The Maverick & the Manhattanite (Montana Mavericks: Rust Creek Cowboys)

by Banks, Leanne

  Gage ran into Will as he headed out the door. “Hey, can you cover for me this morning?”

  “Sure,” Will said and looked at him with curiousity. “Problem?”

  “I’m going to try to fix one before it’s too late,” Gage said.

  Will gave a slow nod. “Is this about Lissa?”

  “Yeah,” Gage said.

  “Good luck,” Will said. “If I can’t have her, then you’re the next best thing.”

  Too focused to laugh, he headed out the door. He made it to his friend’s house and bought the purchase of a lifetime for a man: a diamond ring. After all Gage had put Lissa though, he figured he was going to have to provide physical proof of his feelings for her.

  As soon as he got back in his car, his cell rang. It was Will. “What’s up?” Gage asked.

  “I thought I should let you know that Lissa left early this morning. Melba Strickland took her to the airport. Lissa’s flight is this morning.”

  Gage’s stomach sank. “Do you know if she’s gone?”

  “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. You’d better head straight to Livingston,” Will said.

  “I’m on my way,” Gage said, wondering if he had waited too late and his chance had passed.

  * * *

  At check-in, Lissa was told that her flight was running over an hour late, which only added to her bad mood. She didn’t want to be leaving. Now the process was being dragged out even further. Lissa felt as if she were being tortured.

  Melba, sweet as always, must have sensed how upset Lissa was and offered to wait with her since there was no need for Lissa to go through security yet. “We can have a cup of coffee or tea,” Melba said.

  “I don’t want to inconvenience you,” Lissa said.

  “It’s no problem,” Melba said. “I’m happy to spend some time with you.”

  Lissa sipped a cup of tea while Melba drank coffee. With each passing moment, Lissa couldn’t stop her thoughts of Gage.

  She sipped her tea and tapped her foot, but the tea didn’t calm her and her foot-tapping did nothing to relieve her of her nervous energy. “You know, Gage said that he and I were destined for failure,” she finally said, unable to keep quiet any longer.

  “Oh, really,” Melba said. “I wonder why he said that.”

  “He said I was in love with a fantasy man. That I didn’t love him, the real him,” she said, still tapping her foot.

  “That doesn’t make much sense,” Melba said. “You’re a grown woman. You should know your mind. It’s not as if you’re a little girl.”

  “Exactly,” Lissa said. “I’m a grown woman. He kept telling me something was going to go wrong one day and I was going to wake up and be totally disillusioned with him.”

  “Well, that could happen to any couple,” Melba said. “You just have to make the decision you’re going to stick together and work it out. I’ve had to do that with my husband and I’ve been married to him for over fifty years.”

  Lissa nodded, still irritated with how Gage had acted toward her the last time they’d talked. She didn’t know when she would stop being irritated at him. “You know, now that I think about it, it was like Gage was asking for some kind of guarantee that nothing would ever go wrong between us. As much as I lo—” She broke off and cleared her throat. “As much as I had strong feelings for him, how could we never have an occasion when something would go wrong? It’s not possible,” she said, feeling herself get more worked up. “That is a fantasy. That’s an even bigger fantasy. That you’ll never have problems?” she scoffed.

  Melba took another sip of her coffee. “Very true. Life is full of troubles. It’s how you face them that counts.”

  “You know what?” she said. “I think Gage was scared.”

  “Really?” Melba said. “Well, you know you’re a pretty girl. I wonder if he thought he couldn’t keep you interested.”

  Unable to sit still another moment, Lissa stood. “That’s it! That’s it,” she said. “He let me go because he was afraid of losing me. How ridiculous is that?”

  Melba shook her head. “Men. Will they ever make sense?”

  “Probably not,” Lissa said. “But I’m not letting him get away with this. I’m going to confront him with the truth to his face.”

  Melba stared at her. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m cancelling my flight and I’m going to tell Gage Christensen that he can’t fool me. I have him figured out from head to toe. I’m not backing down this time,” she said and headed for the counter.

  Midway through her conversation with the airline agent, she heard her name being called. By Gage.

  “Lissa, Lissa, stop. You can’t get on that plane,” he yelled as he ran across the airport lobby.

  Lissa saw him running toward her and felt as if she were having an out-of-body experience. She was so stunned she couldn’t speak.

  “You can’t leave,” he said as he got closer to her. “You’ll regret it,” he promised. “If not now, then soon. But you will regret it,” he said.

  The experience reminded her of something out of a movie. A crazy combination of nerves and excitement danced inside her. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. A laugh bubbled from her throat and she was thankful she wasn’t crying.

  Gage glanced around and seemed to notice they were drawing a crowd. Based on his expression, he didn’t care. He dropped to his knee in front of everyone.

  Lissa gasped in surprise.

  “I need to apologize for being such an ass,” he said. “I know I hurt you and I’m sorry. I never, ever want to hurt you. You’re too important to me,” he said and took a deep breath. “I love you, Lissa Roarke. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I don’t care if I have to follow you all the way to New York City. I’m never letting you go again.”

  Lissa could hardly believe her ears. She’d dreamed of Gage saying these things to her. She was almost afraid to believe it was true.

  At that moment, he pulled a jeweler’s box out of his pocket and opened it to display a diamond ring.

  Her heart felt as if it had stopped in her chest. She shook her head.

  His face fell. “You’re saying no?”

  “No,” she said. “I mean...I’m just so surprised. How did this sudden turnaround happen?” she asked.

  “It wasn’t really sudden,” he told her. “I think I’ve been in love with you since you first walked into my office. I just didn’t trust that a sophisticated woman like you could really find happiness with a Rust Creek cowboy like me. But I read your essay this morning and I saw that you really do understand the town—and me.” He shook his head. “Maybe I’m the one who was stereotyping you.”

  “Ya think?” she asked, still smarting from how much she’d suffered this past week. He had put her through hell. But the look of desperation on his face made her soften.

  “Come on, sweet Lissa. Give this man a break.”

  She took a deep breath. “I think you’d better get up off that floor and kiss me,” she said.

  In a flash, he rose from his feet and pulled her into his arms and kissed her until her head was spinning.

  She was so caught up in feeling Gage in her arms that she barely noticed the applause from the spectators.

  Gage pulled back, his gaze latched on to hers. “Wait. Does that mean yes?”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” she said. “I’d already cancelled my flight. I just couldn’t give you up without a fight.”

  “The only fighting I’m going to do is for us, not against us,” he promised. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her out of the terminal. The crowd cheered behind them.

  Epilogue

  Gage pulled into the driveway and Lissa felt an overwhelming sense of relief. “I feel like I’m coming home,
” she said when he stopped his SUV.

  Gage held her jaw gently with his hand and kissed her. “That’s the way I always want you to feel. Always,” he said.

  She unlocked the door.

  “Wait just a minute, there, city girl,” he said and got out of the car and rounded to her side in a quick blur. He picked her up and carried her up the stairs to his house.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. “You’ve done this before. You don’t have to do it again.”

  “Honey, if it makes you happy, I’ll be doing it until I can’t walk. I just want to keep you happy,” he said.

  Lissa saw that he still wasn’t sure of her. “You need to know that you can count on me. I’m not going to leave you even when things get rough. And they will because that’s the way life is, full of ups and downs.”

  “It’s just hard for me to believe that you could give up everything in New York for me,” he said and guided her into the house.

  “You still don’t get it,” she said. “You are the man I always wanted but never thought existed. I love you for who you are to everyone. Not just for how you act with me,” she said. She stopped in the hallway. “I love you for who you are when no one is around because you’re the best man I’ve ever met. And Gage, I know you’re not perfect. You’ve acted like a jerk to me on more than one occasion.”

  He blinked. “Me? A jerk?”

  She gave him a playful punch. “Yes, you,” she said, laughing. “You’ve admitted it to me and apologized. That’s one more reason for me to love you. It takes a wonderful man to admit when he’s wrong.”

  “My only excuse is that falling for you made me crazy. I don’t ever want to lose you or disappoint you,” he said.

  “You’re stuck with me,” she said. “In good and bad times. But you may need to give me some winter driving lessons,” she said.

  “Oh, hell. You’re gonna scare me to death if you go out on slippery roads,” he said and led her upstairs.

  “Then you need to teach me very thoroughly,” she said.

  “You can be sure I will,” he said and started to undress her next to his bed. “I kept dreaming I could smell your perfume,” he told her. “I thought I was going nuts. I missed you so much.”

  “I missed you, too,” she said. “I don’t want to ever be apart from you, Gage.”

  “I’ll do my best to make that happen,” he said and gently put her down on the bed. “I love you and I’m gonna make sure you never forget it.”

  He kissed her lips then caressed her body and made love to her for the whole afternoon. Lissa was so full of him and his love that she lost track of time. Finally, they came up for air.

  A bit of reality slipped in. “I’m going to have to find a job,” she said.

  “I can support you,” he said. “I don’t want you to worry about that right now. You’ll have enough of an adjustment to make getting through a Montana winter and becoming my wife.”

  His wife. The words made her dizzy. “I can’t wait for it all. You and I are going to have a wonderful life, Gage.”

  “Honey, you’ve already made me the happiest man in the world. I can’t imagine being any happier.”

  “Then I’ll just have to try a little harder, won’t I?” she said, snuggling against him.

  “Well, you are a high achiever,” he said with a wink. “I think I’d better kiss you again,” he said.

  “I think you’d better,” she said, and knew she had found her true man, and her true home.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from The One Who Changed Everything by Lilian Darcy.

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  Chapter One

  Mary Jane was laughing. You could hear it thirty yards away, through a closed door and a screen of bushes, and it was a glorious sound on a mild mid-October Monday beside a mountain lake.

  Daisy Cherry came up the steps and out of the delicious fresh air into the resort office and found her sister with shaking shoulders and tears running down her cheeks, a heap of old photo albums in a litter around her, along with piles of shipping boxes, too. “Hey, what’s so funny?”

  Mary Jane rocked back on her heels, flattened a hand over her heart and gasped for breath. “Dad’s mustache, Mom’s wedding hat. Their clothes. Her swimsuit. I’m sorry, it’s not that funny. I don’t know why I’m—”

  “No, it’s great,” Daisy cut in with conviction.

  As the eldest of the three Cherry sisters at age thirty-four, Mary Jane was too serious and too responsible too much of the time. Right now, her medium brown hair stuck out in a messy halo all over her head, she had dust marks on her cream-colored top and she looked like someone who’d been working harder than she should, for longer than she could remember.

  Daisy and Mary Jane had already had a few tense moments with each other since Daisy had come back east to live just a couple of weeks ago, and in all honesty, Daisy didn’t think that she was to blame. It was really good to see Mary Jane lose control, lighten up a little, and Daisy found herself grinning at the sight of it.

  Unfortunately, the laughter and lost control didn’t last.

  “I don’t have time for this.” Mary Jane took a determined hold of herself, stood up, wiped the tears from her eyes with a crumpled tissue and fussed around getting the albums back in a pile, which she dumped into a cardboard box.

  “Where did you find them?”

  “Here in the office, under a pile of files. Lord only knows what they were doing here.”

  “Are you packed?” Daisy asked.

  “You mean this?” Mary Jane waved her hand at the boxes, some filled, some still empty. “These are going to South Carolina to the new condo with Mom and Dad.”

  “I meant for your trip, not Mom and Dad’s move.”

  “In that case, I was packed a week ago.” Mary Jane looked a little tense suddenly.

  She was leaving tomorrow. She loved to travel, and when Spruce Bay Resort closed each year for most of November and April, during the quietest seasons in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, she always went away. Someplace exotic, or someplace indulgent. Never the same destination twice. Taking full advantage of the fact that she was single, even though Daisy strongly suspected that in her secret heart Mary Jane didn’t actually want to be single at all.

  This unwanted condition was down to Alex Stewart, horrible man. Water under the bridge, four years on. Nobody talked about it anymore, but Mary Jane had wasted a lot of time—years of her life—on a relationship that had gone nowhere and it had taken its toll on her heart and her outlook.

  Mary Jane and I are so different, Daisy had thought to herself more than once. Mary Jane’s love for Alex had been a steadfast flame that refused to die even when it needed to. Whereas Daisy had blown hot and cold. Came on strong, then pulled right back. Sent clear signals, then turned them off like a faucet.

  I jumped in too fast. I never looked below the
surface. It was my fault as much as Michael’s.

  Was it a fair accusation to make about herself? She still tied herself in knots asking that question. It was a big reason why she was here, instead of in California, and Mary Jane had accused her—quite gently and sympathetically, which almost made it worse—of coming back for the wrong reasons.

  “I don’t want you as a business partner at Spruce Bay just because you’re running away from something that turned sour in your personal life.”

  This year, because of the renovation and their parents’ retirement from the business, Spruce Bay had closed a month early, missing out on the fall-foliage season, and Mary Jane would be spending most of October, including her thirty-fifth birthday on the eighteenth of the month, on safari in the heart of Africa.

  She hadn’t wanted to go initially. “I’ll have to skip my usual trip this year, with the remodel. It just can’t be helped.” She was definitely too responsible about things like this. Daisy and Mom and Dad—and Lee, from a distance, in Colorado—had all insisted that of course she should go, as usual, since she loved her travels so much. Eventually and reluctantly, Mary Jane had booked her tour package.

  “If you’re worried I can’t handle things here for three weeks, don’t be,” Daisy assured her quickly now, because her sister had really started to look stressed. “Hey, if I can create the dessert recipes and oversee their preparation every night for a two-hundred-seat five-star San Francisco restaurant, I can oversee a construction crew. I’ve brainstormed a heap of ideas for the restaurant remodel, I’m so excited about it, and I have menu ideas to match.”

  “Listen, I don’t doubt that, okay?”

  “But you doubt the reasons I’m here.”

  “Sometimes you dive in too fast, Daisy. You told me that happened with Michael. I don’t want it happening with Spruce Bay.” She gestured toward the open window, where blue sky blazed behind a silhouette of pine needles whose fragrance Daisy could smell from here. She could hear the pine needles, too—the light soughing they made in the breeze. The peace and familiarity of this place hurt her heart, it was so beautiful.