by Maisey Yates
Every man who’d been on the helicopter had died.
Money didn’t bring back people you lost.
It in fact seemed like a laughable pursuit when you were grieving a husband. But once she’d had it she’d realized why it mattered. Because she hadn’t been able to do anything beyond the bare minimum to keep herself alive. And she was having a baby.
It was how she’d bought this house.
And all the furniture in it. Everything that had made the place a home that she and Amelia could inhabit. And even when it had been difficult to care about such a thing, part of her had known that she had to.
And it had been Caleb, of course, who had assembled it all. Who had helped with everything.
And now she was being a jerk about something that he’d achieved. After all he’d done for her.
Well, the little scolding session she gave herself was nice, but she still felt unhappy. But that didn’t mean she had to act unhappy. She had ample experience with pretending to be more okay than she was. She should be able to do it now.
“I’m happy for you,” she said. “Really. I’m sorry. We can go get furniture that’s difficult to assemble, and I’ll help you put it together.”
“Meaning?”
“I’ll...offer you a drink while you put it together?”
“Right.” He nodded. “Sounds about right. Hey, don’t worry about it, Ellie. Things are going to be fine.”
There was so much she wanted to say to him, but she didn’t know how to articulate it. Mostly because she couldn’t quite explain the discomfort happening in her own chest. So instead, she just watched him get into his truck, and didn’t even scold him when he stole another cookie.
She tried to figure out exactly what the feeling was as she watched his truck disappear down her driveway. Then she turned and walked to her porch, sitting down on the bottom step.
“What is wrong with me?”
And suddenly, it hit her.
He was moving on, and she hadn’t.
It was different, because of course, he had been Clint’s best friend. She’d been Clint’s wife. So Caleb moving on from the whole situation was easier. More expected.
But she wished... Well, she wished for a whole lot of things.
Things that were coming up more and more often. Her best female friend at the moment was Vanessa Logan. Vanessa was pregnant, getting ready to have a baby with her husband, Jacob, a man who loved her so much that just looking at the two of them together made Ellie’s whole body hurt.
She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to fall in love. She didn’t want a relationship. But she wanted...
It would be nice to be kissed under the mistletoe, maybe. To have something to wear a dress to. To go dancing in that dress.
And suddenly, those thoughts she had in the chicken coop, about those moments that felt out of her life, that felt like an escape, crystallized.
That was what she wanted. Just some moments. To feel like something other than a tired single mother, or a sad, grieving widow.
A moment to feel like a woman.
Maybe she needed to make some changes, too.
Maybe, instead of dreading Christmas, she needed to get started on her wish list.
Copyright © 2019 by Maisey Yates
ISBN-13: 9781488054341
Rancher’s Wild Secret & Hold Me, Cowboy
Copyright © 2019 by Harlequin Books S.A.
Rancher’s Wild Secret
Copyright © 2019 by Maisey Yates
Hold Me, Cowboy
Copyright © 2016 by Maisey Yates
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