by Wright, Erin
Oh my God! Why? Why is he here?! I just sent an email that sealed his fate! He is going to hate me! Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God - why?!
She wanted to rush to him. She wanted to pummel him with all of her might. And then she wanted to kiss him endlessly, and run her hands over him, and never let go.
But she held back. He was never going to forgive her for writing that report.
“What…” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat to try again. Do not cry! “What are you doing here?”
“I had some business in town, and I wanted to see you,” Stetson said, lowering the flowers. “I needed to tell you face to face that I am sorry for the things I said on Saturday. I was wrong about…everything. I was being a stubborn ass when you were doing everything you could do to help me. I am sorry.”
Oh God, what have I done? He is never going to forgive me. Just tell him - he will leave and I can move on and adopt a hundred cats and live my spinster life in my sweatpants on the couch and…oh God, I can’t breathe.
“Stetson,” she said, her voice cracking again - goddammit, don’t cry! “I’m sorry, too.” Hot tears began rolling down her cheeks. She looked at him, miserable. His face dropped, the light in his eyes dimming.
“Sorry? Sorry for what? I was the one who was a jackass.” He was confused, conflicted. Whatever she was going to say, he had to know it wasn’t good. He laid the flowers down on her desk and folded his arms across his chest. He was already cutting himself off from her, and the pain of it was like an icepick through her heart.
“No. I am sorry. I just sent the report to Greg recommending the bank foreclose on your loan.”
There. She’d said it. He could take his flowers and his love and his heart and leave her office.
But he didn’t respond - his expression became inscrutable.
“I really didn’t want to do it, and if you only knew the full truth, you’d realize how much making that recommendation hurt me,” Jennifer pleaded. Despite her resolution to just tell him and be done with it, she couldn’t control the urge to explain herself to him. “Greg has a buyer for your farm already. There’s a developer who wants to build a ski lodge on the property, and it would be a big account for the bank if that happened. Greg would look really good if he finalized the deal,” she finished miserably.
“So that’s why he looked so pissed off when I brought the check in today,” Stetson said, a grin spreading across his face.
“You…you made the payment?”
“Oh yeah, about that,” he said, his smile growing wider. “Listen, I’m not the best at apologies, but I wanted to tell you that you were right, and I was just being a bull-headed jackass.”
“I was right about what? That selling the grain would make the payment?” She felt dizzy.
“Well, that too. But you said my dad wouldn’t let the whole farm go because of a made-up number in his head, and you were right. I just missed him so goddamn much, and it got all tangled up in my head. That grain was all I had left of him. It became so much more than just some bushels of grain to me.
“So yeah, I know that he would’ve wanted a higher price than what I got, but I also know that he would’ve wanted the farm to stay in the family even more. It took me the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday to calm down and really think it through. By Monday, I knew you were right, so I called a grain buyer buddy of mine and explained the situation. He gave me $6.45 a bushel. He said the extra twenty cents was a bonus for all of the years my father was a loyal customer. Anyway, that gave me enough to come current on the loan, with just enough left over for the flowers.”
I am so in love with this man.
She flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him so deeply, the world disappeared. When they finally pulled apart, she was breathless. She slid down his body, Stetson’s arms holding her around the waist and slowing her descent to the floor. She grinned up at him, her whole body alight with happiness.
“What do you think of the flowers?” Stetson asked, tilting his head toward the desk.
She was instantly embarrassed. This man had brought her flowers - the first man in years to give her flowers and she’d completely forgotten about them. She picked up the bouquet and buried her face into the bundle of red roses offset by white Calla lilies. The scent of roses filled her nose and made her head spin.
“I even wrote the card myself,” he said proudly. She found the card and read the words, but didn’t really understand.
“Will you…?” was all that was written.
Will she what? Her mind stumbled over a million possible answers in about a half a second.
Suddenly, she realized the card was tied to the flowers by a brown, loosely twisted string, and something was weighing the string down. She pulled the card to the side and saw, dangling from the string, a gold ring with a lovely, if small, diamond, sliding slowly along toward the stems of the flowers.
“Turns out, I had enough to bring my loan current, buy flowers, and buy a ring,” he said, trying to smile confidently, but she could tell his nerves were drawn taut.
Her eyes dropped back down to the ring, sliding on the string. It unleashed a cascade of conflicting thoughts that rushed through her brain so quickly, she felt dizzy.
Could I? Should I? What would I lose? What would I gain? Is he really the one?
She felt like the words were blazing on a movie screen above her head. Each question was flashing on the screen and then another piled on top, the words laying on top of each other, hard to read, hard to know what to do, and then suddenly, like a wrecking ball crashing through the side of a building, came a bold, underlined, italic, gigantic YES!, scattering the other words in its wake.
“I guessed at the size,” Stetson said, filling the silence that must’ve been killing him. She slapped him on the chest playfully.
“There for a moment, you were all romantic and stuff. Don’t you dare ruin this for me, Stetson Byron Miller,” she said, before draping her arms around his neck. The flowers knocked his cowboy hat to one side. Laughing together, their lips met.
Finally, pulling away from his lips, she tightened her arms around his neck and with her mouth close to his ear, she whispered her answer.
“Yes.”
Stetson grinned down at his bride-to-be. “Your boss is really upset right now, so I was thinking you and I should get the hell outta Dodge. Whaddya say?”
Jennifer savored another long look at this strong, warm-hearted, and loving man before turning to her desk and pressing a button.
“Susan, when Greg calls again, will you tell him I quit?”
Epilogue
Sighing, she sat back down at the table that was covered with magazines, fabric swatches, brochures and pictures. An only child, Jennifer’s mother seemed to have taken an almost unholy interest in the wedding plans and was driving down every weekend from Boise to “help” with the process. Six weeks into it, and Jennifer was already starting to go a little crazy.
The really good news was, Carmelita didn’t seem to mind the mess considering the reason for it. The bad news was, Stetson had become accustomed to Carmelita’s “normal” level of perfected cleanliness and the disarray had started to get to him. His barn could be a mess all day long, but the house was a whole different matter.
Truth was, this was really out-of-hand even by Jennifer’s estimation. She needed to reign in some of the chaos, but she couldn’t seem to make a decision on anything, much to her mother’s chagrin. She needed to talk to Stetson.
She braced her elbows on the table, crinkling some of the cake decorator brochures she’d picked up at the bridal show in Boise two weeks ago. She’d started off wanting to keep every scrap of paper that was ever considered, but now, she just didn’t care.
“We could catch a flight to Vegas,” Stetson said.
Jennifer flew out of her seat in surprise. She was so absorbed in all of this stuff, she hadn’t heard the backdoor open or close. She hadn’t heard his boots click
ing against the tile, or the fridge door open and close, as was evidenced by the beer he was holding.
“Holy…” she panted. “Stetson, honey, don’t ever sneak up on me like that ever again. You have to actually get married before you can kill me off with a heart attack and get the insurance.”
He smiled. She loved that smile, the twinkle in his eye, and the way the left side of his mouth lifted just a little bit higher than the right. All of this magically made some of her stress disappear. She grinned up at him.
“To be fair I, in no way, tried to sneak. I even let the screen door close on its own behind me,” he said, and cracked open the beer. “Want one? I could pour you some wine.”
“No, but thank you,” she said and pressed on. “I really need to talk to you about the wedding.”
“Darling, already I told you - it’s fall,” Stetson said, his smile wilting a bit. “That means harvest time. I know it’s hard for you to not have me involved, but when I only get one or two paychecks a year for harvests, this is do or die for me. I’ll help you more after I’m done and have more free time, promise.”
She just stared at him. Logically, she knew this was his busy time and that was part of what she’d signed up for when she agreed to be the wife of a farmer. Emotionally though, she needed to be the center of his attention. Just for a few moments.
Stetson looked at her and seemed to sense her conflict. For having been raised around a bunch of men with only Carmelita as a feminine example, Stetson was amazingly considerate.
“I am here now. Maybe we could decide on one thing together before I head for a shower and then bed? What do you think we should decide on - cake? Center pieces?”
“The date,” she said, taking her opportunity by the horns. “I think we should move the date up. I think we should move it to October 2nd.”
“Honey,” Stetson said, sitting in the chair next to her. “I’m too busy to get married in December - what makes you think I have enough time to get married at the beginning of October? That is smack-dab in the middle of harvest. We can maybe move it to the weekend before Thanksgiving if you want it sooner, but even that’s a real stretch for me. I know you haven’t lived through a harvest before, but my days only get longer before they get shorter. You think I’m gone a lot right now - just wait until October hits. Some nights, it’s just easier to sleep in the tractor than it is to come home.”
“I just think the sooner the better,” she said, willing herself to not cry. “I think the beginning of October is the longest we should wait.”
“That just isn’t possible, darling. We haven’t even started harvest over at Declan’s place because he’s helping Wyatt, and Declan’s place is huge. Plus, I want him to be there for my wedding - he’s my best man, after all. I know it’s tough, but that date would shut down two farms.”
She couldn’t hold it in any longer. At first, it was just a tear on her cheek but before she could even try to get a handle on her emotions, she was blubbering and sobbing. Stetson pulled her to him and stroked her hair.
He waited until she’d gotten most of the lip-sucking under control before asking, “Why is this so important?”
“The… The… The drahhh…The dress,” she finally blurted out before the sobbing took over again.
Stetson held her again until she got a better grip on her waterworks.
“The dress? I thought that was the one thing that was decided.”
She wiped the tears away with the back of her sleeve.
“It is. It’s here already.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“It won’t fit,” she said, and then stopped. She wasn’t really sure how to move forward.
“Ah shit,” Stetson said, the relief at finding a simple solution registering on his face and in his voice. “Can you send it back? Or hell, just buy a new one.”
“I don’t know what size I’ll be by then,” she said miserably. She had no idea how blunt she was going to have to be, and even more worrisome, she had no idea what his reaction was going to be.
“Why not?” he asked. He obviously hadn’t connected the dots.
She couldn’t find the right way to say it. She was pretty sure he would be happy, but there was a real chance that all of this was happening way too fast for him, and was happening at the time of the year where all he did was concentrate on bringing the harvest in.
She knew was part of the problem, too. If she had to say it outright, she wanted the announcement to be perfect. She wanted this to be one of those moments that was just right. She just couldn’t find that perfect phrasing in her head.
Stetson’s mind made the connection before she found those perfect words.
“You’re not…?” he said, his eyes widening. “Are you really? Are we going to have a…”
She nodded her head.
“YeeeWeeHahahahaeeeeeeeee!” Stetson yelled.
Vaulting out of his chair, he began to dance with joy around the kitchen. She couldn’t help giggling as she watched him skip and twirl around the cooking island. He was laughing so hard, tears were running down his cheeks.
Carmelita rushed into the room, fear written across her face, fear that quickly changed to all-consuming confusion. Stetson pranced and skipped over to the short woman. He surprised her even more by picking her up by the waist and spinning her around.
Stetson set Carmelita back on her feet after couple of turns, her face still a frozen mask of shock.
Jennifer watched in surprise as he grabbed Carmelita’s cheeks and squeezed.
“We’re having a father! I’m going to be a baby,” he yelled, whooping happily before planting a big kiss on her forehead as Jennifer doubled over with laughter. “You’re going to be a grandma!”
Well, I guess he got the gist of it.
* * *
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About Erin Wright
Erin Wright has worked every job under the sun, including library director, barista, teacher, website designer, and ranch hand helping brand cattle, before settling into the career she’s always dreamed about: Author.
She still loves coffee, doesn’t love the smell of cow flesh burning, and is quite happily ensconced with her handsome hubby in a small, charming town in rural Idaho. Find her updates on ErinWright.net, where you can sign up for her newsletter, along with the requisite pictures of Jasmine, her kitty cat muse and snuggle buddy extraordinaire.
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