She broke then, going to him, letting him envelop her in his strong arms. His lips fell to hers, searching, tentative. Then moving with more confidence as she kissed him back. “I’m falling for you too,” she whispered. She couldn’t say the word love, not yet. But maybe soon.
“Good.” He bent down and picked her up, setting her on the hood of her car as he continued to kiss her. “Because already I don’t think I can live without you.”
She wanted to tell him he wouldn’t have to, but that was too many words. Instead, she just kissed him again.
Epilogue
Three months later
When Tara arrived at the Silver A Ranch for another horseback ride with Crew, he was already waiting at the training barn with Iron Express and Dancer. Tara noted the parking lot was fuller than normal and there were more horses out in the training field.
She was working part-time now for the ranch in marketing, and loving it. The ranch’s preorder beef sales were higher than they been in five years, and with High Vista going out of business, they’d also filled their boarding stables to capacity. Crew had been urging her to leave her other job, but she couldn’t quite let go of it yet. Because while things were really good between them, they hadn’t talked about a future together. And the words “I’m falling in love with you” weren’t quite “I love you.”
He took her in his arms for a lengthy kiss. “I missed you.”
“We just had dinner last night.”
He kissed her again. “I still missed you.”
“I missed you too.”
“Hi, Tara!” Sophie came from the barn leading Jump Start, whose coat shone almost pure silver in the sunlight. In the four weeks that Jump Start had been back, Sophie had been at the ranch every day.
“Nice boots. Are those new?” Sophie’s grin stretched ear to ear.
Tara laughed. “Yep. I finally gave in to the madness.”
“I’ll buy her a cowboy hat next,” Crew threatened.
“You’d better not!” Tara faked a growl.
Sophie dissolved into laughter. “Well, when you finish your ride, come see the foals. I’ve taught Express Jumper some new tricks.”
Crew snorted. “I’ve told you. He’s a horse, not a dog.”
Sophie tossed her head. “When he grows up, he’s going to be a champion jumper. You’ll see.”
“I’d love to see him. I’ll meet you there.” Tara waved as Sophie mounted Jump Start and road away.
Crew stared after his sister. “It’s so good to see them together. And guess what? Today, she said she’s finally moving back in.”
“That’s wonderful. Now you won’t have to worry so much about her.”
“Yeah, and what’s more wonderful is that Dervin from High Vista took all his cowboys back to California, including Sophie’s stalker.”
“That is a relief.” The bearded man had come around to the bar once more, but after Crew encouraged Sophie to file a restraining order, he hadn’t bothered her. That still hadn’t stopped Crew and Tara from worrying.
“Ready to go?” Crew asked.
“Just need to say hi first.” Tara ran her hands along Dancer’s coat, murmuring hellos. The young mare was also an offspring of Iron Express, but she didn’t have Thoroughbred genes from her dam. As far as Tara was concerned, she was perfect.
She swung up on the horse. “Where are we going?”
“Oh, just for a ride.” His voice sounded a little too casual, but when she looked at him, he smiled and shrugged.
“Okay, race you!” She leaned forward and signaled Dancer with her feet, and the mare gladly started forward.
They galloped down the grassy road, and Tara felt happy with the wind blowing through her hair and Crew at her side. She couldn’t imagine anything better.
They ended up as they almost always did in the upper meadow where Crew had played as a child. He took her hand as they walked across the field. Wild flowers still clung to life even during the hot summer, reminding her of Crew and how he’d held onto the ranch.
She wasn’t surprised to see that he’d set out another picnic, but she was surprised when he opened the basket, drew out a cowboy hat, and went down on one knee. She peered inside the upturned hat to see an intricately woven, white gold ring with a large, square diamond. All at once she couldn’t breathe.
Crew gazed up at her. “Tara Levine, I love you with all my heart and soul. I want to spend the rest of my life making you happy. Will you marry me?” He drew out the ring and held it above the hat.
She knew the ring was his grandmother’s because she’d seen it in pictures. Sophie had talked about how when she married, she wanted a new ring, something all her own, but Tara thought this was perfect. That Crew would entrust it to her meant everything.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
He slipped the ring on her finger, and then, laughing, pulled her down onto the blanket, where he plopped the hat onto her head. “You have to wear it now,” he said. “It’s our engagement hat.”
She laughed. “Fine, but only on rides.”
He covered her lips with his own and tucked her against him on the blanket. Both their hats fell off and neither of them cared. For a very long moment, she lost herself in his touch.
“I love you,” he said, pulling back slightly to meet her gaze. “I will never stop loving you.”
In those eyes that still reminded her of warm nights and laughter, she saw their ending. And he was there next to her. Never failing, never running away, never backing down from challenges. Always putting his family first, even when they hit bumps in the road. Or ran into the occasional mountain.
She blinked back happy tears. “I love you too.”
NOTE FROM RACHEL BRANTON: Thank you for spending a little time with me in the Lily’s House world. I hope you enjoyed this story. If you haven’t yet read the first book in the series, House Without Lies, you can get that FREE here. For your enjoyment, on the next pages I’ve included a sample chapter of Tell Me No Lies, book two of the Lily’s House series that follows the story of Tessa, Lily’s sister. Or you can read more about my book in the About the Author section.
THE END
Sneak Peek
1
I blinked to hold back the tears, stunned by what I was hearing. No! I don’t believe it. But I did.
Hurt followed the disbelief, growing to an agony that urged me to physically lash out at Sadie, my best friend and bearer of the terrible news, but I was frozen in place, as though my heart had stopped pumping blood to my suddenly useless limbs.
Besides, it wasn’t Sadie’s fault.
Oh, Julian. How could you?
Sadie put a hand on my shoulder, but the sympathy in her eyes did little to comfort me. “I’m sorry, Tessa. I really am. I didn’t want to tell you, but . . .” She sighed and continued in a whisper, “I would want to know if it were me.”
Her words released me from my mute state. “I need to be alone.”
“Of course. I understand. Call me if you need me.” Sadie stepped close and hugged me while I stood without moving. I barely noticed her departure.
My eyes wandered the room of my childhood, only recently familiar again since I’d come home to Flagstaff to prepare for the wedding. Mother had insisted on dinners and celebrations, and because Julian and I planned to live in Flagstaff, where he would work in his family business, it only made sense for me to leave the job at my father’s factory in Phoenix several weeks early. I missed the job and my friends the minute I’d left, but Julian and I were ready to take the plunge into matrimony—or so I’d thought.
The door to my walk-in closet was open, and I could see the wedding dress I was to have worn in just over forty-eight hours. Bile rose in my throat, and a tear skidded down my cheek. I brushed it impatiently away. I wouldn’t cry for a man who had betrayed me.
Since tonight we were having the rehearsal dinner, last night had been Julian’s bachelor party. Sadie’s brother had been at the party and had told he
r all about Julian disappearing early with a woman whose hands had been altogether too familiar with a man who was about to be married.
I slumped on my bed, covered with the homemade quilt my grandmother had made, my eyes still locked on the white satin dress. Drenched in lace and small pearls, it had a sweetheart neckline and a gorgeous chapel train. The dress cost seventeen hundred dollars and had taken three weeks of daily shopping to find. My mother had been with me every one of those days, which had been a torture in itself.
I bit my lip until I tasted blood.
I’d met Julian Willis when I’d come home to visit for the Christmas holiday, though if the truth be told, my visit had more to do with my horse, Serenity, than seeing my parents. At my mother’s insistence, I’d tagged along on their invitation to attend a party thrown by the Willises. I hadn’t minded going, once I met Julian. If his blond good looks and toned physique hadn’t won me over, his attentiveness and charm would have. After countless trips to Phoenix on his part and numerous weekends home on mine, the inevitable had happened: we’d fallen in love. He asked me to marry him, and I said yes.
Two weeks later, my father and Julian’s had negotiated a business arrangement to take effect after the wedding. The Willis family owned a huge frozen food conglomerate, and my father produced a line of breakfast cereals, where I managed the swing shift. With the help of the Willises, our business would expand to new markets my father had never before reached. I wasn’t sure what the Willises were getting out of the deal since our business was stable but not growing. Maybe they would simply have in-laws who were up to their standard of living.
Not that we’d ever been poor in my lifetime—thanks to my grandpa who’d worked himself into an early grave to create that first bowl of sugar-coated cereal. I still missed him terribly.
What am I going to do?
The awful thing was that a part of me wasn’t all that surprised. Julian was attractive, thoughtful, and a big flirt—a hit with ladies of every age. Half of the marriageable women in Flagstaff had chased him at one time or another, and before we’d met he’d had a bit of a reputation—one he’d assured me was complete fabrication.
I won’t marry a liar and a cheat. Every woman deserved better than that. I wondered if I’d purposely been blind or if he’d been good at hiding things. Perhaps his betrayal had been a momentary lapse, but if so, what did that say about our future? If I couldn’t trust him now, how could I trust him for the next sixty or more years?
Maybe it’s all a mistake. I latched onto the idea. Yet in the next minute I had to discard it. Sadie had been my best friend since kindergarten, and I’d trust her with my life. There was no way she would have spoken unless she was certain it was true. More likely she hadn’t told me everything she knew, not wanting to hurt me further.
A knock on the door startled me from my thoughts. “Who is it?”
“Your mother.”
“Come in.”
Elaine Crawford didn’t so much as enter a room as sweep into it. She was the epitome of grace and elegance. Even at eight o’clock on a Thursday morning, her hair was styled in an elaborate twist that was both attractive and left her beautiful neck bare.
“My, Sadie was in such a hurry this morning. I’ve never seen her run off so quickly. Did you two have a disagreement?”
I shook my head, unwilling to trust my voice.
My mother’s eyes didn’t leave my face. “What happened? We can’t be losing your maid of honor at this late date.” She smiled to show she was teasing, but there was a warning under the words.
“Sadie and I are fine.”
“Wonderful.” She walked to the closet and peered inside. “You’re going to look like a princess in this dress. Even without you in it, I could stare at it all day. Julian won’t be able to take his eyes off you.”
I gave her a weak smile. I did love the dress—a good thing, since it had taken so much time to find one we both agreed on. My mother wasn’t a woman to give up on any goal, and her goal had been to find a dress that not only would I agree to wear but that would make people sigh with admiration for years to come.
She rambled on, going over a last-minute menu change and reminding me we needed to pick up my father’s tuxedo. “I hope Lily’s man comes dressed appropriately,” she said, almost as an afterthought.
“Mario’s wearing a suit. Lily said he looks great.”
“I wish you hadn’t insisted on their coming.”
“Lily’s my sister. Of course she’ll be at my wedding.”
“You weren’t at hers.”
I didn’t say anything. Lily had done what she felt she had to, and I’d been happy for her.
“He will never amount to anything,” my mother added.
“And you think Julian will?” I couldn’t hold it back any longer, though I knew my mother was the worst person to confide in. She’d never been the kind of mother to bake cookies, to take her kids to the park, or sit and discuss school and boyfriends. As teenagers, Lily and I had agreed that she was like Mary Lennox’s mother in the Secret Garden—too occupied with her own life and goals to really care about her daughters. “Well, you’re wrong. I just found out he cheated on me. Maybe more than once.”
My mother didn’t gasp. She didn’t hug me and ask me how I knew. She showed no sympathy for me or anger toward my fiancé. She simply stared, her arms folded tightly against her stomach.
“I can’t marry him,” I said.
That brought her to life. “Of course you’ll marry him. It’s you he loves, no matter what you’ve heard.”
Something in her demeanor tipped me off. “Wait. What do you know about this?”
“I know that Julian is good for you. He’ll take care of you. His family’s business is doing well, and our contract with them will do wonders for our company as well. Your company someday.”
“You knew? All this time, you knew?”
It was one thing for my mother to disown a daughter because she’d married a man she didn’t approve of, but I couldn’t believe she’d want me to commit my life to a man who cheated before he was even married.
“How long has it been going on?” I asked. “Does everyone in town know?” I could imagine it now, people wagging their tongues and in the end sympathizing with Julian because he was oh-so-handsome and exciting, as if that excused everything.
Not in my book.
“The truth is,” my mother said, “marriage is little more than a business arrangement. Eventually you will realize that, and then you will understand this is a problem you can overcome. Besides, Julian will see the error of his ways. He’ll always come back to you.”
I hadn’t even known he’d left me. I shifted on the bed, searching for something to make her see reason. “Would you have married Dad if he’d been cheating?”
“I would and I did.”
I gaped at her. I knew my parents’ marriage wasn’t perfect. Growing up, Lily and I had often clung to each other at night as they’d argued loudly in their bedroom. I’d been glad to escape to college, though it had hurt to leave Lily behind. But she was far more resilient and determined than I ever was, never wavering from her dreams of leaving and building her own life. It was she who’d fallen in love and eloped in the middle of the night a year ago when she was only twenty-two.
We’d both come home for the Fourth of July, and telling our parents about her engagement to Mario hadn’t gone well. I’d helped Lily pack the rest of what was in her old room, and she’d left during the night while our parents lay sleeping. I’d never forget how happy she looked.
“I love him so much!” She’d told me. “He’s like the air that I breathe. He’s a hard worker, and I know we’ll make it. You don’t have to worry about me anymore.”
They had made it, at first, while both were working. They’d even bought a big, old, run-down house to fix up. Then a leaky water heater and a small fire set them back, and they’d cut their work hours at the beginning of summer semester to finish school. Now Lil
y was expecting and so sick she had to quit her job altogether.
Meanwhile, she’d filled every vacant space in their house with teenage girls who had nowhere else to go except the street or back to the unloving homes from which Lily had rescued them. In a few years, Mario would finish school and be able to support them, but for now they survived on love, money from the state for a few of the girls who’d been placed with them officially, the little money I could spare, and the funds I begged for them from my parents.
Now thinking of how Lily’s face lit up every time she talked about Mario, or whenever he entered the room, and how careful he was of her, made me strong. I wanted that for myself.
“I can’t go through with the wedding,” I told my mother. “I’m sorry.”
“At least talk to Julian. He’ll make it right. I know it.”
I knew it, too, and that was exactly why I didn’t want to talk to him. When I was with Julian, he was all too persuasive. He should have been a televangelist, because he could convince anyone of just about anything. Since he’d been over sales in his father’s company, he bragged that the business had doubled in profits.
Cowboys Can’t Lie (A Lily’s House Novella) Page 11