The Hero of Hope Springs

by Maisey Yates

  “She says she doesn’t want a ring?”

  West repeated his own words back to him, and Ryder found it astonishingly unhelpful. “Yes,” he said. “Well, I mean, she said she doesn’t want me to get her one. She wants to make it. You know, she’s into all that artisan stuff. It’s kind of her thing.”

  “Sure,” West said. “But...a woman shouldn’t make her own wedding ring. That’s like making your own birthday cake or...hell, buying your own Christmas presents, I guess. It’s dumb, essentially. And I would think that most women would actually be not okay with it at all.”

  “But she said she was.”

  “Danger, Will Robinson. That sounds like one of those things.”

  “Sammy doesn’t do that stuff. She doesn’t play games.”

  “Maybe she didn’t when she was your friend. But now she’s your fiancée. The future mother of your baby. And that means games come into play.”

  “Are you telling me my sister plays games with you?”

  West lifted a shoulder. “We play games with each other. Even if we don’t mean to. That’s how it all works sometimes. Because suddenly when you’ve got your feelings in the mix it’s easier to play games than outright say it. Half the time I’m convinced the game is with your own head. I bet she’s not tricking you on purpose, but she’s probably afraid to ask in case you don’t want to do it.”

  “Look. That’s all fine for you two, but she and I have been friends for about a thousand years.”

  West leveled a serious look at him. “But now you’re more.”

  “Not really,” Ryder said, ignoring the tightness in his chest.

  “Seriously? You got the woman pregnant, and you’re marrying her, and you’re still going to say that there’s nothing more between the two of you?”

  “Okay, it’s more. But I guess more accurately it always has been. It’s not love. I mean, not in love,” he clarified. “But it’s... She’s always belonged to me. And that doesn’t make sense. I know that. It sounds like a whole asshole caveman thing. And it isn’t. It’s more than that. I’d... I’ve spent the past seventeen years protecting her from the world.”

  “And now you have to protect her from you, too. Because I don’t care if you think you’re in love with each other or not, there’s a hell of a lot higher stakes when it comes to feelings than there were before you were engaged. Than there were before you were having a baby. That’s just a fact.”

  Ryder turned that over in his head for a moment. And he supposed that was probably true. And some of it was that it hadn’t really occurred to him since he had wanted Sammy for quite some time, so the shift for him had more uncovered things he had already known existed, rather than treated him to anything new. But he was sure that Sammy herself had never thought of him that way and so for her it was an entire sea change.

  And maybe that did require something different on his part. Maybe it did require a shift. Except...

  “I mean, we have great sex,” Ryder said.

  West looked at him like he had grown a second head. A second head that was dangerously stupid.

  “You know,” West said. “I’m not an expert necessarily on the finer feelings of women. Being that I’ve only successfully managed to carry on a relationship with one. I mean, my relationship with my ex-wife was fine until she framed me for fraud and had me sent to prison. But I’m hoping for better with Pansy. So you know you can take what I say with a grain of salt. But great sex isn’t enough.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No,” West said.

  “Even if...” Ryder was not the kind of person who shared things like this, but he really did need to make sure. Because for the first time in his life that he could remember he had a pretty delicate situation he needed to talk over with someone, and Sammy wasn’t available to have a discussion with. He could say anything to her. He always had. Though the conversations had never strayed into advice about sex or anything of that nature, because the two of them had never really had relationships. And when it came to the actual quality of the sex, he was good. Thanks.

  “Even if,” he started again, “you’re the best sex she’s ever had?”

  “Bro,” West said. “I am the only sex your sister has ever had. And I still got her a ring.”

  Ryder bristled up the back of his neck. “Didn’t need to know that.”

  “Hey, you brought it up. And you’re being pretty dense for a guy who essentially raised three girls. I would have thought you would know better.”

  “Yeah, but it feels... It feels like something.”

  “Sure. Sex is like that. It feels like something. In the moment. And it takes things inside you and twists them up and makes them all feel bigger and deeper. Gets its hooks in you, and links you to another person in a way that can’t be undone.”

  Yeah. That was definitely true. And he would have said it wasn’t, because before Sammy, it never had been.

  But then that was the other thing. She had wound herself around his life, around all that he was, way before they had ever started sleeping together. There was a permanence to who they were that had always existed. Sex had deepened that for him, but...it wasn’t the thing that had created it.

  “So I should buy her a ring,” he said. “That’s what you’re saying.”

  “Yes,” West said. “As big of a diamond as you can find, because you’re not just sleeping with her and marrying her. She is pregnant with your child and she probably feels like crap.”

  “It would have to be an ethical diamond, or whatever they call it,” he said, racking his brain to figure out how he would find one of those on short notice.

  “I imagine for Sammy, it would.”

  “She’s very aware of everything to do with shiny rocks and stuff. It’s what she does. Okay. I bet there’s a place in town I can go to. I bet Willow Creek will have something.”

  “Excellent. I suggest you get your ass over there bright and early.”

  “Definitely.”

  “And you should propose to her.”

  “I did,” he said. “I proposed to her, and that’s why we’re getting married soon.”

  “Did you get down on one knee? I know you didn’t give her a ring. Sounds like a pretty half-assed proposal.”

  “Well, it’s different.”

  “Quit making it different. Give her both. Give her the different that you are, but give her the tradition, too. Because isn’t she worth that? Who else is going to do it, Ryder? You think some other bastard is going to propose to her in a couple of years? He won’t. Not if you don’t screw this up. So if I were you, I would make sure that I was the man that gave her absolutely every damn thing, or expect that someday she’ll go find somebody else who will.”

  That stuck deep in his chest, lodged in a place that he couldn’t access. Couldn’t shake it free.

  “You don’t like that,” West said. “Good. So I suggest you make sure it’s a nonissue.”

  Ryder nodded and lifted his beer bottle to his lips. “Okay. I can do that.”

  Romance wasn’t really his thing. Never had been. But for Sammy, he would do anything.

  And if West thought she needed some trappings in order to make this all feel real, he would give her whatever the hell trappings she needed.

  He had never intended to propose to a woman in his life. And now he was fixing to have done it about three times. Because the first time she had refused him. The second time she had accepted. But it hadn’t been real. So now he was going to set about to make one as real as he could.

  And he knew exactly where to source the help. “I hope that you and Logan aren’t busy tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

  “What do you have in mind?” West asked.

  He could see her suddenly, so clearly. His Sammy in a flowing dress under a beautiful arbor. Lots of flowing. That was Sammy. She was a fairy and
she should have a fairy wedding, and he didn’t know why he suddenly knew that, only that he did.

  There’s nothing sudden about it.

  No. Knowing that was seventeen years in the making.

  And so was this marriage.

  “I’m going to need some help with some building.”

  “I think I’ve created a monster.”

  “With any luck, a monster who’s going to be able to hang on to his marriage.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE WEDDING WAS TOMORROW, and Sammy was starting to feel jittery. Worse, she was starting to avoid Ryder because whenever she was near him she felt enervated. Like all of her anxieties had twined together and left her feeling completely drained and flat. She hated that. It had never been like that between them.

  She would have never thought that a friendship that had spanned seventeen years, her ridiculous rebellious phase where she had basically kicked back against everything in the world just to test her freedom, his grief and the stress that he felt over ensuring that all of his siblings and cousins made it into adulthood, could possibly become complicated.

  But it had.

  They had survived raging teenage hormones only to be completely overtaken by the heat between them in their thirties.

  Now they were getting married because of a pregnancy that had made exploring that heat difficult, and it forced them into another new space entirely. They weren’t just friends. They weren’t just lovers.

  It was all blending together. And it only got yet more blurry when he held her through bouts of morning sickness, his touch intimate but not sexual.

  It made her chest ache in good ways she didn’t want to explore.

  She returned, somewhat triumphantly, to her camper for the evening, and stopped when she saw a note pinned to the door. She pulled it off, recognizing Ryder’s blocky handwriting immediately.

  Follow the trail.

  She looked around and didn’t see anyone there. It was getting dark out, the sun sinking down below the mountains, the sky illuminated with gold. The trail...

  She looked down, and right next to her foot was a sugar cube.

  A small smile touched her lips at the same time her heart crashed hard against her breastbone.

  He was baiting her.

  And in all their years of friendship, she couldn’t recall that happening.

  She picked up the first sugar cube, then the next. Then started leaving them behind, because the silly man had put a surplus through the field, and they became more difficult to follow as the grass got taller, but she managed.

  Then in the distance she could see it. A big wooden frame wrapped in light suspended high above everything else on the near horizon. White swathes of fabric were wrapped around the frame, with flowers and lights entwined all around.

  Magic.

  A fairy house right there in the field, just for her.

  But they hadn’t talked about doing anything like this. In fact, they had basically committed to standing out in a patch of dirt while Pastor Michael came and said all the right words. She quit looking at the sugar cubes and started to run.

  Her long skirt whipped against the grass as she did, her hair flying in the breeze behind her. And then she saw him, standing in the center of that big bright creation. She was glad that she had run, because when she stopped about ten feet away from it, from him, she could pretend that the sickening thud of her heart was from physical exertion, and not from wondering what this was.

  He was standing there in a black T-shirt, black cowboy hat and jeans, and suddenly she didn’t even want him to wear a suit for their wedding. She wanted him like this. Her cowboy. So stalwart and perfect.

  Her every cowboy fantasy, which, if it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t have at all.

  For the first time she wondered if the real reason she had gone for men who were so opposite to Ryder was that anyone who wasn’t Ryder would have only ever been a poor substitute.

  In reality, that was what they had been. Poor substitutes for the kind of man she had never let herself want. No. Not the kind of man. The man. Because... Oh, she had never wanted to want him. Even now, looking at him standing there like this, she felt so stripped bare. So vulnerable. Like he would be able to see all the soft, needy places inside her. Places that she had vowed she would never show anyone ever again.

  “You made it,” he said.

  She nodded wordlessly. She was unable to find a way to get speech through her tightened throat.

  “Well, you left a pretty clear trail.”

  “I tried,” he said.

  “What is this?”

  The light was continuing to ebb, and that made the glow around the structure that Ryder stood beneath all the brighter.

  “Did you make this?”

  He shrugged a shoulder. “I had a little bit of help.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Come here,” he said.

  She found herself hesitant to do so. But then he reached out his hand, his eyes intense as they stared into hers. She reached out slowly, and she took his hand.

  He pulled her beneath the lights, against his chest, and then he did something she didn’t expect. He started to sway, like they were dancing. His hold on her possessive and expert. Then he twirled her, her skirt and hair flying around her in a circle, before he brought her back to his chest. She laughed breathlessly, and he continued to move with her, to no music at all. But she could feel the rhythm between them. The one established by her heartbeat, moving in time with his. Yes, she could feel it.

  Could feel it coursing through her like a current. This was something else.

  It wasn’t friendship. It wasn’t sexuality, attraction. It wasn’t logical. It wasn’t built around doing the right thing, or looking the right kind of way.

  He was simply holding her, dancing with her. Like he wanted nothing more than to exist in that moment. In that space. She didn’t know when they stopped spinning, because her head still was. Because her heart was still beating out of control, and it wasn’t because she was out of breath. Not from the dancing anyway.

  She whispered his name, and he kissed it off her lips, pulling her in and taking it deeper. She felt wrapped in him completely. Those strong arms all around her, big hands pressed firm between her shoulder blades. She loved this. Being utterly and completely surrounded by him. He had always made her feel safe, but now she felt invincible. With her guardian, her rock, wrapped around her like this it felt like there was nothing that could hurt her.

  Nothing but him. That thought chased through her like an errant lightning bolt streaking across the dark sky, and she shuddered.

  He pulled back and looked down at her. “Is this okay?”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Is it for the wedding?”

  “It can be, if you want. But mostly it’s for right now. For us, and no one else.”

  She couldn’t understand that. That this was just for a moment. A moment, and not appearances. Not forever. A moment for them.

  It all chased around in her head like foxes going after their own tails, and she couldn’t grab hold of any of it long enough to make sense of it.

  “I need to ask you something, Sammy,” he said.

  “What?”

  Hope burned bright and fierce inside her, and she couldn’t quite say why. Or what for. All she knew was that it was blinding and all-consuming. Terrifying.

  It filled her, made her want to float into the air, to burst into a million sparkling pieces, because her human body couldn’t contain it all. She needed to become something else. Something new.

  Something his, maybe, or something more her own. She didn’t know.

  That was at the heart of all of this. This journey that she had been on from the moment she had opened her mouth outside the Gold Valley Saloon and told Ry
der that she wanted to have a baby.

  On some kind of journey to herself, and she knew that she hadn’t quite found it yet.

  And then, suddenly, that big mountain of a man dropped down to his knee in front of her.

  She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t even think around it. She had never imagined... Had never wanted to imagine him doing such a thing. Because he was the kind of man who had to stand strong and tall for all of his life. A man for whom absolute certainty was essential. And something like this, getting down on his knee with a question in his eye would never and could never be him. At least, she would have said so.

  But there he was, on his knee for her. It was something kind of mind-blowing.

  Then he reached into his denim jeans pocket, and pulled out a box. A velvet box. Like on those diamond commercials you saw on TV. Where men always looked hopefully at the woman, and the woman cried. A velvet box that was for normal women, who were cherished and cared for.

  Who were normal enough to actually be in a commercial, rather than being somewhere left of center enough that they might never see themselves in anything, except as an eccentric caricature. The friend of the heroine, and never the heroine herself.

  It was what she was always cast as, at least in her own mind. What she had always been.

  The friend who stood off to the side and gave dramatic bad advice, that led eventually to the heroine getting a ring, obviously. But never the one actually getting it.

  She didn’t know what to do. How to react. So she just stood frozen.

  Until he opened it.

  “It’s handmade,” he said. “And I’ve been assured that the salt-and-pepper diamond there is ethically sourced. I don’t know what all that means, Sammy, or the full implications of it. But I know that it matters to you. And I thought...if I was going to get you a ring, it had to somehow be all the things that you were. It had to be beautiful, and it had to be unique. But it had to be a diamond, because even though this doesn’t look exactly like you think when you say diamond, it’s still traditional underneath all that. And it had to somehow be a ring that cared about the world and how it all worked, how it would all connect, because that’s how you are. So this was the best thing I could find.”