“You don’t look comfortable here, Dax.”
“Guess not. Driving in under all these trees, it felt like the sky got closed out.”
“You should see it when all the leaves are on the trees.”
“Kind of closed-in feeling, isn’t it?”
All her humor faded. He wasn’t talking about trees now. He was talking about emotions. “You can fix that real easily, Dax. Go back to Wyoming. Go back to the Circle CR, where it’s open—wide-open. Nothing to get in your way. That’s how you like it, how you’ve always wanted it to be. So why did you come here?”
Dax pushed at the splintered pumpkin with the toe of his boot. “I came to show you something.”
Drove eighteen hundred miles to show her something? “What?”
He slid his hand inside his jacket and under the flap over his chest pocket to pull out a small black and white photograph. “This.” He held it out.
She studied his face for a moment, but found no answers there, and took the picture, hoping for more.
“Is this . . .?”
“My mother.”
Did she hear something in his voice because it really existed or because she hoped so badly to hear it? She flashed him a look, but with his focus on the photo, his eyes were hidden. “And this is you,” she said.
“Yeah. But I didn’t know that for a long time. It could have been me, could have been Drew. Hard to tell us apart in the few old pictures I’d seen.”
“But now you know it’s you? How did you find out?”
“My mother. Sally said it was me right off. Said she never mistook us.”
Under the gruff evenness of his voice, she heard a deep, core of pleasure.
“You . . . you talked to your mother?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d that happen?” she asked carefully.
“I went to the house. Asked her about when I was a kid.”
“Oh, Dax.”
“Hannah, don’t cry.” Dismayed, he looked around as if for help, and found none. “Lord, that’s what Sally did, too. I never know—I don’t have a handkerchief.” He used the tip of two roughened fingers to wipe at the moisture under one eye, then the other. “I hate seeing you cry, Hannah. I thought you were crying when that damned airplane took off. I nearly ran after it and held on to the tail.”
She cried harder. He drew her to him and settled her head against his shoulder, a totally satisfactory reaction to her.
His next, solemn words were much more than satisfactory.
“I love you, Hannah.”
“I love you, too, Dax. I don’t think there was any chance I wouldn’t from that first walk by the stream.”
He kissed her, gently at first, then with a fierceness that told her that his past weeks had been filled with as much loneliness and longing as hers. And then gently again, before he pressed her head back to his shoulder.
After a minute or two, he asked, “You know what you said about Wyoming, about it being wide-open, nothing getting in the way?”
She nodded, which turned into mostly rubbing her cheek against his denim jacket.
“That’s how I always liked it, you’re right about that. All the sky you could want. Nothing to block your view. Always suited me fine, up to now. Strange thing is, it’s been feeling kind of empty now. Like something’s missing.”
He paused, and Hannah held her breath.
“Maybe,” he finally went on, “what Wyoming needs is one more person, so it won’t feel empty. Maybe it just needs you.”
She straightened, looked up. “Dax—”
“Hannah, will you come back with me? Marry me.” He looked straight back at her, the lines deep around his tense mouth. “I’m not much of a bargain. I’m set in my ways and I’m not much good with words. And taking me means taking the Circle CR. I can make changes to the house if you want, but ranch life’s hard. No two ways around it. Especially for a woman. And not being brought up to it—”
“Dax.” She put her fingers to his lips. “It’s a good thing you’re such a good rancher, because you aren’t much of a salesman.”
Holding her gaze with his, he kissed her fingers, drawing two in between his lips and sliding his tongue across their tips. Her breath and pulse caught, then doubled.
“On second thought, maybe you are a very good salesman.”
“Will you marry me and come back to Wyoming?”
“Dax, you’re making my head spin. That’s an awful lot of changes—extreme changes for someone who was so determined not to ever have a woman in his life again.”
“You’re in my heart—it only seems practical to have you in my life.”
It was such a fine example of straightforward Dax logic, she almost laughed.
“Besides, with all the examples we’ve been setting for Will, he should know when he finds a woman he loves, that marrying her seems like the only worthwhile solution.”
“Oh, Dax.”
“You keep saying that. You’re worrying me. How about an answer?”
Instead, she gave him a question. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” She studied his face. This was her rock solid Dax. The man she could trust to tell her the truth. “Hannah, this falling in love damned near killed me, but now that I’ve fallen, I can’t imagine not having you in my life. I’ve changed.”
Hannah stared at him. Of course! She couldn’t change him, but he had changed himself. “Dax Randall, you are brilliant.”
After a startled instant, he grinned and wrapped his arms more tightly around her. “If you say so, Hannah. Does that mean you’re saying yes?”
“I most definitely say so. And, yes, I’m saying yes.” She cupped his rear end. “You’re brilliant and you’ve also got tight buns. I have it on the best authority.”
“Shouldn’t say things like that without checking them out personally. A lot can change in three weeks.”
A lot had. “You’re right. We’ll just have to remedy that.”
As dark blanketed the Blue Ridge Mountains, though, they discovered a number of things that hadn’t changed at all in three weeks, like desire and passion.
When she would have shifted away, Dax held her tight as he settled more comfortably with her as a limp blanket. He tipped his head to kiss the top of her head, drawing the familiar scent of her hair. “You always smell like vanilla. I couldn’t put a name to it until the day you made dinner at the house.”
“It reminds me of my mother, from baking cookies with her as a kid.”
Her voice told him she was smiling. He looked down, and let the sight of it wash over him, warm and sweet.
“So I use moisturizer and shampoo with vanilla scent,” Hannah added.
“Shampoo?”
“Yes. Why’d you say it like that?”
“I could’ve saved myself some embarrassment.”
“Embarrassment? I don’t understand.”
“I’ll tell you—later.”
Much later, he kissed her damp shoulder before dropping back to stare at the ceiling with a cat-in-the-cream smile. “Can’t wait to tell June. Specially that she was wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“Yep. Five weeks ago June told me about you. Said you were nice, attractive, unattached—the perfect stranger for me to flirt with to show Will it was okay, then go back to staying away from women. But she had that wrong. You weren’t ever the perfect stranger for that. But you are perfect for me.”
Epilogue
The Thanksgiving Day dinner table was packed with delicious food. The Randall family china, silver and glasses were put to full use and Sally’s wedding tablecloth was barely visible. But what Hannah liked best was the full house of smiling faces.
After several years of Irene, Ted and Pete Weston going to North Carolina to be with Cambria and Boone’s growing brood—which so far included Colin and Caroline—they were all here this year, along with Jessa, Cully and Travis.
There’d been no official announcement yet, but Hannah and Cam
bria had exchanged a look with Irene when Jessa turned green at the smell of cranberry sauce, so the three of them wouldn’t be surprised if one came before the day ended.
Hannah thanked the heavens she’d passed that stage with this second pregnancy. She intended to feed the two of them plenty of holiday fare.
“I can’t believe you made strudel again in addition to all the pies, Hannah.”
“Making strudel’s sort of a family tradition, June.” Hannah smiled down the length of the table at her husband. His hot look was a sure sign he was thinking of their personal tradition after the strudel-making. Including one she’d made in August. This baby’s due date came nine months later.
“Sarah, that’s a great hairdo,” Will said with dignity, as befitted a sophomore in college, “but mashed potatoes are food, not hair gel.”
“Will, ’tato, peez,” responded his one and a half-year-old half sister. She turned her brown eyes on him and smiled, and he immediately gave her more potatoes off his plate.
Besotted. Just like his father. If Sarah had smiled while asking Dax to move the Big Horns, Hannah was certain the view from their family room would have changed within a day.
Mandy and Ethan, who’d come to stay for the full five-week break in their masters’ programs, were not far behind. And Sally and June treated Sarah like royalty.
Dax tapped a silver fork his great-great-grandmother had once sold to keep the Circle CR going against a wineglass his great-grandfather had presented to his bride and stood.
“I’d like to thank you all for being with us this Thanksgiving—coming long distances and short. It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without you.”
Over the clinks of toasting glasses, June said, “It wouldn’t be anything without me, Dax, because without me you two never would have gotten together.”
“Hey, if it hadn’t been for me—” Will’s protest faded out under a surge of laughing claims from Mandy, Boone, Cambria, Ethan, Pete and more.
“Hey, I’m the one who chased her down to North Carolina,” Dax said with a laugh.
“In my car,” Cambria reminded him. And they were off again.
This, too, was a sort of family tradition, with each and every one of them claiming a part in the others’ happiness. And they were all right.
Hannah looked around at her family and friends and knew that one day a year was nowhere near enough for all the thanks she had to give. Especially for the man at the end of the table. He’d changed in many ways since two weeks in September four years ago. But his honesty and his love remained constant.
Their eyes met and held, and he lifted his glass to her. Over the hubbub of voices, she couldn’t hear his words, but she knew what he said.
“No clouds on the horizon. I love you.”
Dedication
This book is dedicated to wonderful neighbors. On ranches or farms, in small towns or cities, good neighbors help make a place a home. I’ve been blessed with the best of neighbors all my life, so this book is for my friends and neighbors from Halsted Road, Fox Hollow Drive, Dickerson Street and—where I first learned about good neighbors—Craig Place.
Copyright © 1998 by Patricia McLaughlin
Originally published by Silhouette Special Edition [037324164X]
Electronically published in 2007 by Belgrave House
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228
www.BelgraveHouse.com
Electronic sales: [email protected]
This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.
The Rancher Meets His Match Page 23