by Joanna Sims
He stepped forward and adjusted her grip and repositioned the rifle. “Keep her steady when you pull the trigger.”
The second time Bonita shot the rifle, she hit the target. He’d never seen anyone so excited to hit a target before.
“I did it! Did you see that?”
“I saw it.”
“I need to do that again. Is there still ammo in this thing? Do I need to reload?”
Gabe hadn’t felt like laughing lately, but seeing Bonita take pure joy in one of his favorite activities made him smile. He taught her how to load the weapon and she kept on shooting until she could hit the target five times in a row.
“I think I’m really good at this.” Bonita took off the headphones after she handed the rifle back to him.
“Seems like it.”
Her hands on her hips, his love seemed buoyed. “I honestly never understood the point of all of this. But now I get it. I feel like I got all kinds of frustrations out.”
Gabe packed up his guns and equipment and they walked toward the cabin.
“You want something to drink? I have wine.”
“You’re drinking wine now?”
“I don’t drink it.”
After drinking wine and chasing it with beer the night he had intended to propose, Gabe discovered that he was definitely not wired for wine.
“I keep a bottle around just in case.” He didn’t add that he had bought it for her—she was smart enough to figure that part out.
“Well, like my mom always said, it’s five o’clock somewhere.”
* * *
Tater was happy to see her, and as she always had, Bonita doted on the little dog. Gabe popped the cork on a bottle of sweet red wine, the kind he knew she liked, and poured her a glass. He grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator and twisted off the top. They stood across the butcher-block island from each other; Gabe touched the bottom of his bottle to her glass.
“What are we toasting to?”
“Not a thing.” He lifted the bottle to his mouth to take a swig.
She stopped him and held her glass up in the air. “To us.”
He didn’t join the toast. Up until she showed up on his property unannounced, he was under the impression that there wasn’t any us any longer. He gave her a little nod and then took a drink.
It hadn’t seemed awkward before, but it was feeling pretty awkward now. Bonita sent him a nervous smile. He wasn’t used to seeing her acting nervous. That wasn’t her style.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m here.”
“A bit.”
Bonita took another sip of her wine and Gabe couldn’t stop himself from imaging kissing the sweetness of it off her lips.
“I’m here because I love you, Gabe. I love you. I miss you.” She gestured around her. “And no matter where I am in the world, my home is here...with you.”
Her words—words he had thought to never hear from her—hit him in the heart. They gave him license to act on impulse and forgo formality. He put his bottle down on the island, walked the short distance to Bonita, took her wineglass from her hand, put it on the island and then picked her up in his arms and carried her, like he was carrying his bride over a threshold, toward his bedroom.
“What are you doing?” Bonita asked on a laugh.
“I’m taking you to bed.”
“Don’t you think we should finish talking?”
“No. Every time you talk, you screw things up between us.”
“Every time I talk? Now wait just a minute!”
“Shhh.”
“Did you just shush me?” She started to push on his chest. “You’d better put me down!”
He did put her down—right where he wanted her—on his bed.
She stared up at him and he stared right back as he said. “You came here to make up with me, so let’s make up.”
They could talk later; there would be plenty of time for that. But right now, his body ached for her. He was tired of lonely nights and frustrating days. He wanted to make love to his woman and show her how much he had missed her.
Gabe wrapped her up in his arms in a gentle tackle until they were both lying down on the bed. He held her in his arms and she felt so damn good and he kissed away any words that were about to come out of her sweet mouth.
He pulled her into his body tighter, wanting to hold her so close. He kissed her neck, breathing in that lavender scent. “God, I’ve missed you.”
When he lifted his head to look at her face, Bonita looked him directly in the eye and said sincerely, “I have missed you every second of every day.”
They stripped off their clothes; they didn’t need anything between them. Gabe skipped the foreplay when he felt how ready she was for him; he fit himself between her thighs, slipped inside of her, deep and hard, until he heard her gasp in pleasure. He held her hands in his, their fingers joined together, as he thrust into her with long, deliberate strokes while she made small sexy noises in the back of her throat.
When she came for him, he lost himself inside her body, like a man who had finally found his way home. He was sweating and breathing heavy and she was laughing as she hugged him to her.
They took a quick shower together, cooling off their bodies. He kissed the water off her neck and her breasts, ending with a deep kiss on the lips before he left her to enjoy the shower on her own.
She was drying off with a towel when he returned with a glass of the wine she liked.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, enjoying the simple pleasure of watching her dry off with a towel. It was those small things of everyday life that he had really missed the most.
“I am, too.” She wrapped her hair up into the towel like a turban and walked past him, naked, to get dressed.
He caught her by the waist to stop her from walking by. “Pay the toll.”
She smiled at him and kissed him.
He turned to watch her dress. Now that the urgent need to bury himself deep within her had passed, his mind was starting to run through conversation scenarios, not all of them with happy endings.
They sat down together on the front step of the porch so they could watch the sunset. Bonita had taken her hair out of the towel, and now there were long, damp tendrils framing her face. How he adored his lovely Bonita. How he loved having her back at Little Sugar Creek with him. She was the missing piece to his puzzle.
“Did you mean it?” he asked her. “That Montana is your home?”
She stared out at the landscape before them, so quiet and pristine.
“Yes. I did mean it,” Bonita said quietly. “Where Mom is, that’s always been home to me. This is where she is now.”
Then Bonita said, “And, this is where you are. I always knew how much I love you, Gabe. That was never a question in my mind. But I didn’t know how much I loved this life I have with you here until I left it.” She turned to him and he could read the sincerity in her soft, brown-black eyes. “I used to think that Washington, DC, and medical research were my future. But I don’t think so anymore.” She reached for his hand as she continued, “I’ve had a chance to be a part of medical research this semester, and as much as I’ve liked the experience, I just don’t see myself doing that for the rest of my life. I want to interact with my patients in a more personal way. I want to see, firsthand and right away, how I impact their lives. That’s what I want. And...” she met his eyes “...I can do that anywhere. I can do that right here in Bozeman.”
“We’re always hurting for good doctors,” he told her. “You could do an awful lot of good for an awful lot of people.”
Her brow wrinkled. “I never knew just how noisy the city is.”
That made him laugh. He always missed the quiet of the ranch whenever he was in the city.
“If I opened a practice in Bozeman after I graduate...” she leane
d toward him with a shy smile “...I could be your wife.”
Gabe didn’t trust that he had heard her correctly; the day had started out to be just another ordinary day. And, suddenly, it had become extraordinary.
“You want to get married?”
She leaned toward him and kissed him lightly on the lips. “I do.”
“When?”
Bonita threaded her arm through his with a happy laugh. “When we’re both ready, I suppose.”
He stared at her for several seconds and then stood up abruptly.
“What’s wrong?” His love had a worried expression on her face.
“Not a thing.” He kissed her to reassure her. “I’ll be right back.”
At the door, he paused. “Don’t you go anywhere.”
He went to his dresser, opened the top drawer, and pushed a heap of socks and undershirts out of the way and found the box he had tried to forget at the very back of the drawer. He opened it and realized that he had purchased the perfect ring for the perfect woman—he had just planned to give it to her at an imperfect moment.
The sun was setting and his big Montana sky was bursting with brilliant reds and oranges—the perfect backdrop for one of the most important moments of his life.
He sat down beside her and took her hand into his hand.
“I know I don’t pray as often as you’d like.” He paused and ran his thumb over the empty spot on her ring finger that he hoped to fill.
In a raspy voice, he continued, “But, I’ve been praying every day for you to come home to me, Bonita.”
She squeezed his hand, moving her body closer to his.
“It feels a little bit unreal that you’re sitting here with me now, saying all the things that I’ve wanted to hear. But I don’t want to let this moment pass me by. I love you, Bonita. I love you more today than I did yesterday, and that’s just the truth of things. I know you’ve got school to finish back in Washington, but distance doesn’t have to be a deal breaker for us. You can come to me and I can come to you, until we can be together full-time. When it comes to you, I’ve got plenty of patience.”
“I want this to work, too, Gabe,” she interjected, holding on tight to his hand.
With his free hand, he fished the ring out of his front pocket.
“I want to marry you, Bonita. Today, tomorrow, next year.” Gabe said. “Will you marry me, mi amor?”
Bonita seemed surprised that he was able to call her “my love” in Spanish, just as she seemed surprised that he had just pulled an engagement ring out of his pocket. She stared at the sparkling diamond, for a couple of very long seconds before she looked up at him with unshed tears in her eyes.
There was a catch in her voice when she asked, “In sickness and in health?”
“Till death do us part.”
“Yes, Gabe.” She smiled at him with a small nod. “I want to marry you.”
Gabe slipped the ring onto her finger and then they stood together and embraced. He kissed her cheeks and buried his face in her neck to breathe in the scent of the woman he loved. Bonita rested her head on the spot just over his heart and hugged him in a way that let him know that she wasn’t ever going to let him go again.
“My beautiful, sweet Bonita. You have always had this cowboy’s heart.”
* * * * *
Be sure to look for
The Sergeant’s Christmas Mission,
the next book in Joanna Sims’s
The Brands of Montana miniseries,
available November 2018!
And catch up with the rest of the Brands in these other great romances:
Meet Me at the Chapel
Thankful for You
A Wedding to Remember
A Bride for Liam Brand
Available now wherever Harlequin Special Edition books and ebooks are sold.
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Maverick’s Baby-in-Waiting by Melissa Senate.
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The Maverick’s Baby-in-Waiting
by Melissa Senate
Chapter One
“Have you picked out a name for the baby?”
Twenty-six-year-old Mikayla Brown looked from the display of baby photos on the wall of the Rust Creek Falls Clinic, where she was waiting for her ob-gyn appointment, to her friend Amy Wainwright. Names? Oh, yeah, she had names. Mikayla’s life might be entirely up in the air at the moment, but names were easy. Late at night, when she lay in bed, unable at this point—seven months along—to get all that comfortable, she’d picture herself sitting in the rocking chair on the farmhouse porch with a baby in her arms and she’d try out all her name ideas on the little one.
Problem was, she had too many possibilities. “I have six if it’s a girl,” she told Amy. “Seven if it’s a boy. And ten or so more I’m thinking of for middle names. Can I give my child four names?”
Amy laughed, putting the Parenting Now magazine she’d been flipping through back on the table. “Sure, why not? You’re the mama.”
Mikayla shivered just slightly. The mama. Her. Mikayla Brown. She barely had her own life together these days, and soon she’d be solely responsible for another life—a tiny, helpless little one with no one to depend on but her. Mikayla had always been a dependable, do-the-right-thing kind of person, and she’d fallen in love with a man she’d thought was cut the same way. Then, boom—her life exploded like a rogue firecracker. One moment, she’d been working happily at a local day care in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and in love with her boyfriend, a good-looking, ambitious lawyer, with her entire future ahead of her. The next moment, she was a single mother-to-be. No engagement. No marriage. No loving father-to-be beside her, just as excited about her prenatal checkup as she was.
But who was here today? A good friend. Mikayla was so thankful for Amy Wainwright she could reach over and hug her, and she would if her belly weren’t in the way. Her belly was always in the way these days.
Hey, you in there, she directed to her stomach. Are you a Hazel? A George? Mikayla loved the idea of honoring her late parents, who’d always been so loving and kind. Or her maternal grandparents, also long gone—Leigh and Clinton, who’d sent birthday and Christmas cards without fail but had moved to Florida when Mikayla was young. Then there was her dear aunt Elizabeth, her mother’s sister, who went by Lizzie, and her hilarious uncle Tyler, and their one-of-a-kind son, Brent, Mikay
la’s cousin. Brent was the one who’d suggested Mikayla move up to Montana—to Rust Creek Falls—for a fresh start. Which was how Brent’s name had ended up on the possibilities list. She owed him big.
Moving to this tiny town in the Montana wilderness had sounded crazy at first. Population five hundred something? More than a half hour’s drive from the nearest hospital—when she was now seven months pregnant? No family or friends?
You’ll make friends, Brent had assured her. Sunshine Farm will feel like home.
Brent had been right. Mikayla had been a little worried that she’d get the side-eye or pity glances from the town’s residents. Pregnant and alone. But from the moment she’d arrived at Sunshine Farm three weeks ago and met the owner, Brent’s friend Luke Stockton, she’d been invited to Luke and his fiancée’s joint bachelor-bachelorette party held that very day. Since the recent wedding, she’d become good friends with Luke’s wife, Eva, and Amy, who’d also lived at Sunshine Farm at the time.
Now Amy was engaged, with a gorgeous, sparkling diamond ring on her finger. Mikayla sighed inwardly while ogling the rock. She’d over-fantasized like a bridezilla in training about a ring on her own finger and a fairy-tale wedding. Hell, even a city hall wedding would have been fine. But all that was before she’d caught her baby’s father having sex with his paralegal in his law-firm office.
The more Mikayla admired Amy’s ring and thought about how her friend had reconnected with her first love, Derek Dalton, the man she’d married and divorced when they’d both been teenagers (long story!), the more Mikayla thought anything was possible. Even for seven-months-pregnant single women far from home and trying to figure out where to go from here.
A door opened, and a woman with a baby bump exited, followed by a man carrying a pamphlet. Your Second Trimester. Both their gold wedding rings shone in the room. Or maybe Mikayla’s gaze just beelined to rings on fingers these days.
A nurse appeared at the door and smiled at Mikayla. “Mikayla Brown? Dr. Strickland is ready to see you now.”
Well, where she was going right now was Exam Room 1. That was all she needed to know at the moment. One step at a time, deep breaths, and she’d be fine.