Boone stared sightlessly out the window at the soft and green mountains of North Carolina, envisioning the stark, rough lines of Wyoming. And the direct eyes and tenacious mouth of Cambria Weston.
“Boone?”
“Yeah?”
“Whaddya think about coming for the Fourth of July?”
“I think,” he said slowly, “your thirty-year plan has a lot to say for it. And I’d hate to be responsible for messing up the bookkeeping because of my shortsightedness.”
* * * *
Boone parked his rental car—a red one that a beaming June Reamer assured him was the “hottest” available—in the familiar spot under the cottonwood by the westernmost cabin. He stepped out, leaned crossed arms on the top of the open door and looked around. He heard a whicker from the barn he couldn’t identify. The answer, he’d bet, came from Snakebit.
The new cabin stood solid and finished, complete with roof, windows, door, redwood settee, window box and flowers. By its front steps sat a compact car with North Dakota license plates and telltale white smudges on its trunk that once spelled Just Married.
An unexpected twinge caught him, and he wondered if it was the cabin being completed without him, or the car and all it implied.
His gaze carried on to the main house, as solid and comfortable as ever. Chances were the family was gathered in the kitchen for lunch right now. All the Westons. Together.
And him out here.
Boone turned to the cabin he’d occupied. He could stow his gear first. It wouldn’t take long, since he hadn’t bothered with the fax or computer. Then maybe he’d be ready.
He slammed the car door and started across the open area to the kitchen door.
He’d never be truly ready. He just had to do it.
“Boone!”
In the initial second, he saw Cambria was not there, but the other three Westons were.
Irene reached him first, because she’d been on her feet to bring a plate of sliced fruit to the table. He extended a hand to her, not sure if he’d shake her hand or pat her shoulder. She overrode that by pulling him into a clasp so tight she brought moisture to his eyes. Then she reached up, took his face between her palms, kissed his cheek and announced, “It’s about time you came back.” Leaning back, she studied him critically. “Don’t they have barbers in North Carolina?”
“I got it cut—two weeks ago,” he protested.
Ted and Pete, scraping back their chairs to come greet him, both laughed.
Ted’s handshake was solid and warm. “We’re glad you’re here, boy.”
Pete’s grip was less certain, inclined to squeeze and part. Boone fought the urge to hold on as the boy backed away without meeting his eyes.
“Come sit down and have some lunch,” Ted invited.
“I thought, uh, I’d put my things in the cabin, if it’s the same cabin.”
“Same cabin. But that can wait until you’ve eaten.” Irene guided him to the table. “You look like you’ve lost any meat you’d gained here and then some. Now you sit right down.”
“Might as well give in,” Ted said with a smile as he returned to his chair.
“Sure it’s the same cabin,” Pete said with sly mischief. “Cambria saw to that.”
As Boone took his old chair, he found the sight of Pete’s lopsided grin easing the tightness between his eyes, but not the one around his heart.
“You told me it was empty this weekend, Pete,” Boone said, accepting a plate from Irene. “I see someone’s in the new cabin, but I wondered if business—”
“Business is fine,” Irene said. “We’ve been full up quite a bit. It just so happens your cabin’s empty this weekend.”
“ ‘Just so happens’?” Pete repeated. “Just so happens to be empty...” At the boy’s dramatic pause, Boone looked up from putting together a roast beef sandwich from the makings on the table, and caught Irene glaring a warning at Pete that he blatantly ignored. “After Cambria kicked out the people who were staying there.”
“Peter Andrew Weston,” Irene began a scold that Pete continued to grin through.
Boone hardly heard it.
That sure sounded like Cambria had wanted him here. But he wanted to hear it from her. He needed to see it in her eyes.
He ate absently as the Westons caught him up on the doings of Bardville. Where was Cambria?
“You know what else about that cabin I helped you with, Boone?” Pete didn’t wait for an answer, hurrying his words as if anxious to get them out before he reconsidered. “Cam says I can have the profits from renting it this summer for a college fund. She’s lending me some money from selling that house she inherited, too. She says I’m a lot better off borrowing from her than a government loan because she doesn’t require paperwork. But she’s going to make me work it off by helping with the B and B all summer. Next summer, too. Unless I can find a job that pays real well.”
Boone opened his mouth, then closed it to smother the assurance that he could get Pete a high-paying job to help finance college. His reward was a flash of relief in Pete’s eyes, and a subtle easing in the room.
“That’s great, Pete.”
Before Boone knew what she was up to, Irene took his half-empty plate from in front of him and wrapped the sandwich in foil. “Go on, get out of here, Boone.”
“But...”
She clicked her tongue in feigned impatience. “I can’t take watching you anymore. If you don’t go ahead and get over there, you’re going to wear out that neck of yours.”
“What?”
“The way you jerk your head up at every little sound, and spin it around to look out the screen door,” she explained.
“Like a scene from The Exorcist,” Pete confirmed smugly.
“You aren’t getting much eating done, so go ahead and look for her like you want.”
Ted had the final word. “Try your cabin.”
The cabin was open. Boone closed the screen door behind himself silently. The empty main room smelled less strongly of new paint and wood fires, and more of lemon polish and warm sun.
There was no sign of Cambria.
Then he heard it—water running in the bathroom sink, and the faint, subtle shifting of flooring under human feet.
He made it to the doorway between the main room and the bedroom, but there he stopped.
Boone Dorsey Smith had helped keep his family together at an age most boys memorized baseball stats. He’d served in the army, learning how to kill and facing the necessity of not getting himself killed. He’d built a business, taking on a world that could shatter ambitions with arctic indifference.
He’d never been this scared.
The water shut off, and footsteps reached the open doorway.
“Oh—” Cambria jolted to a stop. “You scared me. I thought...I thought you were over at the house.”
He could have looked at her for hours, just the way she stood there. In her short-sleeved, red cotton blouse, her fading blue jeans and a pair of dusty boots, she looked as good as he’d been remembering. Her shining hair was tucked behind her ear on one side and hung loose on the other to brush her cheek, and her hands were wrapped around an earthenware jug with a mop of orange and yellow flowers sprouting from its top.
She followed the direction of his gaze to the flowers. “Marigolds. They don’t smell very good, but—”
“They’re the ones you planted in the flower boxes.”
Her eyes met his, then skittered away. “Yes. I thought they’d, uh, brighten the room.”
“Thank you.”
“Yes. Well. I’ll just...”
She put the earthenware jug on the nightstand, then stepped back to consider its placement. With no apparent thought, she wiped her damp hands on the seat of her jeans. Boone’s throat constricted and his lower body tightened.
“Cambria.”
She rushed into speech before he could say any more. “So, you saw the new cabin? What do you think? Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?”
“It looks great. Pete told me what you’re doing with it, using the rental money for his college fund.”
“I thought, since you did so much work on it, it was fitting. I thought you’d approve.”
“I do. I’m glad it’ll help him.”
He’d probably always want to do more. For Pete. For her. For his sister. For Ted and Irene. For all the people he cared about. But he was learning that loving more sometimes meant doing less.
Cambria nodded, accepting his answer and approving. Boone felt as if they’d cleared a hurdle. One about the size of a minor mountain.
“But I thought you needed the B and B income to pay off the canyon land.”
“We do. And the easiest thing would have been for me to turn over the money from Angie Lee to Ted, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted I put half right in a money market savings account. I couldn’t budge him. But then, well, it occurred to me, since I do the B and B books and I have this extra money, Weston Ranch Guest Quarters could be sort of, uh, guaranteed of having a few real lucrative years. It’s one of those secrets you talked about people having. Or maybe one of the slips. I’m not sure which.”
He stared at her an extra heartbeat, then laughed. The laughter calmed to a smile, then heated as they looked at each other across the width of the room.
“What’s that?”
She turned to look in the direction of his nod, as if she didn’t know he meant a trio of design pads and a dozen lethally sharpened pencils in the center of the spread. The laughter had helped, but it hadn’t erased all her nerves.
“A welcome back gift.’’
They both knew it was much more than that. It was her reminder that he should do what made him happy in life. She was confident he understood that. She wondered if he also knew it was an invitation and a symbol she trusted in him enough to believe that he could change.
“You don’t think that’s maybe a little optimistic?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You think I can stop trying to do everything myself, can stop trying to run other people’s lives, can let go of enough of those strings that I could do some designing? That maybe I can learn that keeping a balance in life’s as important as it is in designing?”
He had understood. Cambria released a long breath, feeling some of the pain of this past month go with it.
“Yeah, I do. As long as you keep working at it.”
“Maybe with somebody around to keep reminding me, huh?”
“That would probably help.”
He tipped his head, surveying her. “Sounds to me like maybe you believe in me a little, Cambria Weston.”
It was a challenge. She met it, head high, eyes direct. “I love you, Boone. I believe in you. I trust you. I’m not saying it’ll be easy. Or smooth. I guess we’re both too hardheaded for that. But I am saying...”
‘“What? What’re you saying, Cambria?”
“I’m saying I’m glad you’re here.” Her chest felt so tight she wondered that she could speak at all. “I might have had to come after you if you’d waited much longer. Even though I would have been scared. I’m scared now. I’ll probably keep on being scared. And you were probably right that some of it comes from people walking out on me. But even when I’m scared, I know down deep that you won’t. So I don’t know why you’re still standing there in the doorway holding your bag like you might walk out any second.”
The bag dropped to the floor beside him with a chunk that might have made her jump if she hadn’t been concentrating so completely on Boone. He took a step forward.
Cambria started across the room to him. They met in the middle.
Just after Boone swept the paper and pencils from the bed and just before he lowered Cambria to it, they heard distant voices floating in through the open window.
“Well, he’s not exactly a newcomer.” The familiarity of Pete’s voice made his words more easily identifiable. “His name’s Boone Dorsey Smith. You’ll probably meet him later. He’s, uh, I guess you could say he’s a friend of the family.”
Cambria kissed the taut skin over Boone’s jawbone.
“But—” A glint of mischief lit Pete’s final words. “I wouldn’t mind having him as a brother-in-law.”
* * * *
“How long are you going to stay?”
It was nearing suppertime. They’d have to get out of bed sometime. If only to assure her family that all was well. Cambria smiled as she rested her elbow on the pillow and propped her head on her palm so she could watch Boone. All was so much better than well.
“I thought maybe a month.”
“A month? How can you do that with work and—”
He rolled his head on the pillow and grinned at her in reminder of her questions and doubts when he’d arrived the first time. “We’re not going to go through this again, are we?”
“I’m not complaining,” she clarified. “I’m just surprised you can take that much time away from Bodie Smith Enterprises.”
“I’ve made changes there. A lot of changes. Shifting things around to give myself designing time.” He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Letting go some of those strings. In fact—” he shifted to his side, bringing their eyes nearly to a level “—I had this possibility in mind of dividing my year.”
“Dividing your year?”
“Yeah, you know, something along the lines of mid-September through May in North Carolina, then June to September someplace like, oh...say, Wyoming.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“It’s an interesting concept. Were you thinking of doing this year-splitting alone?’’
“Not if I can help it,” he said fervently, then resumed his pseudo casualness. “I’ve been playing with a design for a house that would be great up the canyon a ways—it would have great views without intruding up top or in the meadow.”
“Very interesting. That’s rather a long-term project, isn’t it?”
“I’ve been thinking pretty long-term lately. Matter of fact, did you notice how my year-splitting matches school opening and closing?”
“Ah.” She trailed her fingertips along the line of his collarbone, then across the top of his shoulder to his neck. “But there are short-term considerations, too. For example, did you know this cabin’s got to be vacated by Tuesday morning?”
“I know a motel the other side of Bardville—”
“Don’t you dare go to the competition. We’ll just have to find you other accommodations.”
“Like where?”
“Oh, there’s a cabin that’s never rented out. One of the oldest ones we’ve got. I suspect you can share that one.”
“I’ll take it.” He sat up enough to snatch a kiss. He dropped his head and pressed his lips to the inside of her bent elbow. “But, Cambria?”
“Hmm?”
“Does your daddy have a shotgun?”
“What?”
“Ted. Does he have a shotgun? Rifle? Pistol? Revolver?”
She blinked out of the distraction caused by the gentle assault of his lips and tongue. “You want to go shooting?”
“No, I don’t want to get shot.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about if I’m sharing your cabin we better get married. Fast.”
She laughed and slid a would-be soothing hand over his chest. It might have soothed his worries, but it didn’t soothe his desire.
“You don’t think they already have a pretty good idea why we haven’t come out all afternoon?”
“There’s a difference between having a pretty good idea and having it shouted at you.”
“You’re old-fashioned,” she said in discovery. She had a feeling she’d keep discovering things about this generous, complicated man for quite a while. It sure wouldn’t be boring.
“About some things.” He sat up suddenly to look at her closely. “Why? You mean getting married? I’m damned old-fashioned about that. I want to marry you. I want the whole dam
ned world to know we’re together.”
“It won’t bother you, uh, I mean, your relationship with Pete.” With strained wryness she added, “I’d hate to think of how a genealogist would chart that. So, if it’s—”
He stopped her words with a hard kiss.
“I’ll be proud—and happier than I deserve—to have my position in this family be as your husband, Ted and Irene’s son-in-law, and Pete’s brother-in-law. Okay?” The seriousness in his voice eased. “So that’s settled. Now, to get back to shotguns, I want a church wedding. And I don’t want your family hating me in the meantime because I’m seducing you.”
She flicked her tongue over his flat brown nipple, which immediately tightened in pleasure. “I thought the seduction was mutual.” Desire lit his eyes, but she could see he still wasn’t totally convinced. “Boone, I’m a grown woman. Ted and Irene know that. I make my own decisions.”
“In that case, we still better get married. Fast.” He kissed her. “I don’t want to risk your taking back this decision. And I want to get started on long-term as soon as possible.”
“Not to mention mutual seduction.”
He agreed with actions that spoke louder than words.
~ ~ ~
PATRICIA McLINN books
THE GAMES
Available in print: ISBN: 0-9765185-1-1
E-book available at www.AWritersWork.com
Hoops
RITA Finalist
NJRW Golden Leaf winner
Available as e-book at www.AWritersWork.com
A New World
Affaire de Coeur Contemporary author of year finalist
Available as e-book at www.AWritersWork.com
Prelude to a Wedding
(Wedding Trilogy Book 1)
GRW Maggie finalist
Available as e-book at www.AWritersWork.com
Wedding Party
(Wedding Trilogy Book 2)
Available as e-book at www.AWritersWork.com
Grady’s Wedding
(Wedding Trilogy Book 3)
Available as e-book at www.AWritersWork.com
A Stranger in the Family (Book 1, Bardville, Wyoming Trilogy) Page 21