by Liz Isaacson
Micah took a step toward her, just now comprehending that she’d said she’d fallen in love with him. She came around the island slowly, and then she ran toward him. “Don’t go,” she said as he caught her around the waist. “I love you, Micah Walker, and I don’t want you to go.”
Micah had no words left to say, and he wasn’t going anywhere. He leaned down and kissed her, maybe a little more roughly than he normally would have. She kissed him back, just as eagerly.
“Maybe,” he started, but he didn’t know how to finish. He just kissed Simone again, warming from head to toe. He hadn’t even fantasized that this conversation would go this way, and Micah maybe needed to stop trying to predict how his life with Simone would be.
He pulled back slightly, both of them breathing hard. “Okay,” he said. “So let me just get this all lined up. I love you, and you love me.”
“That’s right.” She smiled at him.
“And we’re married.”
Simone’s smile drifted down, and Micah cupped her face in his hands. “Maybe you’d like to work on getting some babies of your own.”
She nodded, and Micah kissed her again, the feeling of being loved by this woman better than any fantasy he’d ever had.
Chapter Nineteen
Simone woke up when Micah snapped on the light in the master bathroom. She took a moment as warmth and happiness filled her. She kept her eyes closed, and she must’ve dozed again, because the next thing she knew, Micah placed a kiss on her forehead and said, “Baby? We have to get going.”
She moaned and drew in a deep breath of his aftershave. So she’d slept through his shower and everything. “I’m tired,” she said. “You keep me up too late.”
He chuckled, his hands warm on her arms. “That was Susan, sweetheart.”
They’d been staying late at the theater as the date approached for their performances. Since she and Micah drove together, if Simone had to stay, Micah did too. He’d been bringing his portfolio of floor plans and sitting in the back, pouring over them while she tried to hit the right notes and get the lines right.
“Simone,” he said again, and she snapped her eyes open. She reached for him, pulling him in for a kiss, which he willingly gave her. She still couldn’t believe he’d been about to walk out of his own house a couple of weeks ago.
She’d almost said nothing, because talking was hard. But she loved him, and she didn’t want to lose him, and his bravery to bring up the subject had inspired the courage she’d needed to confess her feelings for him. She wasn’t sure why she’d caged them, and now that they were out, Simone had never been happier.
“I thought you wanted to leave by seven,” he whispered against her lips. They were going to the Hill Country that day for Simone’s annual loot-finding trip. He said he wasn’t a big camper, and they had plenty of money for hotels. She’d finished packing everything except her toiletries last night, and she did want to get on the road by seven.
“Seven-thirty is fine,” she said, tilting her head back so Micah would kiss her neck. He did, and Simone didn’t care what time they left.
Micah chuckled as she slid over and made room for him in the bed, and he didn’t question her further about what time they needed to leave. Simone had not doubted his love for her before they’d moved into the same bedroom, but there was a special level of adoration when he made love to her that she cherished.
An hour later, Simone tucked her deodorant and shampoo in her bag and zipped it closed. She wheeled it out into the kitchen, where Micah sat at the bar. “There’s coffee,” he said, getting up and looking at her. “I’ll put that in the truck.”
“See?” She reached for a travel mug to take her coffee with her. “We’ll only be half an hour late. And we’re not really late.”
Micah swept one arm around her and kissed her. “You explained it to me already,” he said, purring in her ear. “I’m happy with whatever, Simone.” He took her bag and headed out to the truck while Simone doctored up her coffee with cream and sugar. She set a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster too, and grabbed a protein shake from the fridge. Once her toast was peanut buttered, she joined Micah in the delivery truck.
“Ready?” he asked.
“So ready.”
Micah backed onto the dirt lane that ran in front of Seven Sons Ranch, and as she finished her first piece of toast, he pulled onto the highway, headed south. The radio played into the silence between them, and Simone took a deep breath, finally feeling…normal.
Life had been so hectic for so many days and weeks in a row that Simone had barely spent any time in her she-shed. And while she’d felt quite a bit of guilt about that, she now knew she didn’t have to repurpose furniture at all. She and Micah had laid awake in bed one night, talking about money until well into the early morning hours.
He had a lot of it, and he didn’t care if she spent it. He wanted her to be happy, and he said he’d build her a deluxe she-shed right in the backyard if she wanted him to. And she did want him to, and he’d started to design the building to go in the space they had.
Micah had about ten acres of land that extended down to the border of Seven Sons and went all the way to the highway. But it was narrow, with only about three hundred yards from the back door to the highway. He planned to fence a yard for grass, and they’d talked about adopting a dog or two.
He could put in a pasture or a corral, but he liked the land wild, and Simone saw no reason to keep horses or goats when both of their families literally owned sprawling ranches across the street.
So Simone had spent more time with her sister, helping with the triplets. And she’d gone to lunch with Micah’s mother, as well as Belinda, getting to know both of them better. She’d skipped the Spring Fling completely, as she didn’t have enough inventory for it, and Gran’s death had put a kink in her productivity.
Micah never asked what she did with her day. He got up every morning and went across the street to Seven Sons, working there for a few hours with Skyler and Jeremiah. He owned ten percent of the ranch still, and he liked taking care of the goats and chickens. He loved horseback riding, and doing whatever else Jeremiah needed at key times around the ranch.
Then he’d work on his floor plans, his business website, take phone calls from clients or potential clients, and pick up around the house. Simone had learned that Micah was quite the neat freak, and she sure did like that. She knew only Jeremiah and Wyatt called him Mike, and that everyone else used Micah. And if he wasn’t home in the afternoon, she knew she’d find him somewhere on the back of a horse.
They’d been driving for a couple of hours before her phone rang, and she picked it up from where it rested on the seat next to her. “It’s Daddy.”
Micah used the controls on the steering wheel to turn down the volume on the radio, and Simone braced herself. She hated that she had this anxiety inside her whenever the phone rang and one of her family members’ names sat on the screen.
“Hey, Daddy,” she said, infusing some false cheer into her voice.
“Sugar-bear,” he said. “I have some great news.”
“Great news?” Simone repeated, looking at Micah. He drove with both hands on the wheel, as if the delivery truck was hard to handle.
“Yeah,” Daddy drawled. “Belinda and I have decided to get married at the end of the month.”
“This month?” Simone asked.
“Yes,” Daddy said. “About two weeks from now. Belinda’s son will be home from North Carolina for a weekend, and then he’ll be gone for nine months. So it’s in two weeks or…who knows when.”
“Two weeks sounds better than who knows when,” Simone said.
“That’s what we thought.” Daddy chuckled, and Simone hadn’t realized how unhappy he was until she’d seen him come alive these past few months. Now that he was happy, she recognized the unhappiness from before. She wondered if people could see the same in her. The way she’d been miserable for much of last year as Micah pursued a relationship
with Ophelia, and she got passed over by men who couldn’t remember her from a dance.
“I know it’s short notice,” Daddy said. “But we’re wondering if you have anything in your workshop that would work as an altar. We’re just going to get married in the backyard, and it would be a nice piece to have. Evelyn is going to do all the flowers, and Callie is going to take part of Momma’s dress and make something for Belinda.”
“Oh, wow,” Simone said, realizing she’d gotten married in a pair of jeans. A sense of longing filled her, and she knew she wanted more than the “wedding” she’d gotten. “Yeah, sure, I’ll look through my shed when I get back. Micah and I are headed to the Hill Country right now and we’ll be gone a week. Maybe I’ll find the perfect piece for you down there.”
“Will you have time to get it ready?”
“Yes,” Simone said, determined. “Whatever it takes, Daddy. I’ll have something for you.”
She caught Micah looking at her, but Simone kept her gaze out the windshield while her father gave her the exact date. “I’ll put it in my calendar right now,” she told him. “I’m so happy for you, Daddy.”
“I love you, girly,” he said, and Simone smiled as the call ended. “Well, they’re getting married on June eleventh. Belinda’s son has a weekend away from the Army, and he’ll be here.”
“That’s great,” Micah said, clearly not understanding the time it took to get a dress, and the perfect shoes, the wedding cake, the flowers, the food, the venue…. Simone was overwhelmed with the very idea of planning a wedding, but the pricking in her chest made her clear her throat.
“Micah?”
“Hmm?”
“I want a big, fancy wedding where I get to wear part of my momma’s dress and everyone we know and love is there to see us getting married.”
He looked at her then, pure surprise in his eyes. “You do?”
“You’re going to drive us off the road.”
He jerked his attention back to the road, but he wasn’t anywhere near going off the road. “I…I mean, I—we’re already married.”
“Yeah, but maybe we could still do a ceremony or something. I mean, Skyler can officiate, right? He married Liam and Callie.”
“So it would be a show.” He glanced at her again. “Unless you want…what are you saying? You want to get divorced and re-married?”
“No,” she said. “Not anything that drastic. But Tripp and Ivory had a family ceremony after they’d been married for a year. Maybe we can do something like that.” An idea popped into her head. “Maybe a Christmas ceremony. That’s when we announced to everyone we were back together.”
Micah let a few seconds pass. He opened his mouth, and then closed it. Several seconds passed, and Simone had no idea the topic of a wedding would render the cowboy mute.
“So you want to have a Christmas wedding ceremony for friends and family, where we…renew our vows?”
“I don’t even think we said vows,” she said. “You have to admit, our marriage was unconventional.” Simone wished her lungs didn’t sting quite so much. “It was barely a wedding. I want more than that.”
He looked at her again, this time with acceptance in his gaze. “All right, sweetheart. You want more than that, you got it.”
A smile burst onto her face. “Really?”
“Yeah, of course.” He shifted in his seat. “We didn’t have a wedding. There were no vows. Just a great kiss.” He grinned at her, and Simone shook her head, though it had been a great kiss. “I’d like to know I’m getting married, I can admit that.”
“All right, then,” she said. “I’ll start planning it.”
“It’s going to take six months to plan a wedding?”
“Yep,” Simone said, her ideas already flowing through her mind.
“Oh, boy,” Micah muttered, but he reached for her hand, and Simone squeezed it.
“I love you,” she said, and that got him to smile and squeeze her hand back.
Chapter Twenty
Micah ran his fingertips along the top of a table that had definitely seen better days. “What about that?” he asked, nodding toward a piece of furniture that looked like it needed the wall to stay standing. He’d been wandering swap meets, garage sales, and antique shows with Simone for five days. It wasn’t hard work, and Micah enjoyed spending time with her away from all the regular pressures of everyday life.
If he were being honest with himself, he really liked spending time with her when they both weren’t pulled in a dozen different directions by family members. Having a break from the ranch was nice too, and Micah had only taken two client calls since he’d been gone.
Maybe he just needed a vacation in general.
Simone wandered over to the counter-height table or island or cabinet and looked at it. Micah didn’t know the technical name of it. Simone would, and she could see the inner soul of something that he could not. He’d tried to be helpful, but after only the first day, he realized that Simone didn’t know what she was looking for.
She knew it when she saw it. She turned and gave him a soft smile that made Micah’s heart thump a little harder. He stepped around a rocking chair that had definitely seen its last rock, and said, “What?”
“I think you’re getting the hang of it,” she said. “This is a nice credenza.”
“I don’t even know what a credenza is,” he said, looking at the furniture. Someone had tried to paint it blue in the past, but most of that was chipped off. It rose to his waist and had doors on the front that the glass had been broken out of.
“It’s a cabinet to hold dishes,” she said. “You can serve food from it, just like a buffet.” She looked up at him. “You have one in the house.”
“Our house? Where we live right now?”
She giggled and nudged him with her hip. “Yes, silly. It’s the wood cabinet on the wall behind the table. I put that picture of you and your brothers on the horses there.”
“Oh,” Micah said, knowing exactly what she was talking about. “I just didn’t know the name of it.”
“Well, this one is going to become an altar,” she said, bending down to look through the holes where the glass should be. “I’ll knock all these fragments out, sand it down, refinish it, and we can put flowers, trinkets, and pictures in here.” She opened one of the doors, smiling. “Yep, great movement here. The hinges are all fine.”
She straightened and looked around. “Now, we just need to find out how much it is….”
Micah stayed out of the way when Simone went into business mode, mostly because he sure liked watching her work. She waved over a man and asked how much the piece was. When he said a hundred dollars, she frowned.
“Fifty,” she said. “There’s at least four coats of paint on it.”
“Fifty’s fine,” the man said, and Simone unzipped her hip pack and took out the appropriate number of bills with a wide smile on that mouth he liked to kiss so much. He knew that was his cue to put his muscles to work, and he waited while the man moved the lamp and what looked like some sort of modern art from the top of the credenza.
“I’m going to go down to that booth with all the fruit,” Simone said.
“Okay,” he said, testing the weight of the credenza. “I’ll get this in the truck and come find you.” He grinned at her and followed the man out of the tented booth without knocking anything over. Thankfully. Just a couple of days ago, he’d paid for a mirror he’d broken trying to get a dresser out of a booth, and while he had plenty of money, he didn’t need to be paying for broken glass.
The Hill Country heat almost suffocated him as he labored with the credenza to the delivery truck, which they always parked quite a ways out in the lot. Simone knew how much she could fit into the truck, and the credenza slid right in front of the dresser. She’d also bought a couple of armchairs from the fifties, as well as four chairs she thought would go well with the barrel table she still hadn’t built.
“But I’m going to,” she’d said. “It’s going t
o be a great piece. I just need to get back to a schedule.”
Micah had been working on the specs for her she-shed in their backyard while he waited for her at practice, but he hadn’t shown them to her yet. He wanted it to be a perfect space for her to create, and he’d spent plenty of time in the she-shed she now had. She’d converted an old barn into a work space, and while it suited her needs, he wanted more for her.
And he had the skills and money to give it to her. So why shouldn’t she have it?
The shed he wanted to build for her wouldn’t be able to bear the label shed. It would have heating and air conditioning. Finished floors, with plenty of electricity for the kiln she used. He was planning on built-in shelves for her pottery, and he’d consulted with Whitney about reserving a corner of the workshop simply for photos.
“Plenty of light,” Whitney had said, and Micah had put in windows on both walls, only leaving a narrow strip of wood for the corner of the building. She worked with unfinished walls now, but he was planning to paint the she-shed, and put in a bathroom. She wouldn’t have to come into the house for anything, as he was planning to put a mini fridge and microwave in her building too.
He hadn’t shown her the plans yet, because he knew she’d object. The only thing he cared about was that she came in when it was time for bed. There was nothing Micah liked more than lying next to Simone in the dark. He loved reaching out and finding her right beside him. He liked listening to her breathe after she’d fallen asleep, and he liked seeing her in their bed when he came out of the bathroom after showering.
Simone wasn’t a real early bird, though she’d told him she got up by six and was in the she-shed by six-thirty during the hotter months. But with her new workshop, she wouldn’t have to follow the dictates of the weather as she set her schedule.