by Maisey Yates
“It’s just... I’m thinking,” she said. “I’m just thinking about our life.”
“And it makes you sad?” Grace asked.
“No,” Lauren protested. “I’m happy. I’m happy that we’re here.”
“I’m happy we’re here,” Ava said. “At least, I think I will be.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Well, it was how you’ve been. In this house. What about Calder?”
Lauren blew out a harsh breath. “Why are you fixating on him?”
“You like him,” Ava said.
“It doesn’t matter if I like him,” Lauren said. “I don’t have time for that kind of thing. Not right now.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” she said.
“Because why?”
“Ava Marie,” Lauren said. “It’s not a discussion. I don’t have time to date the man. I’m not going to... Marry him. It’s ridiculous.”
“I didn’t say anything about marrying him.”
“Well... I’m not going to.”
“Did he ask you to marry him?” Ava asked. Grace was watching the exchange with an open mouth.
“He... It doesn’t matter. I can’t... How am I supposed to know that I’m making the right choice?”
“You always tell us to follow our heart,” Grace said.
Well, her heart had been stupid, and how did she tell her girls that? Her heart didn’t deserve...
Suddenly, it all hit her with more clarity than she cared for.
Her heart didn’t deserve to be happy again. It had wasted its one chance.
She had broken her parents’ hearts and run off with a man. She had been wrong about him. She had made her bed and lain in it determinedly. The consequence for her actions. She hadn’t let him go to be with a woman who would be happier with him. She hadn’t let herself go because she was so intent on punishing them both.
Because she couldn’t let go.
And she was doing the same thing now. Holding on while pretending to let go. A new surrounding wasn’t going to change her heart. She had to...
She had to let it go. Because as long as her heart was still staking its claim in the past, as long as it was still clinging to her mistakes, obsessing over right and wrong and what she deserved, she was never going to get anywhere.
And sitting there with her daughters staring at her asking her directly why she wouldn’t let herself be happy, there was just no good answer to give.
All that self-sacrifice, all that trying to make up for bad decisions... It didn’t make her better.
“Sometimes,” she said, tears making her voice thick, “I think grown-ups forget the simple things that we tell our kids. And sometimes I think those simple things are the truest things. You’re right, Grace. I would tell you to follow your heart. I’ve been scared of mine.”
“Why?” Grace asked.
A tear slid down Lauren’s cheek. “Because I think I love him. And because I’m afraid of getting hurt.”
“Chloe said that when you fall off a horse you have to get back on it again. Maybe Calder is like a horse,” Grace said.
Lauren slapped her hand over her mouth and tried not to laugh through her tears.
“Why is that funny?” Grace asked.
Ava looked slightly confused, but had that look on her face that said she suspected she understood why, even if the details were fuzzy, and was certain she didn’t want to know more.
“Never mind,” Lauren said. “You know, I’m supposed to be raising you and teaching you things. But, I think you teach me more every day.”
“You teach us a lot,” Ava said. “Even when I wish you wouldn’t.”
Lauren pulled her daughter in for a hug. “I think that’s the best compliment you can give me.”
“So, are you going to tell him that you love him?”
She released her hold on Ava, looking down at her pancakes. “I guess that would be the brave thing to do, wouldn’t it?”
“I think so,” her daughter said, her tone grave.
“You’re really okay with it?” Lauren asked.
“It will be different,” Ava said. “Maybe weird. But... This is already really different. So, maybe it’s the best time.”
Lauren laughed. “I guess I can’t argue with the logic. Since I don’t have any of my own.”
“Then, I guess you need to go tell him.”
“Can I finish my pancakes first?”
“That sounds reasonable,” Ava said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CALDER HAD NEVER worked so hard chopping wood in his life. But, he wanted to destroy something, make it match his insides, so chopping wood seemed as good of an option as any.
“That bad, huh?” Tanner was there, looking him over like a smug son of a bitch.
“Don’t you have somewhere better to be? I mean, honestly, you basically run the whole ranch, and I see you standing around snooping in my business more often than not.”
“I don’t have anywhere to be.”
“I could use some help,” Chloe said, coming out of the barn, with a horse on a lead. “There are stalls to muck,” she said pointedly.
“And that’s your job,” Tanner said.
“Well, if you don’t have anything to do, you could help me do it.”
“As it happens,” Tanner said, “I have a date.”
Chloe’s whole face turned red, and she turned on her heel, concealing her expression as quickly as possible. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll do it myself.”
Calder watched Chloe leave, and he thought about asking Tanner if he realized just how messed up the situation with her was getting. It would derail the train Tanner had coming for him, that was for sure.
But he didn’t want to make things tough for Chloe either.
“What the hell is up with you?” Tanner asked.
“I got dumped,” he said. “I would have thought that was pretty obvious.”
“Did you really want to take all that on?”
“Yeah,” Calder said. “I really did. I love her. It didn’t seem like a lot. It didn’t seem like a burden. It just seemed... Right.”
“Teenagers? A widow? That just seems like... A lot.”
“Yeah, well, I always figured if I ever fell in love it was going to be easy. It was going to be nice. More like what Dad found with Chloe’s mom. Not what he had with our mom. Not what he had with any of those other women he married. But this isn’t like any of that. I’d kill someone for her. For those girls. I’m obsessed with her. I don’t want anything but her. I want the hard stuff and the easy stuff. I want... Everything. And I didn’t know feelings like that existed.”
“I’d rather never have them.”
Chloe appeared again, right when Tanner said that, her eyes looking determinedly anywhere but at Tanner.
“What?” she asked.
“Do you agree with him?” Calder asked, because he was in a mean mood. “No love?”
She lifted a shoulder. “If I did fall in love, it wouldn’t be with a hardheaded rancher.”
Maybe Chloe wasn’t as much of a lost cause as he’d imagined.
Calder smiled, but Tanner’s face remained blank. “Good choice.”
He saw a car off in the distance, and when it drew closer, he recognized it.
His heart jumped up in his chest. Like he was a thirteen-year-old boy about to catch a glimpse of his crush.
Hell, when he had been a thirteen-year-old boy, the same woman had been his crush.
“Excuse me,” he said, abandoning his ax and his brother and stepsister, jogging toward the house as fast as he could. By the time he got there, she was just pulling her car to a stop.
Lauren.
“What are you doing here?” he asked as she got out.
&
nbsp; When she looked up at him, her eyes were full of tears, her expression pleading. “I’m here for everything,” she said. “Because... That’s what you said I had to take. And that’s what I... It’s what I want. I want everything, Calder. Everything.”
“What changed?”
“Me. You’re right. That’s what needed to change. You are right that I—” she cleared her throat “—that I was punishing myself. I thought that I was just protecting myself, but it’s more than that. It’s deeper than that. I made a mistake, marrying Robert. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe life isn’t that simple, and I’m trying to make it too simple. I almost melted my brain last night trying to figure out... If he was wrong for me and you were right, then was anyone the one? And was any of what happened with him supposed to happen? Was all of that a life I wasn’t supposed to live?” She shook her head, a tear falling down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away.
“And then I just realized that it was that road that led me here. That marriage. It led me to this house, with my daughters. And it brought me to this point, as this woman.” She cleared her throat. “I had a talk with Savannah the night of the birthday party. She said something that I didn’t think about enough until last night. I have to trust that the woman I am now is different enough that I’m not repeating the same mistakes. But more than that, the woman I am now is the woman who was meant to love you. Who was meant to be loved by you. I’ll never know if the woman I was would have been right for you. But this woman, this woman I am right now... She is. She wants you. I want you. I love you. And I have to stop living my life as a monument to my mistakes. And start being grateful for where my choices brought me. Because right now, with you, with Ava and Grace and the house, I’m happy. I’m whole.”
“Lauren, your past matters to me. Because everything that built you matters to me. Everything you’ve been through, your pain, it matters to me. But what matters to me even more is your present. What matters even more is your future. Our future. It’s one we can build together. You don’t have to solve those questions by yourself. It doesn’t have to be simple. Not if we’re not alone.”
On a sob, she launched herself toward him, and his own heart squeezed in response. Dipped in his chest.
He held her. Just held her. And then she whispered in his ear. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
Over and over and over.
Not a curse. A promise.
A promise for the both of them. A promise for the future. A promise for better.
“I love you, too,” he said, brushing her hair out of her eyes.
“Is it too late for me to say yes?”
“It’s not too late for you to say anything. But yes to what specifically?”
“To the proposal. I want to be your wife.”
“That works out pretty well, then, because I want to be your husband.”
She held on to him tightly. “Good,” she said. “Because I wasn’t going to let you spend the night with the girls there unless we had a commitment.”
He laughed. “Is that the only reason that you said you’d marry me?”
“It’s not the only reason. But, it’s a damn compelling one, you have to admit.”
“It is.”
“How will that work? You live here, right? On the ranch?”
He nodded. “I do. But it’s just a small cabin. And I like your place just fine.”
“Well, you helped build it.”
“We built it together.”
Lauren smiled, and it made his heart feel full to bursting. “I have a feeling it’s just the first of many things we’ll build together.”
“You can count on it,” he said. “Whatever we do, we’re partners.”
“It’ll never be one-sided with us.”
He shook his head. “No. It’s you and me. Always.”
Lauren Bishop had been his ultimate fantasy when he was a boy. But she was better than a fantasy now, she was real.
And he wasn’t a boy anymore. He was a man, and he was going to spend the rest of his life being the man she needed.
He’d always known that she was beautiful, but he’d never dreamed she would become his happily-ever-after.
But that’s exactly what she was.
EPILOGUE
MUCH LATER, when Lauren and Calder were sitting together on the back porch, Calder pressed a kiss to her hand.
“It just occurred to me,” he said. “I should probably ask permission before I marry you.”
“I’ve been married before,” she said. “And I’m thirty-five. You don’t need to ask my father’s permission.”
He shook his head. “It’s not your father I want to ask.”
* * *
WHEN CALDER APPROACHED Ava and Grace, cowboy hat in hand, to ask them if he could marry their mother, Lauren didn’t think she would ever stop crying.
They gave their permission, instantly and immediately. And she could tell that Calder was resisting offering a hug to both girls, probably waiting until they knew each other better. Another thing she appreciated about him. He never tried to force a relationship with them before they were ready.
And that was a trend that continued over the next several months. As they got settled in Gold Valley, and they got their lives settled with Calder in it.
It was Grace who called him Dad first.
One evening, while they were putting dishes away, two months after the wedding.
“Would you hand me that plate, Dad?”
Calder had stopped, frozen in the spot, and then he had handed it to her.
Then, he had pulled her in for a real hug. A long one.
And Lauren had been certain she’d seen tears in her husband’s eyes.
He was a man who didn’t take the gift of fatherhood for granted. Not at all. He didn’t just keep pictures of the girls and show them around. He actually was around.
With Ava, things were slower. But one day when they were picking her up from school, Lauren heard her talking to her friends about upcoming slumber party plans.
“My dad’s family has a ranch,” she said. “My aunt Chloe can take us out riding, she said. And we can camp out in the barn.”
Lauren looked back at Calder, whose face looked hard like granite. “Did you hear that?” she asked.
He nodded, his throat working. “I did.”
“Do you think you made the right choice? Going all in with us?”
He slung his arm around her shoulder and pulled her in for a kiss. “I’ve never once regretted it. I went all in with you, but the three of you have gone all in with me. And that’s a gift that I’ll never be able to repay.”
She looked up at him, her heart pounding. Because she had another little surprise for him. “Well, you’re about to get in deeper, Calder Reid. Because you’re going to be a father.”
He froze, right there in the school parking lot, his eyes full of shock. He looked down at her stomach, then back up at her. And then he looked over at Ava and Grace, where they were talking to their group of friends.
Then he looked back at Lauren. “You made me a father already,” he said. “And I’m happy to be one again.”
Lauren threw her arms around her husband’s neck.
“None of this was in my planner,” she said, rising up on her toes for a kiss.
“Then it wasn’t a very good planner.”
“I guess not. Because this is a very good life.”
* * * * *
From reader-beloved and New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates comes the sizzling new Gold Valley Western romance series:
Smooth-Talking Cowboy
Untamed Cowboy
Good Time Cowboy
A Tall, Dark Cowboy Christmas
Order your copies today!
“Fans of Robyn Carr and RaeAnne Thayne will enjoy
her small-town romance.”
—Booklist
www.MaiseyYates.com
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ISBN-13: 9781488034169
Hard Riding Cowboy
Copyright © 2018 by Maisey Yates
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