by Jillian Neal
"She told me what your mom said. I was worried you'd listened to her."
"My mother has always given terrible advice. I usually just let her talk and pretend to do whatever she says then I do what I know is right. I would never have left. I knew we could figure out how to do this, even if it is really soon. I am scared though."
"I know you’re scared. Jesus, it kills me that I’m not there with you. I swear I’m coming, baby. Just hold on, and it's not too soon. It's right when it was supposed to be. Does that mean that this is the sign you kept wanting?"
"I never really needed a sign. That was just my cynicism talking. The signs were all right in front of me. Every single time you've made me feel loved. That's all I should've been looking for."
"Good. It's going to take me another half hour to get back to the ranch and that's assuming I don't get my ass pulled over for going ninety. Do you want me to get one of my brothers to come get you?"
Callie tried to weigh how badly she needed to pee again against the embarrassment of one of his brothers having to rescue her. Her pride won out. "I'll be okay. Will you stay on the phone with me though?"
"Of course. I'm going to lose the signal again once I get out near the stables, but when that happens just know that I'll be there in just a minute."
* * *
Almost an hour later, the steady sound of rapidly approaching hooves shook the ground. Relief washed over Callie's weary form. Another minute passed before she could see him riding on top of his copper quarter horse heading straight for her. He pulled up on the reins as he got to her, slid off the horse, and wrapped her up in his arms. "Are you okay?" She managed a nod, but he was squeezing her too tightly for her to give him a verbal answer. "Thank god. You walked almost four miles from Wyn's barn, baby. You have to be exhausted. I don't want you exerting yourself especially right now." He ran a gentle hand over her belly.
"I'm okay," she assured him. Truthfully, she didn't mind being fussed over a little.
"Do you want me to take you to the mustangs or back home?"
"Anywhere that there's a bathroom first, and does that mean that I get to call your house home?"
"Make me the happiest cowboy on the prairie if you would." He remounted Chief and then to her shock reached down and pulled her up in front of him. She awkwardly straddled Chief as well.
"Uh, wow, it's really high up here, and there's no saddle."
"I've got you. I didn't want to waste time saddling him. We're going to take it nice and slow. Lean back against me and relax. We'll be home in just a few minutes."
She tucked herself in the crook of his neck as he took the reins and guided them home.
For the first time in her life, she was going to unapologetically do exactly what she wanted to do.
“I love you so much,” he vowed again as they rode.
“I know you do,” she assured him. “I love you, too. Do you want to know what Nana told me this morning?”
“Of course.”
“She told me that Pops is not Willow’s birth father.” Callie felt Ford tense for just a minute.
“That explains a few things.”
“You mean like why she was so hard on my mom?”
“That and something my Uncle Gentry told me.”
“What did he say?”
“He said a lot of people like to stick to these rules they have in their head because they think the rules keep them safe. Your grandmother clings so hard to the rules because maybe her mistake cost her quite a bit. She didn’t want you and your mom to go through the things she went through, whatever they might’ve been. So, it comes from a good place, but it’s misguided.”
“That does make a lot of sense,” she agreed. “I think she has in her head that she has to pay for the mistake she made with my mom’s birth dad. Instead of seeing the good that came out of it, she only focuses on the rules she thinks she broke.”
“Forgiving yourself isn’t easy, baby. You and I both know that. I think that’s why it bothers me so much when you apologize for everything. I don’t want you to live your life trying to make other people happy. I know it soothes you in the moment, but you’ll wear yourself out trying to meet expectations that no one can achieve. When you constantly feel guilty for things that you can’t change, I worry that it leaves you in a place where it’s mighty easy to forget to see all of the amazing things you do because you’re so worried you might’ve upset someone.”
“I mostly just want to make our little family happy.” She placed a hand on her belly again and tried to imagine it being big and round. She couldn’t wait. “I promise I’ll always try to remember to see the good and not to worry so much about everyone else’s definition of what’s good and what isn’t.”
“You make me happy by just existing, sweetheart.”
“When the baby is born, we can just keep showing Nana how good things are. Eventually, she’ll see, don’t you think?”
“I think we ought to try even if she can’t see for a long time, and I think we ought to try to start showing her before our baby is born.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Lying in bed the next morning Callie had questions she wanted answered.
"Just ask me," Ford prompted her before she'd said a word.
"How did you know I wanted to ask you something?"
"I just know. Now go on with it. Whatever it is, it's bugging you."
"Does me being pregnant remind you at all of...you know...when you and Meritt were first together? It bothers me that I've put you back in the same boat, I guess."
"I'm not in the same boat, and you aren't Meritt," he quoted. "I'm in love with you. I was never in love with her. You really are pregnant. She never was. I'm older, wiser, been through some shit and now I know exactly what I want and she's lying on me in our bed."
“What if people think the baby is the only reason we’re together?”
“Like I keep saying, people will think whatever the hell they’re gonna think, but I figure in fifty or so years, after our kids are grown and running this ranch and we’re still together in our rocking chairs on the front porch, people will figure out that it wasn’t just for the kids.”
Callie couldn’t have asked for a better answer than that, but it brought on another question. "Does it bother you that I'm so much younger than you are?"
"I thought I wasn't supposed to say anything about that anymore."
"Okay, but if you were supposed to."
"No. It doesn't bother me. I just never want you to feel like you gave up any part of life for us. If there's something you want to do, I want to make sure it happens."
"I don't feel like I'm missing anything. I do want to keep taking pictures and maybe open a studio, but mostly I just want to be with you and with our baby. I know I'm younger, but I've lived through a lot of shit, too. You tend to grow up pretty fast when you have a childhood like mine. I was the one who had to raise my parents."
"Yeah, I figured that out all on my own. I think I might've finally figured out something about the two of us as well."
Contentment soothed her, still a heady sensation for a girl who finally belonged right where she was. "What's that?"
"Nobody gets to get out of this life unbroken. That just ain't how it works. So, if you get lucky enough to find the person who has the broken pieces that fit yours then you hold on tight and kind of put each other back together."
"Ford," she choked, "I love that."
"Yeah, well I love you."
"I love you too."
"Is it bad that I hate your parents?"
Callie chuckled at that. "Hate is a strong word."
"Fine, I really dislike them."
"I'm not a big fan of theirs right now either, but holding grudges isn't going to be helpful. I just want to keep the baby away from Meritt and away from my dad."
Ford turned so he could stare down at her. "Honey, I had no idea you were worried about Meritt like that. You know I will never let her get anywhere near you. I w
ill protect you and our kids until my dying breath."
"I know, but I might need you to remind me of that every now and then."
"I'll say it every damn day if that's what you need. And it won't just be me either. There are a whole bunch of Holders who'd go to the mat on your behalf. We take care of our own. Speaking of that," he reached into his bedside table and extracted the ring box he'd purchased a few days before.
"Oh my gosh." She sat up in bed and pulled the sheets up over her naked breasts. "You're doing this now. Here?"
"I can put it back 'til later, but I want you to have it. I'm impatient. You know that." He started to return it to the drawer, but she caught his arm.
"No. I want to be impatient, too."
Smirking at that, he kicked off the sheets and blankets. "You want me to put on some shorts before I get down on one knee, or are you okay with me being nekkid?"
A fit of hysterical giggles broke over her. "I like you nekkid."
"That's my girl." He got on his knee, and Callie tried to remember how to breathe. "I love you Calico Anna Monroe the first, but I'd really like to make you Calico Anna Holder if that sounds good to you."
"It does," she assured him. "It sounds perfect!"
He slipped the most beautiful oval diamond ring she'd ever seen on her finger. "Oh my gosh!" She stared down at it in disbelief. "It's perfect."
"Just like you, baby."
"Thank you." She pulled him back up into the bed with her. "You really are my sunrise, you know that."
"I don't think so," he corrected her. Callie's brow furrowed. "I decided we're the whole endless Oklahoma sky. An unending number of sunrises. We go on forever and ever."
"I love you, Ford Holder," she gushed again as she climbed in his lap and gently placed the hand with her ring over the Holder brand tattoo on his arm. Callie Holder. She grinned at everything that was to come. Every road she'd taken had all led her right here. She didn't need a sign to know she was right where she was always meant to be.
Her whole entire life she'd believed she was nothing more than a thousand questions, but she'd fallen in love with the answer to them all.
A week later, Callie was laid out on a cold exam table in a doctor's office in Tulsa. An ultrasound tech was squirting jelly on her stomach. Ford was attempting to hold both of her hands without getting in the tech's way.
"I'm good. I promise," she assured him.
"Okay, let's see if we can't figure out how far along you are," the tech explained.
“I don’t think I’m more than a few weeks along,” Callie tried to explain.
“Your doctor thinks you may be further along than that.”
Callie gasped as the grainy, black-and-white image appeared on the screen. "Oh my gosh. I can see it. It's...real."
Ford stared at the screen in dumbfounded awe.
The tech chuckled at them both. "You appear to be almost ten weeks along."
They turned to stare at each other. "The first time," Callie whispered.
He nodded his agreement. "Guess the universe was listening."
"It always does."
Epilogue
Five Years Later
Dr. Monahan grinned at Ford who was busy brushing his wife’s hair away from her sweaty face and brushing kisses everywhere he could reach. “Looks like you got yourself a little girl this time.”
Callie used her waning strength to lean up from the bed. She was grinning and crying at the same time, but that’s what she’d done for several days after both of their little boys had been born, so Ford wasn’t too worried about it this time.
“When you told me it was going to be a girl, I didn’t believe you,” she informed the doctor. Thrill and shock lit her exhausted tone. Ford accepted the tiny pink bundle wrapped in blankets like it was the most precious thing in his world. Other than his wife and his sons, she was.
“I’m not sure I know what to do with a little girl,” he admitted in a choke. Overwhelming emotion and protectiveness gripped his vocal cords.
Callie grinned. “You always know exactly what to do with me,” she reminded him.
He brushed a tender kiss on his little girl’s forehead and then another one on her mama’s. “I already bought you a pony,” he informed their daughter. “And I’ll teach you to ride, just like I taught Mommy.”
Everyone in the delivery room chuckled at him. He didn’t care.
Apio snapped another picture of the three of them as Ford laid the baby on Callie’s chest. Callie had wanted this birth photographed in all of its gory but beautiful detail. Apio had flown in from Johannesburg to do the honors. Connecting women to their beauty indeed. She’d agreed to fill in at Callie’s studio on the square in Holder County while Callie took a few months off with the new baby.
Just outside the delivery room there were at least three dozen Holders along with Willow and Callie’s grandparents. No family was perfect. Ford was just glad they were there. It made Callie happy, and that was all he ever wanted.
Callie had labored throughout the night. Ford had been right by her side for every contraction, just like always. As he turned to glance out the window just then, he noted a gorgeous sunrise cresting the buildings in Tulsa. He was certain his girls were the only things that would ever outshine the Oklahoma sky.
About the Author
Bestselling author Jillian Neal likes her coffee strong and sweet with a shot of sinful spice, the same way she likes her cowboys. In fact, her caffeine addiction is quite possibly considered illicit in several states as are a few of the things her characters do. When she’s not writing or reading, you’ll find her in the kitchen trying out new recipes or coming up with excuses reasons to purchase yet another handbag or make an additional trip to Sephora. Though she’ll always be a Bama girl at heart, Jillian hangs up her hat and kicks up her boots outside of Atlanta with her hunk-of-a-husband and her teenage sons.
For more information…
jillianneal.com
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Gypsy Beach to Camden Ranch
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