She heard more panic than anger in his command and didn’t care.
“I didn’t know,” he said, obviously trying to temper his tone, to stay calm.
Well, she couldn’t stay calm. She was losing something she loved. Again.
“How could you have misjudged me so badly?” She clenched her fists. “How could you not have understood how special my dreams are to me?”
C.J. shoved his fingers through his hair.
“I just didn’t realize,” he said.
“I changed for you. I opened myself up so you could see who I really am. Do you know how many years it’s been since I did that with anyone?”
To her horror, she felt tears run down her cheeks and batted them away with the backs of her hands.
“Do you know how hard that was? I stripped myself bare for you.”
He hung his head. She’d washed away every trace of the Goth girl she’d hidden behind for eight years. Then, in spite of her terror, she’d laid herself bare, literally. Had overcome her fear to let him touch her, make love to her.
“I trusted you and you didn’t bother to see who I really am. You saw me in terms of how I would fit into your fantasy with no thought given to mine.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you. It was a mistake.”
“I don’t think so, C.J. Take another look. I think the money was more important to you than me.”
He set his jaw. He was getting angry, too. “I’m not that shallow.”
The air whooshed out of her on a frustrated sigh. “I know. But you’ve needed money, a lot of it, for so long, it’s a part of how you think.”
She reached out to touch his arm, then pulled her hand back. “But you did make a lousy ten thousand dollars more important than me.”
She turned to walk away. “You really never knew who I am, what I want and where I want to go with my life.”
He stopped her. “What does this mean for us?”
“I don’t know, C.J.” The backs of her eyes stung, like if she didn’t leave right away, she’d break down and cry in front of him.
She couldn’t give him another little piece of her private self to hurt.
“I need to think.” She backed away from him. “Maybe Ordinary isn’t the place where I can rebuild my life. Rebuild myself.”
“You can’t mean that.”
She kept walking. “I do.”
“But—”
“Leave me alone.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
JANEY FADED into the edge of twilight, swallowed up by the encroaching darkness and the folly of his own damned mistake.
She was right. She had stripped herself bare for him and C.J. had never truly seen her. He’d been looking only at his own dream and had thought he could drop her right into it, tab A into slot B. Settle her down cozily on the ranch then go about his business with his family and his life all settled exactly as he’d wanted them.He’d never bothered to find out what she wanted and how he could fit into her life.
He’d watched her become her own woman before his very eyes, yet he hadn’t truly seen her.
She’d given him so many gifts—gifts fraught with danger for her—the stunning honesty of who she really was when she’d unmasked herself, the body that had known only violence before she’d given it to him, her boundless generous love.
His son.
Despite what she’d lived through in her life, she’d given it all with the amazing courage it took to heal that which was broken inside of her so she could offer everything she was to him.
He sank to his knees and bent his head.
Janey Wilson, what have I done?
He stayed that way for what felt like an eternity then stood abruptly.
No way was he losing that woman. If she couldn’t fit into his dreams as they stood, he would change his dreams.
He jumped into the Jeep just as a pickup truck pulled up behind him.
Hank got out and strode up the shoulder of the road to C.J.’s window.
“You having car trouble? Need some help?”
“Yeah,” C.J. said. “I need you to pick up Janey a little farther up the road.”
“What’s she doing? Walking?”
“We had a fight. I have to make it up to her, but I need her away from the store tonight. Can you take her to the ranch?”
“What am I supposed to tell her? That she can’t go home?”
“Get Amy to tell her she’s too upset to be alone. Hell, I don’t know. Tell her anything, just keep her away from the store.”
Hank strode back to his truck and sped off down the road.
C.J. waited while Hank’s brake lights flared down the road, then the interior light came on as Janey opened the door and got in.
When Hank’s taillights disappeared in the distance, C.J. sped off into Ordinary.
Once there, he carried his still-sleeping son inside and ran upstairs. From the double bed in the apartment, he grabbed a pair of quilts, ran back downstairs and fashioned a bed for Liam in one corner of the back room.
Throughout this process, Liam stayed asleep. C.J. left him swaddled in the quilts and went to the front.
He called Max, who answered on the second ring.
“The deal is off,” C.J. said. “I’m selling the store to Janey Wilson.”
“What? You can’t—”
C.J. slammed the receiver into its cradle and ran to the back.
In the candy-making room, he checked out all of his chocolate molds. Which one would work best? He settled on a rabbit.
He pulled his best melting chocolate out of the pantry.
He was devising a way to get his girl back, through her stomach and her taste buds and her sentimentality. His hard-edged Goth girl was a softie at heart. He was banking on that to save him.
If this didn’t work, he’d do something else. He’d travel to Billings and live with her there while she went to school. He would do anything, because they belonged together.
Throughout the night he worked while his son slept peacefully.
In the morning, he bundled Liam and Janey’s surprise into the Jeep and, with a brief stop at home for food and showers, headed for the Sheltering Arms.
As soon as C.J. drove into the yard, he noticed Janey sitting in the roomy Adirondack under the weeping willow, with young Katie on her lap. She sure did love that tree. He was going to plant one for her, beside their house, whether in the city or on the ranch. Wherever she would have him.
The second C.J. lifted Liam out of his car seat, he ran to join Janey and the girl on the lawn. Katie and Liam squealed and ran across the driveway to where the other children played in the field.
C.J. approached Janey with a big chocolate female bunny rabbit wrapped in cellophane and tied with a big pink polka dot bow.
“You okay with children now?” he asked. Seeing the cool look on her face hurt.
She looked pale and her eyes were bloodshot, her nose red. She’d been crying.
Ah, Janey, I wish I could take back what I’ve done to you.
Her gaze flickered to the chocolate animal in his arms and he noted a flicker of interest and a hint of longing. Good.
Please, God, let that work in my favor.
He crouched in front of her and handed her the bunny. She didn’t take it.
“Please,” he said, “open it. There’s something you should see inside.”
She reached for it, her manner reluctant, but still with that longing in her eyes that became more pronounced as she touched the big bow.
A cheer arose from the group of children in the field, but Janey’s concentration never wavered from the chocolate she unwrapped.
When the cellophane fell to the grass and the bunny lay bare in her hands, a breathy little “Oh,” escaped her.
He wanted to kiss that gasp of surprise, to lick it, to inhale it, to put it into his breast pocket to carry next to his heart forever.
The girl bunny had big pink lips and wore a pink-and white-striped icing sugar apro
n with Sweet Talk written in chocolate across the chest. C.J. had colored icing with the natural carbon he used to make the black stripes on his humbugs and had spread it over the chocolate bunny’s hair and pert ponytail.
One chubby chocolate hand held a roll of white paper. C.J. gently pulled it out of the hole he’d made in the hand to slip it through.
He handed it to Janey.
She took it, but C.J. didn’t think she could really see it for the sheen of tears swimming in her eyes.
“Do you know what it is?” he asked.
She shrugged and raised her gaze to his and he saw hope.
“It’s the deed to the store. I told Max I was selling it to you.”
He leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “Is that okay?”
She smelled like tropical flowers and coconut and hope and burgeoning love. She smelled like his future. He traced his lips down her neck and she shivered.
She craved touch so much, and had known so little.
His breath whispered over her skin and she shivered. “I’m going to spend the rest of our lives together touching you to make up for how little touch you’ve had in your life until now.”
He wrapped his hand around her bicep and his fingers grazed the side of her full breast.
“A real hardship.”
She shivered again and he smiled to himself.
He wrapped his other hand around her nape and urged her forward so he could kiss her.
When he drew the soft fullness of her lower lip between his teeth, she launched herself into his arms, knocking him to the ground.
He ended up on his back on the grass, with Janey in his arms, lying between his spread legs, her tongue in his mouth and her hands roaming his chest, hidden from the children across the way by his Jeep.
Laughing, he broke the kiss and held her away from him. “Business first. Will you marry me?”
“I can keep the store and work there forever?”
“Forever, my darling Goth.”
She giggled, said, “Yes,” and fell on him again, her sweet tongue in his mouth and his hands roaming her delectable body.
She wiggled her body against him and he tossed her onto her back in the grass, discreetly adjusting his pants.
“Have a heart, Janey.” He laughed. “Not in front of the children.”
“C.J.,” she said, laying her hand on his heart. “I want children. Lots of them.”
C.J. pulled her head to his shoulder and whispered, “We can start tonight.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
C.J. ENTERED THE HOUSE late in the afternoon. Gramps had taken Liam to his soccer game and Janey should have arrived home from work before he left. Yep, she was. He heard the shower running upstairs.
Sweaty and dirty from his day’s work on the ranch, he headed to the kitchen for a tall cool beer, but was arrested by the sound of voices quarreling.He swerved back into the hallway and to the back porch, listening and smiling as he went.
“Let go of my toe.”
“You let go of my ear.”
“Mine!”
“No, mine!”
He found the three-year-old twins kneeling on the floor at the coffee table. Cellophane and polka dot ribbons lay strewn on the floor. Two chocolate bunnies sat on the table missing various body parts.
The girls had chocolate rings around their bow-shaped mouths set in heart-shaped faces. Little black ponytails bobbed at the backs of their heads.
“Girls,” he said, for the pure pleasure of seeing their faces light up for their daddy.
They didn’t disappoint. They squealed and jumped up, throwing themselves at him when he crouched with his arms wide-open.
“Daddy! Sarah ate one of my ears.”
“Hannah is bad. She ate my toe.”
“Didn’t!”
“Did, too!”
“Hush,” he said. “No fighting. Tell me what you did today with Gramps.”
In a matter of seconds, his two chattering little daughters had covered his T-shirt with chocolate handprints. Their mouths had smeared his face with chocolate from their kisses.
He didn’t mind, wished he could bronze the shirt, wished he could keep his two rebellious, active daughters young forever.
“Go wash your hands and run outdoors while I clean up here and put dinner on.”
“I want one more ear,” Hannah squealed.
Sarah followed suit. “I want a paw.”
They took their chocolate pieces outside while C.J. wrapped what was left of the cannibalized bunnies. He wiped his face with a big white hankie from his pocket, leaving it smeared with chocolate.
Janey stepped out to the back porch, looking even more beautiful now than on the day they’d married four years ago.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. He bent forward to accommodate her big belly.
“How was work today?” he asked.
“Great. We had tons of tourists. I left Annie and Jack there and left the store open late because there was a lineup out the door.”
She pulled back and studied his face. “And you? How was your day?”
“Had to pull a calf today before Liam headed for school. I swear that kid loves animals so much he’s going to be a vet.”
“I hope so.”
A rueful grin kicked up one side of C.J.’s mouth. “I thought we’d agreed that no more chocolate animals would come home from the store for the girls.”
Janey hid her face against his shoulder. “I know, but today is a special day.”
“Yeah?” C.J. bit the side of her neck just hard enough to get her attention. “What’s so special about it?”
“It’s Tuesday.” Her delightful high laugh filled C.J. with joy.
“C.J.?”
“Hmm,” he murmured, pulling away from her neck and turning her around in his arms, settling her back flush against him, so he could caress her big belly.
They watched the girls run in the backyard, chattering and happy.
Janey looked up at him over her shoulder. “Has life lived up to all those dreams you had when we met?”
“No,” he said and she frowned. “It’s better, Janey. So much better. And you?”
“Better. Perfect.”
He felt his son kick his hand from inside his wife’s womb.
Soon, he thought. We’re waiting for you, me and your mother and the twins and Liam and Gramps.
He remembered all of his old frustration with constantly waiting for everything he wanted. His daughters romped in his fields under the sun, their tiny feet clad in small black cowboy boots eating up the wide-open spaces of his flourishing ranch.
His hand roamed Janey’s belly again and a tiny foot moved to meet his touch.
Son, we’re waiting for you.
His heart filled with joyful anticipation.
I’m waiting for you.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5258-9A COWBOY’S PLAN
Copyright © 2010 by Mary Sullivan.
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