She looked up from her notes and saw Dean grinning at her.
“What?”
“You really like this stuff, don’t you?”
“I do. Was I getting carried away?”
He held his thumb and forefinger barely apart. “A little.”
“Does any of this appeal to you at all?”
“Everything sounds great, but I’m not sure half of it is possible.”
She smiled and tossed out what she’d told so many clients.
“Anything is possible if you want it enough.”
Dean’s expression seemed to freeze for a split second before he nodded and pointed at the notebook.
“What else do you have?”
As she continued sharing her ideas with him, Dean asked insightful questions that prompted even more ideas. Sunny lost track of time as they continued to bounce possibilities back and forth like an endless tennis match. When she started yawning, she looked over and noticed Dean’s eyes looked heavy.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You must be worn out.”
When she started to stand, Dean surprised her by clasping her arm to keep her on the couch.
“I’m fine. It’s nice to talk these things out. I’ve not had anyone to share even my initial ideas with who didn’t immediately tell me every reason they weren’t feasible and that I should stick to what I know. I like ranching, you know that, but I want something more than endless days of cows in my future.”
Sunny leaned back on the couch, perhaps overly close to Dean, but she was too tired to think about that.
“I’m sorry no one has given you support.”
He shrugged. “It’s not like anyone’s been awful. I have a good life here.”
“But you want more.”
“Yeah.” He leaned his head against the back of the couch and closed his eyes. “I think you’re the first person who’s understood why.”
“Because I left to find more too?”
He nodded.
And she’d found it, experienced so much, gained a lot of professional knowledge, which she was now able to use to help him fulfill his dreams. A warmth flickered to life in the middle of her chest and grew outward until it filled her entire body. It felt really good to help someone she knew personally.
Dean’s arm moved behind her, his hand settling on her shoulder. She wondered if he’d actually fallen asleep. Not wanting to bother him if he had, she stayed quiet. But the lack of conversation added to her own fatigue, and her eyes began to drift shut. She should muster the energy to trudge to bed, but it was so much easier to stay right where she sat.
When Dean sighed as if relaxing into the first stage of sleep, he gently tugged her toward him. Though she knew it was a mistake, she allowed herself to be moved and ended up with her head resting on his shoulder.
As she drifted, her lips lifted at the corners. It was nice to be held, nice to be with someone who understood her without her having to say the words. Even if it wasn’t completely real and was only for a short period of time, she couldn’t fight the need to indulge in that heady feeling.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DEAN WOKE SLOWLY, wincing against the crick in his neck. He started to reach up to massage the ache but became aware that not only was he not in his bed, he also was not alone. He opened his eyes and recognized the top of the head nestled against his chest.
His heart thumped harder, so much so that it’d be a miracle if it didn’t wake Sunny. But he was powerless to stop the intensity of his heartbeats. He vaguely remembered her leaning her head against his shoulder as he’d been drifting off to sleep, but somehow in the intervening hours her head had slipped to his chest and her arm was draped across his waist.
They’d obviously both been too tired to move to their separate sleeping spots, and if he was being honest he didn’t mind. He wanted to let his arm drift down to wrap around her back, but he didn’t want to chance waking her, breaking the spell. Though it was selfish, he wanted these few minutes of having her close. He wouldn’t do anything to violate her trust or his respect for Sunny, but these few moments had to be okay.
As if she sensed he was awake, she mumbled something, readjusted her position as if snuggling into her pillow. His breath caught, and he momentarily closed his eyes as he tried his best not to move. But those actions must have made her aware of where she was and with whom because she lifted her arm and sat up, scooting away from him in what she probably thought was a not noticeable way.
“Sorry I fell asleep on you,” Sunny said as she smoothed her hair.
“It’s okay. Guess we were both more tired than we realized.”
“I think I bored you to sleep with all my business talk.”
“Not at all. Your enthusiasm is infectious. I can see why you’re good at your job.”
He noticed that as she spoke Sunny did not attempt to make eye contact with him. She wasn’t one to get embarrassed easily, but he thought it was cute. He pressed his lips together so that she wouldn’t catch him smiling and he’d have to explain why.
“Oh good. Well, good night,” she said as she stood.
Dean started to reach for her, to ask her to stay, but that wasn’t part of their agreement. There was no one around they needed to convince of the truth of their relationship. And she was obviously uncomfortable.
“Good night. Sleep well.”
She nodded then walked around the coffee table rather than stepping past him as she hurried toward the bedroom. When she closed the door, putting a barrier between the two of them, Dean exhaled a sigh and let his head drop to the back of the couch. He was going to have to guard against anything like that happening again, no matter how nice it felt. He’d mostly restrained himself from expressing his true feelings so far, if one ignored the wedding kiss, but a man only had so much willpower.
Outside, the telltale sound of rain in the distance moved closer until he finally heard it start hitting the roof. He wished he could snap his finger and turn out the light, but it required him pushing to his feet and crossing the room. That done, he stretched out under his quilt on the couch to get two or three more hours of sleep before he had to attack another day of work.
But unlike earlier, sleep proved elusive now. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling and trying not to focus entirely on how he wished he could join Sunny in the bedroom. Even though they were legally married, he didn’t have the right unless she invited him. And judging by how she’d reacted to falling asleep next to him, he didn’t see that happening anytime soon. Ever.
Which shouldn’t surprise him at all considering his was a one-sided love.
He forced his thoughts in another direction, replaying their conversation about all the various ways to expand the income base of the ranch. The heart of this place would always be cattle ranching, at least as far into the future as he could imagine, but it made good business sense to create other streams of revenue. The fortunes of ranching depended a lot on Mother Nature, and she was notoriously fickle.
His mood dampened like the ground outside when he thought of how none of his ideas or Sunny’s would become reality if Jonathon didn’t eventually go to California with Sunny and the twins. Dean hated the idea of Sunny leaving. Of Jonathon and the kids leaving, for that matter. Here, in the safety of his own mind, he could admit that he wished things could stay like they were now, all of them living here on the ranch together, eventually making exciting changes together. Only he wanted his marriage to Sunny to be real, for her to feel for him the way he felt about her.
But he’d seen how animated she’d become the more she shared her ideas of how he could create a multipronged business strategy with the ranching operation as the centerpiece. She loved what she did, could help so many more people than just him. He had no right to want to take all that away from her to make himself happy.
Would he even really be happ
y if he knew she might very well be longing to be somewhere else than this ranch in rural Wyoming? The world was so much bigger than Jade Valley, and her desire to explore all its corners was obvious. He couldn’t achieve his professional dream as well as his personal one, especially when Sunny’s path was obviously elsewhere and most likely with someone else.
That wasn’t an easy truth to accept, but it was the truth nonetheless.
* * *
SUNNY KNEW SHE’D once had the ability to focus, but she must have misplaced it somewhere between Dean’s couch the night before and Trudy’s dining room. She’d lost count of how many times she’d had to forcefully yank her attention back to the conversation going on around her and respond at the appropriate times. It didn’t help that Angela Schuster, the head of the Fall Festival committee, wasn’t in attendance and there wasn’t a lot of structure to this meeting.
But the last thing she wanted was for any of the people seated around the table to question why her mind was in another universe—the one where she’d woken up pressed up against Dean and it had felt really nice.
After she’d retreated to the bedroom and put the flimsy barrier of a single, unlocked door between them, she had tossed and turned for most of the rest of the night. When Dean leaving for work had woken her only a couple of hours after she’d finally fallen back to sleep, her churning thoughts had returned. Somehow she needed to speed up the timetable on getting her dad to agree to transfer the ranch title, then begin the breakup process with Dean in a believable way.
Who could possibly look at their relationship after it was over and believe anything about it was real?
Except her rapid pulse and the chaotic fluttering in her stomach had felt very real the night before.
“What do you think, Sunny?”
Did someone say her name? She looked up to see five faces fixed on her with expectant expressions.
“I’m sorry, what?” She didn’t even know who’d spoken to her.
Eileen Parker, who ran the tiny art center and who had been one of Sunny’s mom’s good friends, smiled.
“This is what we get by expecting the full attention of someone still in her honeymoon phase,” Eileen said.
Heat crept up Sunny’s neck, and no excuse she could think of on the fly was going to make things sound any better.
“I’m sorry—could you repeat what was said?”
“I asked what you thought of a cake walk?” Nettie Jones asked. “Those are popular, right?”
“They have been in the past,” Sunny said, wanting to steer the conversation quickly away from her so-called honeymoon phase. “But if you want to draw more people in, you have to be more innovative. Go to any school festival and you’ll find a cake walk or something similar. For lack of a better phrase, you need to think outside the box.”
“How so?” Johnny Marston, a retired industrial arts teacher at the high school, asked. “Pies?”
Sunny barely kept herself from laughing, instead leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms as she let her creative mind wander. Then one of those light-bulb moments happened.
“What if you had a town-wide scavenger hunt for clues? Like one of those whodunit mysteries where all of the business owners in town who want to participate have to answer the questions of people who come in seeking clues to who the ‘killer’ is. One of those business owners would be the ‘killer’ and whoever figures it out first after asking each suspect at least one question gets a big prize of some sort.”
“So not cakes or pies?” Johnny asked.
Sunny smiled. “Do you have a sweet tooth by chance?”
Johnny smiled. “Busted.”
She laughed. “For the sweets, what if there is instead a silent auction for them?”
“I like that,” Eileen said. “We could pick two or three good causes to give the proceeds to.”
Much like her conversation with Dean the night before, once the ideas started flowing they came faster and faster.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited about putting this festival together,” Eileen said a while later as she tapped the list she’d been keeping with her pen. “You really are a natural at this.”
“Thanks. Lots of practice.”
“Angela,” Eileen said, looking past Sunny.
“Hey, everyone.” Angela sounded hesitant as she approached.
“What’s wrong?” Eileen asked.
“Nothing really, except I feel guilty for what I’m about to say. Jake got the job he applied for in Cheyenne. We’re moving in a week, so I’m not going to be able to chair the festival this year.”
Sunny’s phone buzzed with a text. She pulled it out to read the message while the committee members dealt with the sudden need for a new chair. Against all common sense, the fluttery feeling returned when she saw it was from Dean.
I’m going to be later coming home tonight, so you might want to eat dinner with your dad.
Though he was only being considerate so she didn’t wait on him, it felt way too much like the kind of message a real husband would send to a real wife.
“I think that’s a great idea. Don’t you, Sunny?”
“Huh? Yeah.” Wait, what had Eileen said? Sunny had to stop getting distracted by thoughts of Dean. “What? Sorry, I was reading a message.”
When she looked up, the whole committee was looking at her with smiles on their faces.
“Thanks so much for doing this,” Angela said as she placed one of her hands over Sunny’s atop the table. “I feel so much better leaving the festival in such capable hands. You’ll be a hundred times better at this than I’ve ever been anyway.”
“Wait, what are you talking about?”
Eileen and Francis Trenton looked at each other and chuckled before Eileen returned her gaze to Sunny.
“Honey, you just agreed to chair the Fall Festival.”
“What? No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did,” Eileen said, and everyone around the table nodded.
“I think it’s a fabulous idea,” Trudy said as she arrived with slices of pie for everyone.
Sunny shook her head. “I can’t do that. I won’t be here then.”
The smiles dropped off everyone’s faces, and Sunny realized she’d made a big mistake that she now had to try to explain away.
“I mean, I’m working remotely now but I’ll have to go back to traveling soon. I have no idea where I’ll be when the festival happens or in the weeks leading up to it.”
“I didn’t realize you’d still be working for the same company,” Eileen said.
“At least for now,” Sunny said, hedging a little. “I enjoy my work and there sadly aren’t any business consulting companies in Jade Valley.”
“What does Dean think about this?” Francis asked.
Sunny only barely kept her instinctive dislike of that question from showing. Francis was a nice lady, but her question smacked a bit too much of misogyny to Sunny.
Eileen swatted Francis’s arm. “Times have changed, and for the better. Women don’t need their husbands’ permission to do what they want anymore.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Francis said.
“Dean is very supportive of my career,” Sunny said, wanting to put an end to this conversation. Thankfully, this wasn’t a lie.
“Of course he is.” Trudy patted Sunny’s back. “He’s a good man, through and through.”
True.
“And quite a handsome one at that,” Eileen said with a wink.
Also true, though Sunny would do well not to let her thoughts travel that particular road. Especially when she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to prevent her thoughts from playing across her face like a movie-theater screen.
“Any of you would be a better choice for the chair position than me,” Sunny said, deciding to not comment on the attra
ctiveness level of her husband.
“Could you do it as an interim?” Eileen asked. “You’d have lots of worker bees to help, but I think you’ve shown today that you are, in fact, the right person to helm the new direction for the festival.”
Everyone around her made enthusiastic sounds of agreement. Angela reached over and gripped Sunny’s hand.
“Please say yes. I’d feel so much better about leaving if someone with your talent and vision was taking over.”
Sunny felt as if the vines of Jade Valley were growing around her legs, beginning to make her more of the ecosystem than she could be in the end. Mike was not going to let her work remotely forever, and flying to international destinations from Wyoming was not sustainable in the long term. Already she was probably going to have to go back to California before she managed to complete her entire plan for convincing her dad to move there with her. That she’d even for a moment thought she could reach the endgame both she and Dean wanted in a short amount of time made her wonder if she’d temporarily lost her ability to make rational decisions.
She should continue to say no to this group’s requests, and yet she found herself nodding.
“Just as interim chair. Once we have everything decided on and people assigned to head up each area of the festival planning, I’ll hand things over to one of you.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Eileen said.
“Thank you so much.” Angela looked as if she might cry with relief. Sunny wondered if that might be at least partially because she’d been freed from the burden of trying to revive a festival that had been waning.
“I feel really good about this year’s festival,” Eileen said. “With new blood and fresh ideas, I think it’s going to be a success.”
“Of course it is,” Trudy said, squeezing Sunny’s shoulders from where she stood behind her. “This gal has the golden touch. Next up, filling this dining room so full that Alma will be spitting mad.”
* * *
DEAN LAUGHED SO hard that Sunny had to shush him.
The Rancher's Unexpected Twins--A Clean Romance Page 16