“I’ve been meaning to give you a heads-up, Destry,” she said. “People have been talking about your resort for addicts.”
“Former addicts,” Destry corrected, trying to keep his voice calm and steady.
Mr. Curtis stopped in front of a yellow rose bush and handed Destry the scissors. “Get me three of those,” he ordered. “The best ones.”
Destry clipped three yellow roses that smelled like lemons before turning back to Betty. “What are they saying?”
She scrunched her mouth to the side, as if what she had to say might hurt Destry’s feelings. “That it’ll be a bad influence on the youth around here, that it’ll increase crime—that sort of thing.” She pointed her finger up to emphasize her next point. “I think it might help if we arranged for a town meeting to calm peoples’ nerves about the whole thing. I could help you do that. I’m on the town council.”
Destry stuck the roses in Mr. Curtis’s vase. He should have expected something like this to happen. He had noticed how his neighbors tended to dramatize every bit of news. “I’d appreciate that, Betty.” He hoped she was right, that a meeting really would help and not escalate the problem.
Mr. Curtis leaned in to sniff the roses. “These were always Martha’s favorite.”
“I’m taking him to the cemetery to visit his wife,” Destry explained to Betty as he maneuvered the old man back toward the driveway.
“What a sweet idea.” Betty walked on the other side of Mr. Curtis. “I’ll get to work on the meeting, then.”
By the time they reached Destry’s BMW and said goodbye to Betty, four petals had fallen off the mature rose blooms. Destry wondered if there would be nothing but a pile of petals when they got to the cemetery.
He helped the old man into the front seat. Then he folded the wheelchair and placed it in his trunk next to the old rifle that had caused him so much trouble with Wile E. He took his phone from his pocket and sent a text to Rosie. “Taking your gramps to the cemetery.” He hoped she would be pleased, but Rosie was as unpredictable as a desert rainstorm in Lone Spur. It was hard to know whether he’d receive a gentle shower of appreciation or more of a thunderstorm.
He depended on Mr. Curtis to direct him to the cemetery. They drove straight down to the middle of town and then turned west—away from the river and toward the dry hills. The cemetery was a sparse patch of irrigated grass surrounded by poplar trees and a chain-link fence. It was drier than what Destry would have imagined as a decent resting place.
Mr. Curtis directed Destry toward the back of the cemetery, where they parked the car. By the time he got the wheelchair set up, Mr. Curtis had already ambled across the grass with the vase of flowers in his hand. Destry chased after him, carrying the wheelchair. Most of the graves were marked simply, with small, flat markers. Mrs. Curtis’ grave featured a large granite headstone with Curtis written across the top. The name Benjamin was already carved on one side of the stone across from Martha, beloved wife. Two small rose bushes grew on either side of the headstone. Mr. Curtis waved his hand at them. “Do you mind deadheading those?”
Destry had no idea what he meant. Whatever it was, it sounded a little creepy. “Pardon me?” he asked as he set the wheelchair down behind the old man.
“Would you mind taking the old flowers off those bushes so new ones can grow?”
“I’d be happy to.” Destry took the vase from the old man and set it in front of the headstone. Then he reached to snap off three dead blooms from one bush and two from the other. It seemed wrong not to give Mr. Curtis more privacy, but he had to get him to sit down, so he wouldn’t fall. “Let me help you sit down.”
“No, thank you.” As the old man bent to remove a withered leaf from the rose bush, Destry grabbed hold of Mr. Curtis’s elbow to steady him. Hearing the squeak of dusty brake pads, Destry looked up to see a truck pulling into the little cemetery. Rosie was driving it. Better yet, she was alone.
“Rosie’s not going to be happy that you’re not in your chair,” Destry said.
The old man either couldn’t hear or chose to ignore him. Rosie pulled up beside them, parked, and yelled out her window. “Better get in that wheelchair, Grandpa, before you fall over and bash your noggin on a headstone.”
Mr. Curtis craned his head around looking for the chair. “That granddaughter of mine can be a terrible nag. I’m starting to feel sorry for Tanner Smith.”
Destry helped him sit down. Since Mr. Curtis had shared so many emotions with him that day, it seemed only natural for Destry to say how he felt. “Yeah, poor guy. Think he’d let me trade places with him?”
Mr. Curtis chuckled and winked as Rosie got out of the truck. “She’s also a terrible cook, but she’s the best granddaughter I could ask for.”
Rosie raised an eyebrow as she approached. She seemed to know they were talking about her, but Destry didn’t care. It couldn’t do any harm for her to know how he felt—except to his pride.
“Thank you for bringing him here,” she whispered.
“I’ll leave you two alone.” Destry wandered off to look at some other graves.
Even as he walked three rows over, he could still hear Mr. Curtis’s voice. “This grass is the greenest I’ve ever seen in this cemetery. Martha would be happy about that.”
Destry wandered among the graves, looking at the headstones of mothers and fathers, husbands and wives. Hardly any adult there had died without having been married and having children. Were there any single people in the cemetery? If there were, they hadn’t warranted a marker.
Rosie came up to him as he was staring at the grave of a two-year-old child buried in 1945. “How did you know he needed this?” she asked.
“I didn’t. I stopped by to talk to you and saw he was upset.” Destry chose not to recount the tale of how he had found her grandpa crying in the bathroom.
She tented her hands above her eyes, trying to see Destry’s face in spite of the sun. “What did you need to talk to me about?”
“I was wondering if you’d consider selling your paintings.” Maybe he had been too blunt. He braced himself for her reaction. Would she be angry?
“You mean the sticky-note pictures?” she asked, turning away from him to arrange a faded bouquet of fake flowers that leaned on a headstone. “I couldn’t sell those. They’re the only things Grandma left me when she died. My great aunt Rhoda gave them to her.”
“So you’re going to hang them back up on the wall?”
“No. Grandma only kept them there in case Aunt Rhoda came to visit, but she died four years ago.”
He tried to hide his smile. “The first day I was here, I recognized one of the artist’s names—Blake Anderson. My mom took me to one of his exhibits when I was a kid. I hope you don’t mind—I sent a few pictures of the paintings to my mom. She knows more about art than I do.”
Rosie walked to the next grave and stooped to pull a weed. He followed her example. She brushed off her hands. “I guess it couldn’t do any harm to see if they’re worth anything. Tanner would probably like the idea.”
Destry gulped. He’d almost forgotten Tanner had anything to do with this. Here he’d been so happy to help Rosie live her dream, but what he kept forgetting was that Tanner was part of that dream. Tanner was the one who was going to own the ranch with her, and Destry was helping him to do it.
They walked to the next grave, reading out the name on an ancient headstone that had toppled over. “Poor Dorcas,” Rosie said. “She was only three years old.”
Together, they worked to prop up the headstone, so it would be easier to read. He could tell she had learned to respect the dead in the way he had learned over the past year. It was worth taking a chance to see if she understood the things that had been going through his head. “Do you know why Alfred Nobel invented the Nobel prizes?”
She wrinkled her nose in that cute way he’d come to recognize as a mix of amusement and confusion. “Why?”
He swallowed. “His brother died, but the newspaper report
ers got their names mixed up. They published an obituary for Alfred instead of his dead brother. And it wasn’t complimentary. The whole article focused on how Alfred had killed thousands of people by marketing dynamite.”
Rosie stood to look Destry in the eye. “And that was the truth?”
He nodded. “Yeah. He didn’t mean for people to die from his invention, but that’s what happened.”
Her lips formed an adorable pout. “How horrible.” She placed her hand on his upper arm.
He froze, afraid she might move if he did. “It turned out to be a good thing,” he said. “Reading his own obituary forced Alfred to begin the life he was meant to live. It’s the reason he came up with the idea for the Nobel Peace Prizes.”
She tipped her head to the side and smiled. “It sounds a little bit like your story.”
“It’s a lot like my story.” Her hand remained on his arm, drawing all his attention to the warmth of her fingers on his skin. The cemetery around them faded into the background and all he saw was her face, turned up to his. “Once I realized that this life doesn’t go on forever, I started to make the decisions that really matter.” He placed his hand on her arm. Slow and gentle.
She didn’t flinch or pull away. Her steel blue eyes took him in, seeming to offer forgiveness. Unlike so many others, she judged him by his words, not by what she read on the internet or heard from their neighbors.
Without stopping to think, he traced his fingers along her jawline, cradling her face in his hand. She didn’t fight it or didn’t step back from his embrace. “And this feeling I get when I’m close to you,” he said, “this feeling like I’ve come home. It’s one of the things that matters most to me. Does it matter to you?”
Her gaze dropped from his eyes to his lips, and that was all the permission he needed. His thoughts swirled into a dizzy confusion as he ran his hand down the soft skin at the back of her neck. Her lips softened as he pressed his mouth to hers, and all her emotions opened to him—everything she had kept hidden. Her feelings seemed to mirror his own, magnifying them, as he drank in the sweetness of her lips, the scent of her hair, the smoothness of her skin, the comfort of her body pressed to his.
Then he felt her tense in his arms. Her lips stilled and she gently pushed him away. How could such a kiss not convince her to choose him? This was what love felt like. This excitement. This wholeness.
She clapped her hand over her open mouth in astonishment and stepped away. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.” She glanced back at her grandfather, who was nodding off in his wheelchair. It seemed he hadn’t noticed. “I don’t know what came over me.”
Destry rested his hands on Rosie’s arms, feeling the tension in her muscles. “You can’t deny this feeling between us.”
Over Rosie’s shoulder, Destry saw Mr. Curtis grin and give him a thumbs up before resuming his fake nap. The old guy had probably seen the whole thing.
Rosie pulled away, clasping her hands in front of her. “I feel it too, but we can’t base a relationship on our emotions alone. I’ve seen my mother make that mistake. After a while, the excitement fades away, and you’re left with someone who isn’t at all right for you. I like you, Destry, but I think we’re better off as friends. I’m sorry.”
He couldn’t give up now, not after the glimpse he’d had into her heart. “I guess I can only speak for myself, but I think we are right for each other. I think about you all the time—how I can make you smile or blush, how I can become the right man for you. It’s like we’ve known each other much longer than a few weeks, everything seems so natural, so invigorating. Look at the synergy we’ve got going with our lesson plans, the way we build off each others’ ideas, and the way we helped each other during the flood. We make a good team.” Tanner could barely yield to her requests about wedding rings and stray dogs. Anyone could see they weren’t right for each other.
Rosie tipped her head to the side in that way he loved, and frowned apologetically. He dreaded the next words from her mouth. “I’ll always be grateful you rescued me that day, Destry. But we hardly know each other.”
“There’s still time.” He lowered his voice to a sultry rumble. “Time to shoot pebbles against the riverbank, irrigate fields, and play WrestleMania. Time to enjoy the décor in your grandma’s living room. And time to stuff ourselves with my homemade pumpkin pie.”
She squinted at him, the sun in her eyes, fighting a smile. “I’ve never had your homemade pumpkin pie.”
He grinned, resisting the urge to reach for her hand. “That’s something for the future. I haven’t learned how to make it yet.”
She laughed and then glanced at Mr. Curtis, pretending to doze in his wheelchair. “I think you may have forgotten that I’m engaged to Tanner.” She twisted the ring on her finger as she spoke.
“Believe me,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten. Lately, I spend most of my days trying to figure out how I can help you change your mind.”
She kept her eyes focused on her ring. “Tanner’s so much more disciplined than I am, and that’s exactly what I need. I need someone who’s good with money and schedules, someone who understands all my quirks—and Tanner knows me better than any man ever has.” She drew in her breath, and Destry wondered how she could be so logical about the man she chose to live with for the rest of her life. “It would kill him if he ever found out I kissed you,” she said. “He’s already jea—I mean, he’s been insecure since you got the job he wanted.”
He would have loved to tell Tanner about their kiss. Still, he wanted to keep Rosie happy. “I won’t tell him, but I’m not about to deny it ever happened. I love you, Rosie.” He hadn’t meant to admit so much, but it felt right, now that the words had slipped out. “I knew it from the moment you saved Wile E. You’ve changed my life for the better, and I know I can make you happy, happier than Tanner ever could.”
She wrung her hands. “I better get back to Grandpa. I’m sorry, Destry. I’m engaged to Tanner, and that’s not a choice I take lightly.”
“I’m sorry too,” he said, though he wasn’t at all sorry about the kiss. “We could be happy together.”
He watched her run back, her ponytail bouncing as she dashed between the headstones. She reached Mr. Curtis’s wheelchair before Destry had even taken a step. What else could he have said to convince her? He had told her he loved her. She had even admitted to feeling the same crazy rush of attraction he did. It killed him that she could overlook the importance of an emotion so strong.
He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He ignored it.
This kiss, which he thought was the beginning, might just turn out to be the end. He didn’t want to give up, but he wasn’t going to make himself into a fool, begging for her attention.
His phone kept buzzing, and he fumbled to pull it from his pocket. It was a call from his mom. The first in over a year. Maybe she was ready to forgive him for failing to predict Cody’s overdose.
He answered. “Hi, Mom.”
Silence. It stretched on long enough to be uncomfortable. Just as he was about to hang up, she spoke. “Hello, Destry.” He could barely hear her, she spoke so quietly.
It had been at least three months since he had stopped leaving a weekly voice mail message for his mom. Since then he had only been calling his dad.
“How are things in the West?” she asked, her pitch rising a little too much at the end of her sentence. She sounded more nervous than sociable.
He watched Rosie push the wheelchair toward Mr. Curtis’s truck, her lean arms taut with the effort, but Destry didn’t think she would appreciate any help, given the circumstances. “I’m in love with a woman who’s engaged to another man,” he said without thinking.
She chuckled, sounding relieved that he’d broken the ice. “You always did like a challenge.”
“I’m afraid I might have already lost this one.”
“But you’ve found a couple of treasures.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “I forwarded those pictures you
sent to an art dealer friend. He wants to talk to you about them.”
He raised his free hand in victory. “Really?” This could be the key to Rosie living her dream. And though she had rejected him, he still wanted her to be happy.
Chapter 21
Like a song stuck in her head, the memory of Destry’s kiss stayed with Rosie, resurfacing daily, sometimes hourly. The more she tried to forget it, the more she remembered. It had been her fault. She invited it. Yielded to it. Relished it. No wonder her mother constantly fell into her bad-decision trap with men—she let passion take over.
Closing her eyes, she could feel the tips of his fingers moving along the sides of her face as she breathed in the freshly laundered scent of his shirt. The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled. Then, just like that, his lips were on hers, and it was the way she had always imagined a kiss should be, soft and delicate but as overpowering as the taste of a habanero pepper. The fire of it still raged through her.
Tanner never smiled before he kissed her, nor had she ever felt the Indy 500 ride of excitement with him that she’d felt with Destry. She had to keep reminding herself that passion wasn’t what she needed. She didn’t need a race car. She needed the calm, reliable partnership Tanner offered. He was the safe choice. She knew everything about him.
It would have been easier if she didn’t see Destry every day at work or live next door to him at the ranch. Or if he hadn’t discovered that two of her paintings were valuable enough to sell at a New York City auction house. Thanks to him, she would have plenty of money for a down payment. Depending how well they sold, she might have more than she needed. Maybe this had been Grandma’s plan all along—for her to use the money from the paintings to help buy the ranch. Rosie remembered her joking around that “the paintings are for you to use when grandpa and I buy the farm. You can use them until you buy the farm too.” Surely, Grandma had known they were worth something.
Now, the two most valuable paintings, packaged by Tanner, were on their way to the auction house in New York City. They had also heard from the bank that Tanner was preapproved for a loan that would cover the rest of the mortgage. Rosie’s dream hovered within her grasp. And yet all she could think about was that kiss in the graveyard and the way Destry’s hand slid across her back.
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