins

  Just before it was time for Wyatt to come in from the range, she locked her bedroom door and closed it. To leave it open would show her hand. She knew Wyatt would respect her wishes and leave her alone, especially if the door was locked. They’d figure out how to unlock it later. She took a few things from the cupboards and walked to the trailer.

  This was where her journey began, and where it would end.

  She opened the can of stew and a fresh package of crackers. While it heated, she texted Blain.

  I’ll be there tomorrow night. I want my bungalow back. Make sure it’s clean and fully stocked with food. I also want Pride to be my horse. I’ll expect a ten percent raise on top of everything. And the next time I leave, it will be because I want to not because you’re throwing me out. If you can’t agree to all my demands, I’ll stay where I’m at.

  She pressed send and held her breath. If he didn’t come back with a yes, then she had no idea what she’d do. It was all a bluff.

  His text pinged.

  See you tomorrow. Angel is excited.

  She laughed.

  One more thing. Don’t lie.

  Another message came in.

  Okay, she’s in tears, but she’ll survive.

  She dished up a bowl of stew and crumbled crackers on top. She sat at the tiny table and took a breath. Everything was set. She knew Texas wasn’t a long-term plan. No way would she torture Angel to sit in the saddle when she wanted to be somewhere else—she deserved choices too—but that was a fight for another day.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Wyatt decided to wait Three out. He knew she’d be up to feed the horses and clean out the stalls. That’s why he woke up early. He wasn’t letting another day go by where they didn’t talk it out. He missed her. Missed everything about her. She was so much more than a spark to his day. She was the sun.

  He made the coffee and cooked up a big breakfast of bacon and toast and eggs.

  “Three, breakfast is ready,” he called out.

  There wasn’t a hint of life in the house. No groan when her feet hit the cold floor. No movement of air. No scent of her shampoo or body wash.

  He moved down the hall to her door and knocked softly. Pressing his ear to the wood, he listened but heard nothing. The second knock was louder.

  “Trin, get up, and have breakfast with me.”

  Again, there wasn’t a peep from the other side. He turned the door handle to find it locked. No way had she slept through everything. He pounded once more.

  “Damn it, Trinity, get your ass out here. I need you.” The truth of that statement twisted his heart. She was his today, his tomorrow, and all the days to come.

  When silence greeted him once more, fear seeped into his pores. She’d been hurt in the storm. What if she was lying in the bed unable to move? What if she’d fallen asleep to never wake up again?

  He shouldered the door open, breaking the lock in the process. He stared at the empty bed, the closet, where hangers swayed in the breeze. The pictures of her family nowhere in sight. He wasn’t prepared for his next question. What if she’d left?

  He rushed outside to find her SUV gone. He turned and ran to the main house to get Cade. His knock wasn’t the soft gentle rap of someone who feared they’d wake everyone. It was intended to stir the dead.

  Cade swung open the door with fire in his eyes. “What the hell is wrong? There better be someone bleeding or a fire.”

  “We need to go after your sister.”

  Cade looked at him like he was speaking in tongues. “What do you mean?” He wiped the sleep from his eyes.

  “She’s gone. Packed up her shit and left.”

  Abby walked out, tugging a sweatshirt over her T-shirt. “Trinity is gone?” She moved straight to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee.

  “Maybe she went into town to get muffins or something.”

  “No way. She left,” Wyatt said. “I’m going after her.”

  “Wait.” Cade rushed barefooted down the hallway.

  While he was gone, Abby poured three cups of coffee and made six slices of toast.

  “I refuse to live without her. If that means I have to leave the ranch, then I will,” Wyatt said.

  Abby pushed a mug of coffee into his hand. “Why would you have to live without her? Cade told her to stay. He offered you the promotion.” She shook her head and went about buttering toast.

  Cade walked into the kitchen, shaking his head. “She left because I offered her the spare bedroom.”

  Abby rolled her eyes. “Of course you did. You’re her brother, and you love her.”

  Cade picked up a cup of coffee and downed it.

  Wyatt didn’t know how the heat hadn’t seared Cade’s tonsils.

  “I know her, and what she heard was, you can stay, but you can’t stay with Wyatt.”

  Abby spun around and fisted her hips. “That’s not what you meant.” She stared at Cade with the intensity of a hawk eyeing a mouse.

  “Well…” Cade muttered.

  Abby shoved two slices of toast into each of his hands. She marched past Cade and pulled her keys from the hook by the door. “If I didn’t love you so much, I swear I’d kill you. Let’s go. We have to find her.”

  They all rushed from the door and climbed into Abby’s truck.

  It struck Wyatt funny that Cade sat in the middle while the tiny woman drove.

  She reached over and slugged Cade in the thigh. “Why in the hell are you allowed to be in love on your ranch, and your sister isn’t? Don’t you understand how hard it is to find the one?” She started the engine and tore down the gravel road, kicking up dust behind her. “I’m thinking maybe you’re not the one for me if you can overlook love so easily.”

  Cade hung his head. “Would it help if I told you I’m blinded by my love for you?”

  Wyatt choked on his coffee.

  “Yes, it will. At least you know what love looks like. It’s not always pretty.” She turned onto the paved road toward town. “I remember a man willing to kill a bear for me. I saw the fear in your eyes when you thought you’d lost me. How do you think Wyatt feels?”

  Cade turned to look at him. “I’m so sorry, man. I didn’t know it was at that place.”

  Wyatt searched the road for any sign of Three’s white SUV. “You know I can’t take the job as your foreman if Trinity can’t be by my side.”

  Cade was silent until Abby elbowed him. “Fine. I don’t care who you love or what you do. Just don’t wreck the ranch.”

  “Where would she go?” Wyatt asked.

  They drove through town hoping to find her, but at five in the morning, the streets were empty.

  “We’ve got two choices,” Abby said. “We go north or south. She’s either heading to places unknown or back to where she came from.”

  “Go south,” Wyatt said. “She had a good relationship with an old man they called Trigger at Wallaby Ranch.”

  “We’re driving to Texas?” Cade asked. “What about—”

  “Really?” Abby yelled.

  Cade changed his tune. “We’re driving to Texas and let me tell you, my sister is worth the trip.”

  Wyatt wasn’t sure he meant that or if he was giving Abby what she wanted to hear, but it was the truth. Three was worth any distance they’d have to travel to get her back.

  For a tiny thing, Abby had a lead foot. Cade kept telling her to slow down while he told her to speed up. He’d be happy to pay any ticket she got. They made it two hours south when he saw her SUV pulled into a gas station.

  His heart took off like a wild stallion. When Abby pulled into the station, Wyatt jumped out.

  Trinity wasn’t anywhere in sight.

  “Don’t wait for me. If I’m back in a few hours, it means we’re staying, and if I’m not, she didn’t want to return. I’m going where Three is going.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want us to wait?” Abby asked.

  “No, I need to do this alone. I need to convince her that I’m worth the figh
t.”

  “She won’t come back if she thinks she’s not welcome.” Cade rummaged around Abby’s glove compartment until he found a pen and a piece of paper. He wrote something on the back of Abby’s proof of insurance and handed it to Wyatt. “Give her this.”

  He shoved it in his pocket and marched into the station. He found her looking at the candy bars, reaching for a package of Reese’s cups.

  “I hear you’d do just about anything for peanut butter and chocolate.”

  Her hand stilled. She didn’t turn to look at him. “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s a long story. Grab your stuff, and I’ll tell you outside.”

  She swiped the candy from the rack and turned to face him.

  His heart nearly broke at the sight of her. Despite the dark circles below her eyes and the red rims caused by hours of tears, she was stunning.

  “You left me.” The words came out choked.

  “I left you so you could have your dream.”

  “I’ve got nothing if I don’t have you.” He felt the tears pooling behind his eyelids. “Do you really need that candy?”

  She nodded.

  He walked her to the register and searched his pocket for his wallet, but he’d forgotten everything at the ranch. “I’d pay, but I left without anything.”

  “What happened to my boy scout?” She paid for the candy and her gas and walked outside with him.

  The sun was rising and cast a glow over the mountain, washing everything in its path with light and hope.

  “I can’t live without my heart. You took it with you when you drove away.”

  She moved to the picnic bench that sat on a patch of grass to the side of the gas station.

  “Wyatt, everything you want is back in Aspen Cove.”

  They took a seat, straddling the bench and staring at one another.

  He shook his head. “Not everything. I want you more than I want anything else.”

  “You’re willing to give it all up for me?” Her eyes narrowed.

  “Three, you’re it. Without you, nothing matters. Don’t you get it?”

  She cocked her head to the side. “I get that you love me. I love you, and that’s why I left. When you truly love someone, you put them first.”

  “You’re right, and it’s why I told your brother I might not return. I’m a leaf caught in your wind. Wherever you blow, I’ll follow.”

  “You can’t mean that.”

  He pulled her forward, so they were knee to knee. “Trinity Mosier, my fate is in your hands. We have two choices. We get in that SUV and drive to wherever you were headed together, or we turn around and go home.”

  “I was going back to Texas.”

  “You hated that job.”

  “True, but I like to eat. He texted yesterday and asked me to come back.”

  “Ah, Three, he doesn’t deserve you.” He knew he had to be careful and not push too hard. He wanted her to choose him, not feel like he was the lesser of two evils.

  “I renegotiated my employment contract. I don’t expect it to be a forever plan but a stop-gap until I can find something better.”

  A fist in his chest squeezed his heart so painfully he gasped. When he took his next breath, he exhaled the words, “I’m better, Three. I know you. I see you. I love you. I’d get on my knees and beg you to come home with me, but I don’t want to choose for you. You choose for me. I’m all in whether it’s Texas, Colorado, or someplace else.”

  “I’m not choosing for you. That’s so unfair. I know what it’s like to have others decide.”

  “I know, sweetheart, but this time the choice is yours. The only way I can get what I want is to follow you. Where are we going, Three?”

  She chewed her lip. “I just want what’s best for you. Wyatt, Mosier Ranch is where you should be, but I can’t be there and not have you.”

  He remembered the note Cade handed him. He’d shoved it in the front pocket of his jeans when he entered the station. “This is from your brother.” He prayed it said something kind because if it didn’t, his first move would be back to Mosier Ranch to kick the man’s ass.

  She opened it. “Abby’s insurance policy?”

  Wyatt lifted his shoulders. “We had to do things on the fly. He wrote something on the back.”

  She turned it over and read. Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears. She swiped at the first one to fall. “He wrote this?”

  She turned the note toward him.

  Come home, Trinity. Not to my house with Abby but your place with Wyatt.

  Love your hardheaded brother, Cade

  “Yes, and he even rode in the center seat of her truck all the way here.”

  She laughed. “No way.”

  “Seriously. That woman has your brother’s heart all twisted up inside, but she didn’t tell him what to write. That came from him.”

  She stared at the page for a moment and then lifted her eyes to his. “What about Blain Wallaby and his daughter Angel?”

  “He’ll have to find his own Trinity. You’re mine today, tomorrow, and always.”

  “And you want me to go back to Aspen Cove with you?”

  “More than I want my next breath.” He leaned in and pressed his forehead to hers. “I want to spend all my time with you, not missing you. Let’s go home. We’ll take the day off and spend it in bed practicing for the day you tell me you want to have my baby.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “You want a baby with me?”

  “Sweetheart, I want to experience life with you, and that comes with babies and wrinkles and gray hair and arthritis.”

  She laughed. “You had me at baby, but when you added wrinkles and gray hair … how could a woman say no to that?”

  He kissed her and held her tightly to him, afraid if he let go, she’d disappear. Moments later, when he released her, he stood and walked with her to the SUV.

  “Are you going to call Blain and tell him you got a different deal?”

  She tossed him her keys and climbed into the passenger side. “Nope, but I’ll text him. That’s how he offered me my job back. Seems fair that it’s the way I’ll give him a two-minute notice.”

  He started the engine. “Are you sure you trust me to drive? I don’t have my driver’s license on me.”

  “I’m trusting you with my future and my heart. Surely I can trust you to get me home.”

  “Home it is.” He chuckled. “You know what’s funny?”

  “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “I’m finally going to be a foreman, and I have no one to boss around.”

  She unbuckled and slid into the seat next to him. “Sure you do. You’re the boss of my heart.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  She snuck out of bed early and turned the alarm off before it could wake Wyatt. They’d been home for a week now, and every day was better than the last. What started as a stopover until she could make her next move became her ending point and forever. Who would have thought that being fired, rejected, and beaten by a hailstorm could turn out so amazing, but if her life with Wyatt was anything like the preview she’d lived last week, she wanted to spend a lifetime at Mosier Ranch in his arms.

  She made the coffee and snuck out the front door to the stables. Each time she stepped inside, she didn’t see the work ahead. Sure, there were stalls to muck, horses to feed, and tack to clean, but what she saw was love. Love of a man who gave her his horse.

  “Hey, handsome.” She walked to Red’s stall and smiled. She had two men in her life. One she rode during the day and one who rode her at night.

  She saddled him and took off toward the pasture where her brother had moved the cattle yesterday. She figured she’d get started early while Wyatt got a little more sleep.

  “Three,” she heard him yell from the porch. She turned Red around and headed home.

  “Don’t be yelling. You’ll wake the valley,” she said.

  “I woke up, and you weren’t there.”

  She swung down
from her horse and tied his lead to the porch. She wished Red came with a whistle like her brother’s horses, but he didn’t. If given enough leeway, he would take off for the hills. It wasn’t that he didn’t like living on the ranch, but he was a horse, and horses liked the wind in their hair.

  “I was trying to surprise you and start moving the herd.”

  He smiled. “You were?”

  He hopped down from the porch and swept her into his arms. “How about we go back to bed, and I’ll surprise you? You know that thing I do with my lips and your—”

  She covered his mouth with her hand. “Yes, I know exactly what you’re talking about, but my brother and Abby don’t need to know.”

  He laughed as he took long strides up the stairs and into the house. “They have to know by now. You’re a passionate, receptive lover, and I’m sure they’ve heard your More Wyatt multiple times.” He strode down the hall to his bedroom, where they’d traded the twin beds for a queen. He tossed her on the mattress. “In fact, I think your brother is sending the Coopers out to see if there’s a way to insulate the bunkhouse.”

  She opened her mouth. “No. He did not say that to you.”

  Wyatt tugged off her boots and pulled down her jeans. “No, but I like it when you turn pink with embarrassment. You’re so damn cute.”

  She lifted up on her elbows and watched him drop his jeans and work his way from her ankles to that sensitive spot on the inside of her knee.

  “Shouldn’t we be in the field?”

  “You’re exactly where you should be, and that’s nearly naked in my bed.”

  “What about the cows?”

  He nibbled on the inside of her thigh.

  “Cows have been taking care of themselves for centuries. They can wait another hour or so.”

  “An hour?”

  “At least.” He pressed his lips against her core. After several sensuous strokes, he said, “All work and no play makes Wyatt a dull boy.”

  She lay back and took in the love he gave. The first climax came quickly. He knew her body like it was his own. Then again, she’d given herself to him completely the day they returned to the ranch.