“Because they’re committing,” Sara pointed out.
He shrugged. “I guess they are.” He stared at her suitcases. “I don’t want you to go.”
“Feel free to stop me, Noah.” She tried a smile, but tears welled and she shoved her half-drunk coffee mug away.
“Sara, I...”
Oh God, not that.
Maybe the real problem with Noah Dawson was that he didn’t love her. Maybe that was what he—and she—couldn’t face.
But she’d bet everything she had that he did love her—very much. She knew it, she felt it, she believed. But until he could admit it to himself and open up the gates inside him, they were stuck.
“Will you help me load up the twins’ stuff?” she asked. “I know it’ll be hard for you, but I can’t do it alone.”
He grimaced. “Of course.” He poured himself a cup of coffee, added cream and sugar, and took a couple long sips, then put the cup in the sink. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry, Sara.”
Tears stung her eyes. “Well, it’s not worth all that much to me. I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to love me. I want us to raise Annabel and Chance together, be a family. I want us both to be happy. And if you really think you can be happy by shutting off half of yourself...”
He couldn’t. But she was done talking, done arguing, done trying to convince him. It was time to go.
The expression on his face as he picked up one of the baby swings almost broke another piece of her heart.
But they silently loaded the pickup. Once back in the cabin, all that was left were the babies themselves in their carriers. She picked up one, then the other. Heavy, but she had this.
He stared at her, and then reached forward to take both carriers himself, but she walked out the door toward the truck before he could.
She could feel him just standing there and had no doubt his own heart was breaking. But by his own hand.
* * *
Noah had done double rounds on the ranch and finally made himself go home. Then he tried to stick to his bedroom, where he wouldn’t be overly reminded of Sara or the twins. But he’d made love to Sara in this room. And every time he closed his eyes, he’d see them in bed. He’d never been so aware of how much he felt for her as he had that other night, when he’d stopped thinking so much and just let himself feel.
That he loved her like crazy wasn’t in doubt.
He thought he heard a cry and bolted up and into the nursery, but the cribs, which were still there, were empty. Daisy had enough of a setup in the nursery she’d started making for her own child that they didn’t need to move the cribs and dresser and glider right away.
He stood in the room, his gaze on the letters spelling out Annabel’s and Chance’s names on the cribs. He’d painted their names himself. He dropped down in the glider, where he’d sat so many nights, a baby in his arms, telling a story or just marveling at the precious infant he held. He thought about hearing Annabel’s cries the night he’d found her. The note saying she was his.
The terror that had gripped him.
He’d been so damned scared of screwing up, but he hadn’t. Hadn’t screwed up at all in the seven weeks he’d taken care of Annabel.
And now he’d lost not only her but Chance, as well.
Instead of focusing on that, he kept going back to the previous thought. That he hadn’t screwed up. Huh. Why the hell was he so focused on destroying his relationship with Sara when there was nothing to indicate he would—well, other than a history of doing just that? He had a history of failure, but he’d given himself an A-plus when it came to rebuilding the ranch and an A-plus in raising Annabel those first seven weeks.
He could handle a newborn baby as a bachelor rebuilding his family’s legacy, but he couldn’t handle his own feelings for the woman he loved with every fiber of his being?
He shot off the chair. Wanting to go get her. Get his woman. His life, his future, his everything. His Sara.
He sat back down. Once he’d allowed himself to really go there, there was no turning back. He’d be cracked wide-open. And his least favorite word in the English language: vulnerable.
He thought about the most vulnerable he’d ever felt. The day he’d read the letter his father had left him in his will. The whoppers in there. About how his dad believed he was the one to restore the Dawson Family Guest Ranch, that Bo Dawson hoped he would. I believe in you, his father had written. I’m sorry I was such a failure. I know you can make things right, Noah. I know it. And knowing it gives me peace at going.
Noah felt his eyes well. He took out the letter and read it for the fifth time, then put it back in the envelope and under his socks in the top drawer of his dresser. Even his father had owned up to his failures and looked to fresh starts—for Noah, at least, if not himself.
And Noah was going to sit in this empty, silent cabin when the woman he loved was a quarter mile up the road with the family he’d already made his own?
No, he wasn’t. He opened his dresser drawer again, reaching under the socks until he felt a small velvet box that had been there for two years now.
* * *
Sara sat outside on the porch of the farmhouse where she’d spent so much of her childhood, running between this house and the cabin. She loved this house as much as she did the foreman’s cabin, and she was grateful to have a room here. She might not have what she really wanted in a getting-her-groove-back way, but at least she wasn’t settling for what she didn’t want. That was a no-go.
She and Daisy had had a long talk when she’d arrived with her stuff, after a grim-faced Noah had brought everything in, making a thousand trips up and down the stairs. Then he was gone, and she’d let herself burst into tears, Daisy comforting her. They’d talked for the past two hours, Daisy assuring her she was doing the right thing, Sara assuring Daisy she was too. Trying was paramount. Now Daisy was in her bedroom, working on her wedding plans for July. She’d asked Sara to be her maid of honor, and Sara had joyfully accepted. According to Daisy, they were still honorary aunts to each other’s children, even if they weren’t going to be sisters-in-law.
Daisy heard a truck coming up the road, then saw the headlights. Was that Noah?
She stood up as he parked. It was Noah.
If he was here to try to convince her to come back, he was wasting his breath. But damn, it was good to see him, and they’d only been apart for two hours.
He came around the side of the truck and walked up the porch steps. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”
Don’t get your hopes up, she told herself. He’s going to suggest some kind of compromise.
“You’re absolutely right,” he said, his blue eyes intense on her. “I’m letting fear control me. It’s what did my father in, I understand that now. He failed, and then instead of picking himself up, he fell deeper into the hole.”
She stared at him, her heart surging. Maybe she could hope a tiny bit.
“I’ve loved you so much for so long that you’re a part of everything I am,” he said. “I’m you and you’re me and we’re separate but the same. There’s no me without you, Sara.”
Tears welled in her eyes. She’d let herself hope a second ago, but he was taking her to the moon and the stars.
“I love you, Sara Mayhew. I’m in love with you. I want to spend my life with you and the twins. I want to be your husband in every sense of the word. I want to be Annabel and Chance’s father. I love you. Even more than you could possibly want.”
She grinned. “Is that possible?”
“Anything is possible now,” he said, the moonlight shining down on him as he got on one knee, opening a little black velvet box. “Do me the honor of becoming my wife. Will you marry me?”
Sara gasped and barely managed to whisper, “Yes,” before jumping into his arms and wrapping her arms around him. “I love you too.”
He kissed her and she kissed him back, then he looked at her, and she could see the change in his eyes, in his expression. He slid the beautiful ring on her finger, then kissed her again. So passionately her legs buckled.
“Get a room!” called a voice from an upstairs window. “At the cabin so you don’t wake the twins. I’ve got them till the morning. Go, lovebirds,” Daisy added with a grin.
Noah laughed. “Thanks, Daisy. I owe you.”
“Yeah, you do,” his sister called back with a smile before poking her head back in.
“Let’s go get that room,” he said, taking Sara’s hand.
And then they got in the truck and headed home, where they both belonged.
* * *
Don’t miss Daisy’s story, the next book in the Dawson Family Ranch miniseries,
Wyoming Special Delivery
available April 2020 wherever Harlequin Special Edition books and ebooks are sold!
And check out Melissa Senate’s Wyoming Multiples miniseries,
A Wyoming Christmas to Remember
A Promise for the Twins
To Keep Her Baby
Available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from A Chance for the Rancher by Brenda Harlen.
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A Chance for the Rancher
by Brenda Harlen
Chapter One
Watching for the arrival of the veterinarian, Patrick Stafford exhaled a relieved breath when he finally spotted a vehicle coming down the long driveway. He didn’t recognize either the mud-splattered pickup that parked beside the barn or the woman who exited the vehicle, and the rancher felt a brief twinge of disappointment that his injured horse would have to wait a while longer to be tended. But as a man who appreciated women, his interest was immediately piqued.
She was tall and slender, wearing a sheepskin-lined leather jacket unzipped over a plaid flannel shirt tucked into slim-fitting jeans with a wide brown belt around her waist and well-worn cowboy boots on her feet. Which only meant she was dressed like most of the other women who lived on the ranches that dotted the countryside of Haven, Nevada, and didn’t begin to explain why he found himself so drawn to her.
He continued his perusal anyway: long brown hair that was tied away from her face in a neat braid that fell to the middle of her back. As she drew nearer, he realized that her hair wasn’t actually brown but auburn, and that it shone with hints of bronze and copper in the afternoon sun. Her eyes were the color of dark chocolate and fringed by long lashes. Her mouth was unsmiling but temptingly shaped. And as his gaze lingered on her lips for just a moment, Patrick realized it had been a long time since he’d kissed a woman—or even wanted to.
He pushed the wayward thought aside to focus on his visitor. “Can I help you?”
“Actually, I’m here to help you.” Now her lips curved into a smile and she proffered a hand. “Dr. Langley.”
He shook it automatically, noting the long, slender (and ringless!) fingers, neatly trimmed, unpainted nails and firm grip. “Patrick Stafford,” he replied automatically. Then her words registered, and he frowned. “You’re not Dr. Langley.”
“Well, I don’t carry a copy of my diploma with me, but I can show you my driver’s license,” she offered, shifting the backpack he hadn’t noticed was on her shoulder so that he could now see the patch bearing the letter V superimposed on the staff of Asclepius—the immediately recognizable symbol of her profession.
Apparently she was a vet, but he still felt confident in asserting, “I remember Dr. Langley from his visits to Crooked Creek Ranch when I was a kid, and you’re definitely not him.”
“That would have been my father,” she said. “Dr. Bruce Langley. I’m Dr. Brooke Langley.”
Which made sense, as the other Dr. Langley had been older, with salt-and-pepper hair and a stocky build that promised he was capable of handling the ranch animals that were the foundation of his rural practice.
“Where’s Ranger?” she asked.
“I might not have been clear when I called,” he said now. “But Ranger is a twelve-hundred-pound stallion and rather ornery right now.”
“This isn’t my first rodeo,” she assured him. “It’s also not the first time I’ve been out here to tend to one of Gus Sterling’s animals.”
“They aren’t his animals anymore,” he pointed out. “They’re mine.”
“Right now, I’m more interested in Ranger’s injury than in who’s paying the bill, but if you want to wait for my father—who’s currently tied up out at Whispering Pines helping to birth a breech foal—that’s entirely up to you.”
Her response didn’t eliminate all his doubts, but he decided that if Gus had trusted her with his horses then Patrick could, too. He slid open the barn door and gestured for her to enter.
The heels of her boots clicked on concrete as she made her way down the center aisle to the stallion’s stall, but it was the subtle sway of her hips and sweet curve of her derriere that held Patrick’s attention. And though he regretted the circumstances that had required him to contact the veterinarian office, he wasn’t sorry that Dr. Brooke Langley had answered his call.
Haven wasn’t so small that everyone knew everyone else, but there were usually only two or three degrees of separation between one person and the next. As he’d already mentioned to Brooke, he remembered her father from his visits to Crooked Creek Ranch, but he had no memory of her. And though she must have attended the same high school he did—because there was only one in Haven—he drew a blank there, too.
But Ranger seemed to know her, and Patrick was reassured by the animal’s acknowledgment of her presence. The stallion’s long nose appeared over the door of his enclosure as she approached and actually seemed to nod, as if in greeting.
Brooke lifted a hand to rub the horse’s cheek, and Ranger whinnied softly.
Patrick stood back, both mesmerized by the wordless interaction and a little terrified for the woman who boldly opened the gate and stepped inside the stall. He’d guess that she was about five feet eight inches tall, but next to the horse, she looked small.
And breakable.
Of course, anyone who’d spent any amount of time around horses had to respect the powerful strength of an animal whose muscular legs and flashing hooves could do serious damage, even inadvertently. But Brooke didn’t hesitate to enter the enclosure, and Ranger didn’t shy away from her presence. And somehow, her quiet confidence only added to her allure.
“How are you doing, Ranger?”
Her tone was quiet, soothing, but the hands stroking the animal were steady and sure. Everything she said and did seemed to reassure the animal that she was in charge. Her quiet murmuring trailed off when she crouched down far enough to examine the wound. After a moment’s hesitation, she resumed her monologue and continued her study.
When she rose up again and turned to Patrick, her voice was as hard as her gaze. “He’s cut all the way through the coronary band. How did this happen?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I put the horses out in the paddock this morning but somehow Ranger got out and—”
“Somehow?” she interjected.
“I thought I latched the gate, but when I went back to check on the horses, it was swinging free.”
“Is Ranger the only one who got out?”
“No, but he’s the only one who got hurt.”
“I’m going to need more light,” she said, reaching over the door for Ranger’s halter and lead rope.
It was a testament to Ranger’s training—and reassuring to Patrick—that the anim
al didn’t balk in any way as she secured the halter and led him to the cross-tie area, where textured rubber mats provided stable footing for both the animal and the vet, and additional lighting illuminated the area even in the dark of night.
He watched as she opened her pack and began rifling through the contents. “He was favoring his right foreleg when I found him.”
“No wonder.” She unwrapped a syringe, slid the point of the needle into the vial and measured out the medication.
“This is a tetanus antitoxin,” she told Patrick. “He’s also going to need a shot of penicillin to combat any infection. Then I’m going to flush the wound and pack it with ichthammol ointment.”
“What can I do?” he asked, feeling responsible and guilty and wanting to help.
“You know how to make coffee?” she asked.
He almost breathed a sigh of relief that she’d assigned him a task he could handle. He nodded. “What do you take in it?”
“Black is fine.”
“Coming right up,” he promised.
* * *
While Patrick was gone, Brooke took her time tending to Ranger’s injury. She knew the stallion had to be in pain, but at least he seemed to understand that she was there to help. Though initially agitated and skittish—as any wounded creature would be—he stoically endured her ministrations.
In her experience, most animals tolerated necessary treatment if they were given an opportunity to understand that the hands poking and prodding wanted to heal. Sure, she’d endured occasional kicks and nips—and once even a nasty headbutt from a nanny goat that resulted in a concussion—but the veterinarian-patient relationship was generally one of mutual respect and understanding. And if she was ever in doubt, she sedated the animal in the interest of their mutual safety.
For the Twins' Sake Page 19