by Maisey Yates
“Kaylee,” Bennett said, “why do you think I’ve spent my life planning things out the way that I have? Why do you think I was so obsessed with having all those pieces I thought were the right pieces? Because it was what I could control. And you can’t control love. The love that I have for you, I can’t control. I think something in me had to know that. And it’s why I kept you as my friend. It’s why I held out all this time. Why I insisted that I didn’t see you that way. But loving Dallas broke down the first barrier, and being with you broke down all the rest. When I held you in my arms the other night I realized there were no more barriers between kinds of love. I love you. I’m in love with you. When I quit holding back...it was so clear.”
“What made you fall in love with me?”
“There just came a point where I couldn’t not be in love with you anymore,” he said. “It was pointless to resist it.”
Her heart swelled up, everything inside of her feeling so full, so swollen with happiness that she thought it might burst inside of her, that she thought it might be too much. But she didn’t care. She’d spent her whole life having not quite enough. Too much was better. So much better.
“I got this place,” Bennett said. “For the next four days. Hoping that you’d want to spend them with me.”
“I do,” she said. “I really do. I promise you’re not forcing this on me.”
“Do you know why I wanted to do this?”
“No,” she said, feeling all choked up. “Why?”
“Because I want to take us away from real life. To get away from my family, even Dallas, for a few days. We don’t need to fit in my life. We just need to fit together. I wanted us away from all of that. My timing and everything. I believe in this. I believe in us. You are the longest, most important relationship I’ve ever had. I think it was love all along. But this is for you, all these days. Just for you. Whatever you want. Whatever you need from me, I want to be there for you. So for the next few days, it’s just you and me. This room, this bed. Nice breakfast. Maybe some walks. Some time on the beach. Whatever you want. I want to take time out of my life to be with you, to show you how much you matter. Enough to change me. Enough to rearrange things.”
“Bennett... You didn’t have to do this. Dallas...”
“Is fine. He’s with his uncles, his aunt and his grandparents. And he’s completely fine. You and I need to be together. Just us. Not forced together by emotional stuff happening back in Gold Valley. Not breaking dry spells. You and me. Because we want to be together.”
“I already know that I want to be with you,” she said.
“What do you want me to be, Kay? I want to be all that. Whatever you need. Your furniture mover. Your friend. Your lover. Your smile when you’re sad. Arms to hold you when you can’t stand up. Your hope when you can’t find any.”
“You are,” she said, swallowing hard. “You have always been the one who could be that for me. I was just too afraid to tell you it was what I wanted. But it is. It’s you, Bennett. I want you to be my everything.”
He kissed her, deep and long until neither of them could breathe. “Do we really need a walk on the beach? Or should we spend the weekend in bed?”
“Hey,” she said, pushing at his shoulder. “You promised me walks on the beach. I want walks on the beach.”
Bennett laughed and suddenly he mobilized, pushing her onto her back, grabbing hold of his cowboy hat and putting it on his head as he gripped her wrists and push them over her head, holding her down to the mattress, his weight over the top of her. “Are you sure about that?”
“Okay, now you’re making a case for this staying in the room business.”
“You’re my best friend,” he said. “The love of my life.”
“Mine too,” she said.
“We can do this. Just this. Sex and working together. Until you’re ready for more. I want marriage, Kaylee, I won’t lie to you. But I’m willing to wait until you’re ready for it too.”
“I’m ready,” she said, the words coming out a whisper.
“Thank God. My dad said I had to get down on one knee, but I think I like this position a lot better.”
“I’m not complaining,” she said, gasping as he rolled his hips forward, and then teased her with a kiss.
“I bought a ring and stuff too. But...”
She reached up, pressing her fingertips against his cheek. “That can wait.”
“Do you think we need to talk more?” he asked.
“I think we’ve spent the past seventeen years talking,” she said. “You say you love me. And I believe it. But why don’t you show me.”
“I think I’m going to take a lot of joy in showing you for the rest of our lives.”
She was never again going to spend a sad date she didn’t want to be on hoping she got a phone call from Bennett. Because finally, forever, she had Bennett.
Her friend. Her lover. Her everything.
He kissed her, and she kissed him back. She gloried in every erased boundary, every blurred line.
Kaylee Capshaw had been convinced she needed a new life. But that hadn’t been true at all. She’d had what she needed all along. She’d just needed to find the courage to embrace it.
The love she’d had all along.
EPILOGUE
IT WAS THAT time of year again, and the seniors’ names were written on the window at Mustard Seed. And this time, Dallas Dodge’s name was among them.
Bennett could not possibly have been prouder of his son, or the work he had put in over the past three years to graduate. He had been behind, and it had been a struggle getting here, but he was here, he was doing it.
And so much of Bennett’s own work as a father was done. It was strange. The past three years had been the most defining in his life. They had made him a father. And he had become a husband.
As he sat down in the bleachers at the football field while the graduates readied themselves, Kaylee grabbed hold of his arm, her ring shining in the sunlight.
That weekend at the bed-and-breakfast, he’d eventually gotten around to getting down on one knee and giving her the ring properly. Sometime much, much later in that first day. After he made love to her so many times he’d lost count.
Even now, the memory made him smile. Made his heart beat faster.
That weekend had been important. It had established a foundation for who they were as a couple. After so many years of being friends, it had been...necessary. To find that romance. To find out who they were as a couple, away from everything else.
It had been surprisingly easy. Like everything they’d been holding back for years had just been waiting. Waiting for them to wise up and realize what they both needed.
When their son was called up to the stage, Bennett and Kaylee stood, cheering and clapping, the whole Dodge section making a spectacle as Dallas crossed the stage to collect his diploma. When the ceremony was over, they all met on the field for a barbecue, families and students in black robes milling around. Dallas, for his part, ditched his hat almost immediately. But he held on to that diploma.
He surprised Bennett by crossing the lawn quickly, heading away from his friends and his girlfriend and straight for Kaylee and Bennett. He grabbed hold of Kaylee and gave her a hug. And then, he wrapped his arms around Bennett.
“I love you, Dad,” he said.
Bennett’s chest tightened, emotion almost overwhelming him. “I love you too, son.”
“I’m going to go hang out,” he said, clapping Bennett on the back as he headed back toward his friends. And Bennett just stood there, staring.
“I guess we did it,” he said to Kaylee. “We’re empty nesters.”
“He doesn’t go to school until fall,” Kaylee pointed out.
“Still,” Bennett said, “it was like we were on some kind of accelerated program.”
“
We were.”
“I guess so,” he said, rubbing his chest.
“Bennett,” Kaylee said, grabbing his hand and pulling him close. “You don’t have to worry about us being empty nesters for very long.”
Bennett jerked back. “What?”
“I would say that with Dallas not leaving until October, we’re really only going to have an empty house for about five months.”
“Kaylee Dodge,” he said, grabbing hold of her chin and looking at her square in the eye. “Are you telling me what I think you’re telling me?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”
Bennett picked up his wife and swung her in a circle, kissing her right on the high school football field he should have kissed her on years ago. Back when he’d been too stupid to know she was the one for him.
Back when he’d been too afraid for her to be.
A baby. More family. More love.
Things in his life definitely hadn’t gone according to his plans. And thank God.
Because it had all gone much, much better.
* * * * *
Mail Order Cowboy
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
JACKSON REID KNEW what he liked. He liked riding the perimeter of his family ranch, liked working from sunup to sundown until his muscles ached and his body was worn out. He liked drinking. And he liked women.
Women were the reward for all that work he did.
Work hard, drink hard, fuck hard.
He had no intention of settling down, no intention of changing. If he could die on the back of a horse, or with a tumbler of whiskey in his hand, or in the bed of a beautiful woman? Any of those things would be a fitting end for him. So why in hell would he change his life? He was on the path to any one of those ends, which meant he was on the right path for him.
His stepmother didn’t approve, but she’d moved away from Gold Valley six months ago, and his father was dead. So there wasn’t anyone around to mourn the fact that he wasn’t after marriage or babies.
He’d worked damn hard that day, like he did every day. It was pouring down rain and he’d been soaked to the bone by the time he’d come in. He’d had a hot shower, and now he was about to get down to the drinking. But that was when he heard a knock on his door.
He stood up, ambled over to the door and opened it. For a moment, he thought the sex had been delivered right to him. There was a blonde on his doorstep, bundled up against the cold and the wet.
Then he realized a few things. The first being that he recognized her. The second that she was tearstained and miserable. The third...that she wasn’t as bundled as she had initially appeared.
She was holding a blanket. And in the blanket was a baby.
“I can’t do it,” she said. “I thought I could, but I can’t.”
“Sasha?” That was her name. He vaguely remembered her from a liquor-soaked night quite a few months ago.
More than nine months ago, as a matter of fact.
Hell.
While that realization was rolling over him, she reached forward and thrust the baby at him, into his arms.
The bundle felt fragile, and at the same time...heavy. He looked down at the tiny thing in his arms and felt... He couldn’t explain it. Couldn’t reason or rationalize the expanding sensation in his chest, or the ever-increasing sensation of weight. In his arms. On his shoulders.
“I can’t,” she said again. “I know you can take babies to a hospital or a police station, but she’s yours. You can take her there if you want.”
“Mine?” he asked.
His. His baby. He’d never even held a baby before, and now it turned out the one he had now was...his.
“I have to go. I need to go get... I need to get out of here.”
And then Sasha turned and ran. Ran away from the front door and down the steps, through the rain and back to her car.
He should do something. Go after her. Stop her. But he was frozen in place, staring down at the bundle in his arms. He moved the blanket away from the baby’s face and something in him shifted. Changed. As he looked at that tiny, vulnerable bundle in his arms, Jackson Reid felt like he no longer knew a damn thing.
Three months later...
I have a degree in early childhood development. The daycare that I worked at recently had to close, so I’m out of a job right now. I’m also out of an apartment, but that’s a long dramatic story.
—S
Lily is four months old. She doesn’t sleep through the night and I think I’m about to die of exhaustion. Cows don’t delay their care, even if babies don’t sleep, it turns out. She doesn’t take after me. If I hadn’t had a paternity test done I almost wouldn’t have believed she was mine. Too sweet, for one thing. And she’s the prettiest little thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t know a damn thing about babies.
—J
She sounds perfect.
—S
She would be, if I weren’t drowning. I need help. Room and board, plus the pay we discussed previously.
—J
I can get there in a week.
—S
I’ve got all your flight info. I’ll be at the airport to get you.
—J
You can’t miss me. I’ll be the one with the bright, flowered suitcase. I’m plain and tall.
—S
A week after that...
SAVANNAH STURM STOOD in the tiny airport and looked around. She’d come into gate number three, and it turned out it was... Well, it was gate three out of three. In the only terminal the airport had.
She had been worried that her new employer, Jackson, might need a sign to help her find him. Now she imagined she’d just look for the man with the baby, assuming he was a man with a baby and not an ax murderer. The possibility was there that all of this was a scam of some kind. She was counting on him ringing alarm bells while they were here in public if she needed to be scared of him.
She adjusted the strap on her carry-on bag and stuffed her hands in her sweatshirt pockets, walking in line with the people who had just gotten off the very small plane and through a revolving door that led to...
What looked like the lone baggage carousel.
She stopped and looked around. The waiting area had a smattering of people in it. Not many, but that wasn’t terribly surprising since her plane couldn’t have had more than fifty people on it.
She didn’t see a man with a baby.
The main doors to the outside slid open. The man who walked in was head and shoulders above everyone else in the room, a black cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes. He was wearing a flannel shirt with the sleeves pushed up, revealing muscular forearms that had lumberjack-caliber definition.
And he was holding a little pink bucket seat with a lacy blanket draped over the top.
Fathers of infants should not look like that. They should not look like every bad boy fantasy she’d never allowed herself to have. Fathers of infants shouldn’t look like fantasies at all. They should look softer. Less angular. And he certainly shouldn’t make her stomach tighten, and her body remember that it had been a very, very long time since she had been touched by a man.
And even longer since she had particularly wanted to be.
She blinked, grabbing hold of herself and retrieving her consciousness from that strange space it had just been in. She wasn’t here to check out a hot man. She was here to do a job. To reclaim the broken pieces of a life that hadn’t even be
en hers anymore after a particularly traumatic divorce.
She had herself firmly back together. Breathing normally.
Until she realized with absolute certainty that this wasn’t just any hot dad wandering through the airport terminal.
It was the hot dad she was waiting for.
Jackson Reid.
He was nothing like what she’d expected. She felt silly suddenly that she’d had an expectation at all. But a single dad with a tiny baby made her think of someone soft, and the man she’d corresponded with online had seemed...maybe even sweet.
Checking out her boss in the first ten seconds of meeting him was kind of a bad start. But then, she supposed she could forgive herself that. She’d been with Darren for five years, and during that time, it had never even occurred to her to check another man out. Finding herself unattached again was presenting some interesting side effects.
That was all this was. That part of herself naturally inclined toward seeking attachment reminding her that she currently didn’t have one. And all she had to do was remind that part that she didn’t want one. She squared her shoulders and crossed the space, standing closer to the baggage carousel, but also a little bit nearer to Jackson.
Who was apparently a hard-bodied cowboy.
She waited for him to see her. Waited for him to close that remaining distance. But he didn’t. Instead, he continued to scan the crowd, such as it was, his eyes skipping over her easily. She didn’t know how to feel about that. Particularly since her eyes had gone immediately to him, and had had a nearly impossible time leaving.
She cleared her throat and looked back at the baggage carousel. Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe she was still waiting for Jackson Reid. Maybe it was some other man all by himself with a little baby. Maybe this man was waiting for his wife.
A wife who would no doubt be pretty and petite and as striking as he was.