Wouldn’t be anywhere.
“Sometimes, there are,” he told her quietly.
“Like what?” she challenged.
He spelled it out for her. “Like I can guarantee that I’m going to feel the same way about you tomorrow that I do now and that I will the day after that and the day after that—to the nth degree,” he said.
“What way?” she asked, feeling shaky inside. She was cornering him and she knew it. But she already knew that Cody wasn’t the kind of man who lied and, if she pressed him for an answer, he would give her an honest one. She was counting on it and hoping against hope that it would be enough to break through her wall of fear and convince her.
“I love you,” he told her quietly. “I’m not Jack,” he insisted. “Get that through your head. I’m not going anywhere. Ever.”
I love you.
She stared at him. She’d heard the words before. Heard them and clung to them and they had turned out to be as binding as soap bubbles. Jack had told her he loved her and then took off soon after that without a backward glance.
“You don’t mean that,” she said flatly.
Cody measured his words carefully. “No disrespect, Devon, but you don’t have any right to tell me what I mean or don’t mean. If I say I love you, then that’s what I mean.” A little more fiercely, he repeated, “I love you.”
“Why?” she asked. “Why do you love me?”
Rather than get annoyed with her for pressing him, he did his best to make her understand. “For more reasons than you can possibly imagine. Looking back, I probably fell in love with you the first moment I laid eyes on you.”
As she recalled it, she had her legs spread out and she was screaming, not to mention that she’d looked like a mess. “Not my finest moment.”
“Oh, but it was,” he said. And then he grinned. “And I want to love you through every moment for the rest of my life.”
She shook her head, unable to accept that. “You just feel sorry for me.”
“No,” he corrected, “I feel sorry for me because you’re giving me such a hard time over this.” He took hold of her shoulders to keep her in place and to force her to look at him as he spoke. “Now, you may not like hearing it and I really can’t help that, but I love you.” He took a breath and went for broke. “And I’d like to marry you.”
Stunned, her mouth dropped open. “No,” she whispered in disbelief.
Cody took it as a rejection, but he tried not to let it slice him up inside.
“Not the answer I wanted to hear, but there’s no hurry. You can take your time, think it over, work it out.” He emphasized, “Like I said, there’s no hurry. Because I’ll still be here when you finally realize that maybe marrying me isn’t such a bad thing. Bottom line is I am not going anywhere.”
She realized that she’d stopped breathing and took in a deep one now before asking, “You’re serious?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cole about to enter the kitchen and he waved his brother back. Cole took the hint and disappeared.
Facing Devon, Cody’s expression was the soul of solemnity. “I’ve never been more serious in my entire life.”
Devon never took her eyes off him. “You’re not just saying this to make me feel better?” Devon asked.
“No,” Cody corrected. “I’m saying this to make me feel better.”
As if she believed that. “Why would you want to marry me?” she challenged, silently demanding that he somehow convince her.
Maybe he needed to enumerate the reasons for her, at least to some extent. He began with the most obvious. “Because you’re beautiful. I look at you and my heart all but stops. Because you’re a good person. You could have taken advantage of all of us—we would have gladly let you—but you didn’t. And maybe most of all because I need you to need me.”
The reasons were all valid, but somehow, she just couldn’t see how they applied to her. She didn’t feel worthy of that sort of sentiment or capable of generating it in someone else.
“Is that all?” she asked quietly.
“No, that’s just the beginning,” Cody answered. “But I promise that if and when you do decide to marry me, I’ll make sure that you never live to regret it, not even for a single moment.”
“That’s a tall order,” Devon told him, struggling really hard not to smile.
“In case you haven’t noticed, I live up to all my promises,” he told her with a touch of pride. “Just ask around.”
She didn’t have to. She knew the kind of man he was. He was offering her the world on a platter. It didn’t seem fair to him. “I don’t have anything to give you,” she told him.
“Now, there you’re wrong,” Cody contradicted. “You have yourself to give and I couldn’t ask for a more precious gift,” he told her honestly. “And don’t worry,” he quickly told her, “I’m not going to ask you for an answer yet. I told you you could take your time and you can. Take as long as you want—as long as, eventually, you come up with the right answer, the one I need to hear.” He added, “No pressure.”
“Yes,” Devon said.
“Yes, we have an understanding?” he asked, not quite sure what she was telling him.
“Yes,” Devon repeated. Her eyes had locked with his and remained that way.
“Yes to the understanding?” he asked again uncertainly. She still wasn’t making herself clear and he refused to jump the gun in case he was wrong. Because being wrong would hurt too much.
“Yes to the question,” she told him.
“Which question?” he asked.
The corners of her mouth began to curve. “The only question that counts.”
He looked at her apprehensively, still afraid that he was grasping at the one thing he wanted to hear. But he knew that he couldn’t just walk away from this without knowing, without being positive.
“This question—Devon, will you marry me?” he asked.
Her eyes crinkled as she threw her arms around his neck and brought her mouth up to his.
“Yes,” she repeated with feeling and then, in case they were still bogged down in rhetoric, she made herself perfectly clear by saying, “Yes, Cody, I will marry you.”
His heart all but leaped out of his chest as he asked for one final confirmation. “You’re sure?”
Her eyes were laughing as she said, “I’m sure.”
“I’m not pressuring you?” he asked her.
“No, you’re not pressuring me.” Her eyes were smiling now. “You are, however, driving me crazy.”
“Well, that’s only fair,” he told her as his arms around her tightened. “Because you’re doing the same to me.”
She didn’t want to talk. More than anything, she needed him to kiss her, to finally seal this bargain they had struck up. “Shut up and kiss me.”
He pulled her even closer as he brought his mouth within a hair’s breadth of hers. “Oh, with more pleasure than you can possibly imagine.”
“Does this mean someone else is making dinner?” she asked teasingly.
There was mischief in his eyes as he asked, “What do you think?”
“I don’t want to think,” she told him. “I just want to feel.”
“That can be arranged,” he promised her.
“Show me,” she whispered.
He did.
And Layla slept through it all.
Both her mother and her father-to-be took that as a good omen.
Epilogue
Devon looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror in the church’s antechamber. She hardly recognized the person in the wedding gown looking back at her. That person was positively glowing.
She put her hand over her stomach, willing the butterflies away.
They stayed put.
“Maybe we should have eloped,” she said, addressing the other reflection she saw in the mirror.
Cassidy, resplendent in a blue maid-of-honor dress, was fussing with the bottom of Devon’s wedding dress, making certain that the veil’s train wasn’t trapped beneath it.
“Don’t you even dare think about it,” Cassidy warned. “This is the first McCullough wedding and there’s a church full of people out there, not to mention your little fifth-graders, who would be heartbroken if you suddenly turned tail and became Forever’s version of the runaway bride,” she admonished.
“Runaway brides leave grooms at the altar,” Devon pointed out. “I don’t want to leave Cody at the altar. I just don’t want everyone watching me show up to marry him.”
“Too late,” Cassidy said. She dropped the train and stood back for a moment to admire her handiwork. “You’re good to go,” she pronounced happily.
Cassidy glanced over to the corner where Layla was sitting up in a colorfully decorated car seat. She was wearing an infant’s version of Cassidy’s dress. “Too bad she’s too little to be your flower girl, but I guess you can’t have everything.”
“You’re wrong, there,” Devon corrected her. “I do have everything.” She smiled at Cassidy. “I’m even getting the sister I always wanted.”
Cassidy laughed. “Just try getting rid of me.” There was a knock on the door and Cassidy exchanged glances with the bride. “I didn’t think that Connor was coming for you for another ten minutes.” Because her father had long since passed away, Devon had asked Connor to give her away. “He’s probably early to make sure you’re not changing your mind.”
Devon shook her head. “Not a chance.”
Cassidy opened the door. Then she tried to close it again.
“You’re not supposed to see the bride before the wedding, Cody,” she admonished. “Don’t you know anything? It’s supposed to be bad luck.”
Cody stuck his foot in to block his sister from shutting the door. “I just want to give her something,” he told Cassidy. “I thought she would want to wear it during the ceremony.”
“Let him in, Cassidy,” Devon said.
“It’s against tradition,” Cassidy insisted.
“So’s everything that’s happened in my life so far,” Devon told her.
She felt that if Cody wanted to see her right before the ceremony, it had to be about something important. Telling him he couldn’t because of some ancient superstition wouldn’t be starting out their marriage on the right foot.
Cassidy frowned. “Okay, but this is against my better judgment,” she said just before she opened the door farther. “Okay, buster, what’s so important it can’t wait?” she demanded of her brother.
“I’d like a minute alone with my fiancée if you don’t mind,” Cody said, amused that his sister had turned into a guard dog in a bridesmaid dress.
Cassidy picked up Layla. “Let’s get you situated out there, Princess.” Since Cassidy and her brothers were all in the wedding party, Miss Joan had volunteered to hold the baby for the duration of the ceremony. “Make it quick,” she told Cody. “Connor’s due in less than ten minutes.”
“This won’t take long,” Cody said. As Cassidy left, he turned to face Devon and really looked at her. She took his breath away. “I didn’t think you could be any more beautiful than you already were, but I was wrong.”
“Is that what you came to say?” Devon asked. She was no longer afraid that he was going to call the wedding off at the last minute, but, for the life of her, she couldn’t come up with a reason for Cody showing up like this just before the ceremony.
“No,” he replied. “I came to give you this. I thought you might want it.”
“This” was what he was holding in his hand. He held it up in front of her before he drew back his fingers. There in the palm of his hand was a necklace and a pair of earrings.
Her necklace and earrings. She would have known them anywhere.
Her eyes widened as she stared first at the items and then at him. “Where did you get these?”
“Then they are yours?” He was fairly certain that they were, but he wanted her to confirm it.
“Yes!” she cried, taking both from him and looking at them in wonder. She never thought she’d see the necklace and earrings again. “Where—? How—?”
“They were in a pawnshop thirty miles outside of Houston.” It had taken him all this time to locate the items, circulating Jack’s photo to all the pawnshops between Forever and Houston. Jack was nowhere to be found, but at least the jewelry was. He felt extremely triumphant about locating it, especially when he saw the look in Devon’s eyes. It was priceless. “I thought you might want to wear them.”
There were tears in her eyes as she put the earrings on. Then, turning her back to Cody, she gave him the necklace so that he could fasten the gold clasp for her. She held very still, almost afraid to breathe. She was that happy.
“I don’t know how to thank you!”
Finished, Cody turned her slowly around to face him. “Don’t worry, we have the rest of our lives together to work on that.”
The wedding march was starting. In the next moment, Connor was in the doorway. He rapped once.
“Time,” he declared, giving his younger brother a piercing look.
Cody grinned, withdrawing. “It sure is,” he agreed. “See you at the altar,” he told Devon just before he hurried away.
Connor shook his head as he offered Devon his arm. “Well, at least you know what you’re getting into,” he said to her.
Devon could only beam as she replied, love in every word, “I certainly do.”
* * * * *
Keep reading from an excerpt from RESCUING THE COWBOY by Cathy McDavid.
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Rescuing the Cowboy
by Cathy McDavid
Chapter One
Shopping in a small-town market shouldn’t be a nightmare. Four thousand square feet. Three aisles crammed with merchandise. A modest dairy and meat department. Fresh produce on Wednesdays: be sure and get there early before it’s all gone. A completely uneventful and uninteresting excursion for most people.
But not for
Summer Goodwyn. Yet, what choice did she have? She’d promised to bring homemade oatmeal cookies—without raisins—to the party later today at Dos Estrellas Ranch. After a thorough search of her pantry had netted only half the necessary ingredients, a trip to the market couldn’t be avoided.
Oatmeal without raisins was the only kind of cookies her son, Teddy, ate. If she offered him something else, he might have a meltdown, and that would ruin the party.
She glanced down at him, sitting in the shopping cart basket, shoulders hunched. His rhythmic back and forth motion could be a good thing. He often rocked for hours to soothe himself. Or it could be a warning sign of things to come.
“I was thinking you might want to wear your new blue shirt today.” Blue was his favorite color.
Teddy didn’t answer. Rather, he stared at nothing in particular, his eyes barely visible beneath an unruly fringe of reddish-blond hair. Teddy hated going to the barber shop, although the elderly gentleman who cut his hair was very understanding.
Maybe she should call and beg off the party. On second thought, that wasn’t an option. The Dempseys were good to Summer. Really good. Without them, there’d be no equine therapy program for Teddy and other children like him. Plus, the party was special: a welcome to Mustang Valley for Josh and Cole’s cousin who’d arrived a few days ago. The brothers were excited to see their cousin again and hoped he’d stay, offering him a job at the ranch.
The party was also a celebration of sorts for the entire family. After months and months of financial and emotional struggle in the wake of former patriarch August Dempsey’s death, the ranch was finally on the road to recovery. Not to mention Cole and Violet’s recent elopement and Josh and Cara’s engagement. Gabe and Reese were likely headed for the altar as well, though no formal announcement had yet been made.
For those reasons and more, Summer felt obligated to attend. She briefly considered leaving Teddy at home with his regular sitter. The party was scheduled to start at six—she could leave by eight, no problem. But the Dempsey brothers, along with Gabe’s mother, Raquel, the family’s well-loved matriarch, had insisted Summer bring Teddy. Besides, Josh’s two children were also going to be there.
COWBOY AND THE BABY, THE Page 17