by Maisey Yates
“You look glum,” her mother said, without appearing to glance in her direction.
It was mama magic, and Kit loved it.
She sank down next to her mother on the wide seat then she laid her head on her mother’s shoulder like she was still ten. They sat like that for a long while as the summer wore on all around them. The birds made a racket in the trees all around the tidy little house where Kit had grown up. She’d played in this yard, and could almost feel the grass beneath her feet. She’d tried to capture tree frogs, had helped her mother in the vegetable garden, and had built secret forts with her friends beneath the porch.
“Mom,” she said when she felt a bit steadier, “why does it sound like someone’s banging around out back?”
“That’s your father,” her mother said. “I’ve invited him to move into that shed he made into a man cave a few years ago.”
“I thought that was his office.”
“Some men have fishing lures or power tools. Your father has his poetry. But still, a man cave is a man cave.”
Kit sat up. “Wait. Like moving out, moving?”
Judy Hall smiled serenely. “I’ve invited him to spend the rest of the summer ruminating on his behavior. And I used big words so he’d be certain to understand me. If he can’t read enough from my romance collection to conduct himself appropriately in romance bookstores, he can stay out there forever. Between you and me, it gets cold in winter.”
Of all the things her mother might have said, Kit had not expected...that. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with his visit to me last night, would it?”
“It has everything to do with that visit,” her mother said, her expression suddenly fierce. “I didn’t mind your father pushing you as long as it was what you wanted too. And how could any parent not be bursting with pride at all you’ve accomplished? If you wanted to wander barefoot through that desert in Nevada for the next ten years—”
“Do you mean Burning Man?” Kit blinked. “How have you even heard of Burning Man? And also...no.”
“My point is, whatever you choose to do with your life makes me happy, Kit.” Her mother sighed, but not in the way her husband did. “You know I love your father. I love the arcane things that come out of his mouth, the funny things he thinks and does that no one else ever thinks or does. I love his poetry and those chapbooks and how deeply he cares about his journalistic integrity in this sleepy valley. There isn’t a single part of him I don’t love.” Her blue eyes flashed. “But if he can’t support my daughter, he can sleep in the shed.”
Kit wiped her suddenly damp eyes, and smiled at her mother. Judy wrapped her arm around Kit’s shoulders and for a moment, they stayed that way.
Eventually, Kit took a shaky breath. “You really think he’ll stay out there until winter?”
Her mother cackled, a knowing sort of look on her face. “He won’t last a week. Believe me. You can look forward to an apology in about two days.”
When Kit opened her mouth to ask her mother how she knew that, she stopped herself. Because she understood that look on her mother’s face; it was just wicked enough. She knew that she really, really did not want to hear her mother’s answer.
“I don’t read romance novels to escape my marriage,” Judy said, her gaze gleaming. “I read them to help celebrate it.”
“I support that,” Kit said. “And also, please do not say another word.”
“You come from a happy marriage between two people who’ve loved each other a long time and plan to keep on loving each other forever, sweetheart,” her mother said with a certain intensity that spoke of more of that mama magic. “Your father dreamed of Ivy League schools and prominent jobs, but I don’t care about that. I have only one expectation of you. That you never, ever settle for anything less.”
Kit walked back to the store, her head spinning and her heart making a nuisance of itself. When she got there, she stood out in front for a moment. She looked down the row of brick buildings that were dreams she and her friends had made real.
Dreams they’d built on the strength of their friendship, together.
The Jasper Creek Centennial was still a couple of weeks away. But as far as she could tell, they’d already done it: all four of them, back in Jasper Creek and committed to this madness they were all making work.
She lifted a hand to hold the compass that hung around her neck and always would. From Seattle, California, Chicago, and New York. From dating slips to house rules to making these abandoned shopfronts their own. Whatever road the four of them took, it always led them home.
Because they’d made themselves their first, best home long ago.
“What are you doing?” Hope asked, coming up beside her. She squinted at her own shop, handing Kit a lemon bar from the bag she was carrying. Because of course she was carrying a bag of lemon bars. Kit took hers immediately. “Are you having second thoughts about this thing we’re doing?”
“Not a single one,” Kit said.
And she meant it.
Pru appeared in the open window of her feed store. “Are we loitering on the sidewalks today? Because some of us have work.”
“Oh,” Charity said, flinging open the door to the knitting shop. “I was hoping you were the delivery guy. I have a big yarn shipment coming.”
“Are those lemon bars?” Pru demanded. “Why does Kit get one?”
Hope smiled. “I was going to give you one, Prudence, but I don’t like your attitude.”
“Does that mean I get hers?” Charity asked brightly.
“You guys,” Kit said. She smiled wide, and not because she’d stuffed that lemon bar in her face and was now riding a sugar high. Or not entirely because of that. “You realize...this is our life now.”
“Ew, Kit,” Pru said, though she was grinning. “Too sentimental. Too earnest.”
She moved back from her window. Charity shook her head, looking up at the sign on the front of her shop, with that folksy Z they were all getting used to. Or trying to get used to.
Hope slung an arm around Kit’s shoulders and grinned.
But when Hope and Charity went back inside, Kit stayed where she was.
Her mind was still spinning, her heart was still a riot, and she was beginning to understand that neither was a bad thing.
Quite the opposite.
“You’re supposed to feel things,” she muttered at herself.
Then she had to smile mildly at Mrs. Kim, who was passing by and looked rightly suspicious of the weird woman talking to herself in the street.
And then, following an urge that seemed to sing out from deep inside her, she didn’t go inside the bookstore.
Instead, Kit got in her car, and headed for the West ranch.
And Browning, at last.
CHAPTER NINE
BROWNING HAD JUST finished pounding the life out of the fence post he was replacing when he heard a vehicle approaching.
He didn’t even look because he was sure it was one of his brothers, and he wasn’t in the mood.
Epically not in the mood, in fact—something they’d all noticed earlier this morning and had piled on him anyway. Because that was the West brothers’ way. He’d left them all back at the barn and had headed out into the great, wide spaces of the far pastures where he could nurse his battered heart at his leisure.
And without any brotherly mockery.
He heard a door slam and waited until whoever it was had walked up behind him.
“Not in the mood,” he growled. “Thought I made that clear.”
“That’s not what it said on the bathroom wall,” came the reply.
Kit.
Kit! something in him roared.
Browning had been working on a pretty decent helping of righteous indignation since she’d run out of her shop and left him there last night. It had beat at him all along his dr
ive home. It had kept him company while he nursed his feelings over a bottle of whiskey in his bunkhouse.
It had not in any way helped his hangover.
He threw his tools to the ground, took his time straightening, and then he turned to get an eyeful of her.
She didn’t wear shrouds any longer. Today she was wearing a pair of cutoffs that made his brain short-circuit and a tank top that made him want nothing more than to take it off to see whether or not she was wearing anything beneath it. Her dark hair was swept up into a knot on the back of her head and her sunglasses took up most of her face—pretty much everything but that sulky mouth that he had no hope of getting over.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” he observed with as much drawl as he could manage in the face of such provocation. “What did you come here for, Kit? Do you want to shove the knife in a little bit deeper?”
He expected her to flinch. To go pale and fluttery.
But this was Kit. She showed no particular reaction, because of course she didn’t. Until, as he watched, one brow arched.
Why did he find that almost unbearably sexy?
“I came to apologize,” she said in that deliciously snotty way of hers that made him want to eat her alive. “But I certainly don’t have to if you’d rather brood at me.”
Browning had actually never experienced something like this before. He was usually the one extricating himself. The one navigating the land mines of someone else’s feelings.
He had no idea how to handle himself.
“I told you I loved you, Kit,” he gritted out. “And you told me I was basically nothing but an airhead, then ran away.”
She still kept looking at him with that poker face. “I can’t deny it.”
Browning felt like growling. So he did. “If you’re going to stand here and get your intellect all over me, at least take off your sunglasses.”
“What? It’s the middle of summer. The sun will blind me.”
“Off,” he commanded.
Her scowl intensified.
And sure enough, he loved that too. It was beginning to irritate him.
Kit lifted up a languid hand to slide her sunglasses back onto her head, and confirmed everything Browning already thought.
Those faded blue-jean eyes of hers made him feel like melting.
“Satisfied?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
He wanted to put his hands on her—maybe he always would—but he didn’t. Because he had no intention of making this easy for her. The way he’d made everything easy for her.
The way you intend to always make things easier for her, a voice inside him said.
But not today.
He crossed his arms, arched his own brows, and waited.
Kit cleared her throat. “Well. Like I said, I wanted to apologize.”
Then she waited, like that would do it. He could see her expression get hopeful and he let out a bark of laughter.
“What sucks for you, baby, is that you made me read all those romance novels. And if you think you’re getting away with a few stilted words when we both know it’s time for a big old speech, forget it.” He tried to fight his grin and failed. “I want a little groveling.”
That was when she turned his favorite shade of red.
“You can’t really think...”
“I’m not kidding, Kit.”
She floundered. He watched her mouth open, then close. She was bright red and maybe a little bit miserable, and she should be.
He waited.
“I’m sorry,” she said, fast, like the words left marks on the way out. “You scared me, Browning. All those things you said to me. You see me, when no one else ever has. No one but my friends. They accept me and tease me in equal measure and it never crossed my mind that a man could possibly like me like that. Much less love me, at all.” She blew out a shaky breath. “It’s been pointed out to me, by three people who love me enough to tell me the truth, that I’m a terrible snob when I want to be. Just like my father.”
Browning frowned at that. “Let’s not get carried away.”
But she rushed on. “I hate that he said terrible things to you and not only did I not defend you, I piled on...when I don’t even think it’s true. Because I know you too.”
Kit moved closer then. She reached out her hands so she could put them on his arms, carefully. And when he didn’t jerk away, she curved her palms over his forearms so she was holding on to him.
Just like that, everything was better, but Browning didn’t crack.
Not yet.
She tipped back her head, and there was no trace of a smile on her face then. Not even a scowl.
There was only...this.
Them.
And the pounding of his own heart, so deep and loud that Browning thought he should use it in place of a hammer on the next fence he touched.
“You showed me so much more than a lake in the place where we’re going to build a house someday,” Kit said solemnly. “You pretended it wasn’t serious, but it was. I knew it then, and I pretended I thought it was nothing but fun. I knew better, Browning. It was your heart.”
He hadn’t realized she was going to kill him.
It was only his pride that kept him on his feet.
“I bruised it,” she whispered. “And the only reason I did that was because I was scared. How could you be everything I wanted? How could you handle all the silly challenges I had to do with my friends—hatboxes and too much laughing and opera gloves, for God’s sake—the same way you held me in the water? The same way you kissed me. Like you could do it forever?”
“Because I could,” he said. He meant he would, but he bit that back.
He was going to have to ask for more details about her “challenges” later because for now she was still talking.
“Everybody knows the legend of Browning West,” Kit said, her gaze and her voice intense. “But they don’t know you. How kind you are. How sharp. Smart enough to play dumb and not interested in proving yourself to anyone. You know what you want and you get it, don’t you? Always.”
“Don’t go telling everyone, baby.” He was cracked into pieces, but he liked it. There was so much more sunlight that way, like summer was right here, between them and in them. “They like their legends to stay the way they left them.”
“You’ve taken care of me since the moment we laid eyes on each other, when I was sure I didn’t need anyone to do anything of the kind. You make me laugh. You make me cry. You make me want all the things I was trying to tell myself weren’t practical, and you make me believe we can do it. And will.”
“We will,” Browning managed to say. “I promise.”
“I don’t know how to ask you to forgive me,” Kit whispered. “But I will never, ever fail to stand up for you again. I swear it.”
“It’s already done. I forgave you before you showed up here today. It’s kind of irritating, if you want to know the truth, how little I want to stay mad at you.”
He went to pull her closer, but she stopped him.
“No.” Her gaze was solemn. “I think it’s going to take a long, long time to adequately apologize, Browning. I said you weren’t serious—”
“Kit.” He tugged his arms free and brought her close, looking down into her perfect face. The face that haunted him even when he was looking straight at her. He hoped it always would. “I can be unserious about a great many things, but you? I’m never going to be anything but serious about you.”
She smiled then, wild and heartbreaking and beautiful.
Kit was all of those things and so much more.
But most of all, she was his.
“I’m going to make it up to you,” she said. “I’m committed to it. And you know me. When I put my mind to something, nothing can stop me.”
He smiled back,
slow and sure. “About how long are you thinking?”
And as he asked, he felt the world shift around them. Not an earthquake, but more of a becoming, because this was how it was going to be. They were going to live in that apartment over her shop that he’d been fixing up like he’d known it was theirs all along. Then he was going to build them a house, and they were going to live there together, looking out over that lake where they’d found each other.
It was like he could see it all laid out before him.
She was going to have his babies. They were going to raise them up together and have each other while they did it. There would be more laughter than tears, if he had anything to say about it. He’d even win over her father if it took him the rest of his life. She would do the same with his mother, because Annette wouldn’t see Kit coming.
Sometimes they were going to hurt each other, mostly they would love each other, but it would always come back to this.
To them.
The beginning and the end of everything.
“I’m thinking, to start off, a lifetime,” she said, smiling wide. “Just as long as you forgive me.”
“Always,” he drawled. “We can start by moving into that apartment. Labor Day?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Kit sniffed. “I’m not moving in with someone three months after we start dating.”
“Halloween, then.”
“How is that better?”
“Thanksgiving,” Browning said. “But that’s my final offer.”
“I love you, but I am not going to—”
“Stop,” he told her. “Say that again.”
Kit was scowling, of course. She blinked, then her face smoothed out, tipping right over into a big, bright smile. “Didn’t I mention that part?”
“You did not.”
She looped her arms around his neck and arched herself into him. They both sighed at the contact.
“I love you, Browning West,” she said, her gaze on his. Her smile went a little giddy, though he could see she was trying to get that scowl back. “But I am absolutely not moving in with you until the New Year.”