“He’s amazing.”
“Spoken like a woman in love.”
“I don’t have time for love. I’ve wasted years of my life. It’s time for me to focus on real things. Getting a job. Living a decent life. Going to church with my family. If I toss a relationship into that mix, it’s just going to confuse things.”
“Or make everything fit together a little better.”
“Go away.”
“Help me pack boxes. You promised.”
Kayla shook her head. “I do not remember making that promise. And he hasn’t called me. That should tell me something, right?”
“Yeah, that you’re both dorks.” Sam headed for the kitchen. “Come on, we’ll make a casserole. Potatoes make everything better.”
* * *
Kayla rode with Sam to Duke’s that evening. It was dark when they pulled into town, and obvious that the town was gearing up for the Christmas season. Lights twinkled in the trees along Main Street. Homes and stores were decorated. The nativity had been set up in front of the Community Church.
A few years ago Oregon’s dad had slept in that nativity. He’d said if a stable was good enough for his Savior, it was good enough for him.
There was already a crowd at Duke’s No Bar and Grill. Kayla strode through the door with Sam. It felt odd to be back, and to know that she belonged here. This was going to be her home. The people waiting at a big table in the center of the dining area were her family. She stopped, taking it in, letting it become real to her.
“You okay?” Sam asked as they walked to that table.
“I’m good.”
Remington was there. He stood to hug Kayla and then he reached for Sam, holding her close, their lips brushing lightly.
“Three more days,” he whispered.
“And I’ll be Samantha Jenkins.”
Kayla glanced away because it was too much. She was happy for her sister. But she was feeling sorry for herself. Years ago she’d thought about marriage. She’d dreamed of the man she’d marry, the house they’d live in, even the names of their children. That young girl had dreamed big. There had been mansions and maybe a prince who rescued her.
But then everything had changed. She’d lost her trust. She’d lost track of that innocent girl who dreamed big. She’d been racing through life not allowing herself to think about a future with happily-ever-afters.
“Sit down.” Brody pulled on her hand. “And try to relax.”
She sat by her brother, and he put a comforting arm around her shoulder.
“I am relaxed.” She even managed a smile as she said it.
“Yes, you look relaxed. Do I need to hurt someone for you?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m good. It’s just strange, being back. And I’m going to live here. It’s a big step.”
“You’re a country girl at heart. You’ll adjust.”
Of course she would. She always adjusted. She’d always been good at reinventing herself.
* * *
Boone pulled up to Duke’s. It had been a couple of weeks since he’d been home so he should have kept on driving. But after playing bodyguard to a Saudi prince for several days, he needed a few minutes to relax. And he needed a piece of Duke’s chocolate-cream pie.
As he walked through the door, he realized he should have kept on going. He saw her immediately. She was laughing at something Brody said. But it wasn’t her real laugh, not the one that lit up her eyes. It was the laugh that said she was trying hard to fit in.
He wondered if anyone else knew that about her.
Maybe pie wasn’t such a great idea. He reached for the door but a hand on his shoulder stopped him. He didn’t look up to many people, physically, but he had to look up at Duke Martin.
“Change your mind, Boone?” Duke’s hand was still on his shoulder and there was a challenge in his eyes that was unmistakable. “Never figured you for a coward.”
“Not a coward, just a man in a hurry to get home. I thought I’d get a piece of pie. To go.”
Duke’s mouth twisted and his eyes lit with humor. “Sorry, but I don’t have pie ‘to go.’ Pie can only be eaten in house this week.”
“Guess I’ll come back next week.”
“Have a seat, Boone. I wouldn’t want you to look yella.”
“I’m not yella.” Boone headed for a booth. “And the word is yellow.”
“Yeah, but when you’re calling a man coward, you say yella.” Duke grinned. “Sounds better that way.”
Boone sat at a booth and took off his hat. He brushed a hand through his hair to smooth it down. He was exhausted. And now he was confused. She was here. He hadn’t expected that.
And he hadn’t expected the emotional punch to the gut.
Duke sat down across from him, placing the pie on the table just out of reach. Ned, the best waitress in Texas, hurried over to fill his coffee cup. She gave them both a “don’t make trouble” look and left.
“You look awful.” Duke’s hand was on the plate. “As if you really need this pie.”
“What I need is for you to stay out of my business.”
“But if your business pertains to my family, then it becomes my business.”
“Duke, I have to get home. Either give me the pie or don’t.”
Duke slid the pie in front of him. “What’s your hurry? Don’t you want to stay and visit? Sam is getting married this weekend. We’re having a family dinner. You look as though you could use a good meal.”
“I’ll have a meal when I get home. And I’m not going to invade your family dinner. I have a family of my own. And from what I hear, a pinkeye outbreak to deal with tomorrow.”
“I hear your dad is up and around, doing better now.”
“He’s doing much better.”
Duke sat there, silent, watching him eat the pie. Boone felt about sixteen. He now understood how Remington had felt when the Martins had run him off their ranch a dozen years ago. That had been the first time Rem had tried to date Samantha Martin. It hadn’t gone well.
Boone wasn’t dating anyone. He definitely wasn’t going to start dating clients. When he, Daron and Lucy had started the business, they’d verbally agreed that dating clients was off-limits. It was unprofessional. It created problems.
Big problems. Such as the one he was facing now. He hadn’t dated Kayla, but he’d definitely crossed lines. And those lines had led him to this place.
“I have to go.”
“Yella.”
Boone grabbed his hat and stood. “No, I’m not yella, Duke. I’m a man with a family and a business.”
When he walked out the door, he inhaled cool autumn air. It felt good to be back in Texas. He’d spent two weeks in Southern California. It had been hot and dry there. The prince had been a pain. A guy who drove fast and lived faster.
Boone enjoyed the quiet, slow pace of country living. He wouldn’t trade Texas for anything. Not even a Bel Air mansion and a Ferrari.
He stood in front of his truck for a long time, staring at Duke’s.
Chapter Sixteen
She’d held her breath when he first walked through the door of Duke’s. And then she’d held it a little longer while he’d sat at the table with her brother. She’d wanted him to say something. He hadn’t. So she’d laughed and talked with her family and pretended it didn’t hurt.
It had been an eye-opening experience, though. In the five minutes he’d stayed in the diner she’d realized the truth. She’d been a client to him. Nothing more.
“Ten, nine, eight...” Next to her Brody was counting down.
“What are you doing?” she whispered. Jake was saying something about Sam and Remington and their lives together.
He grinned. “You’ll see. Two. One.”
Boone pushed open the front door and stepped back inside.
Brody chuckled. “Known him all my life. He can’t stand to be called a coward. And he doesn’t back down.”
Kayla really disliked family at that moment.
“My guess, sis, is you’re about to tell us all goodbye.”
“I doubt that. I ordered one of Duke’s black and bleu steaks, and I plan on eating it.”
Boone crossed the diner, and when he reached their table, he looked like a thunderstorm about to break.
“I need for you to come with me,” he said to her in a low voice. Everyone was watching, though. Not one person in the suddenly quiet diner had missed the order.
“I’m having dinner with my family.” She managed to sound in control. At least she thought so. “And I don’t like to be ordered around, Boone.”
He briefly closed his eyes. “Can I please have a moment of your time?”
“Now, wasn’t that sweet?” Brody said. “I think you should go with him before he tosses you over his shoulder and goes all caveman on us.”
Both she and Boone gave Brody a look he didn’t need interpreted for him. Kayla pushed back from the table.
“Five minutes, Boone.”
“Ten,” he said. He took her hand and led her from the restaurant.
They walked in silence to the park, Boone practically dragging her along with him. Christmas lights twinkled on the trees. A speaker played Christmas music. In the distance she heard a train. Boone still held her hand but his touch had gentled.
“Boone?”
Before she could ask what he wanted he pulled her into his arms.
“Don’t talk.” His mouth lowered to capture hers in a desperate kiss.
His lips moved over hers and his hands splayed across her back. She didn’t feel trapped. She felt complete. For the first time in weeks she didn’t wonder. She only wanted. His love. Him.
His lips stilled but his mouth hovered against hers. She felt his smile.
“I missed you.” Finally the words she’d longed to hear. “I couldn’t drive away from Duke’s without holding you, without kissing you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” She leaned into his shoulder and brushed her lips against his shirt. He smelled so good. Like the mountains and autumn. “I missed you, too.”
“How long are you here for?”
“Forever,” she answered, her face still buried in the crook of his neck.
“Forever isn’t long enough,” he told her. “I need more time with you.”
“I’m not going anywhere. But what if—”
“No,” he said with a voice that shook. “Don’t say anything. What I feel has nothing to do with being your bodyguard. It has everything to do with love. I love you, Kayla. And I want more than a few weeks in your life.”
She trembled in his arms, thinking about his words. Thinking about forever.
* * *
He hadn’t planned to put it all out there. He’d gone back into Duke’s determined but not knowing where that determination would lead him. He’d only known that he needed to hold her. He had needed to kiss her until the emptiness he’d felt since she’d left went away.
He hadn’t expected that one kiss would make him want more. He hadn’t planned on any of this, not really.
But she was in his arms, her eyes shining with emotion that he had to guess meant she felt pretty strongly about him.
And he wanted to marry her. He guessed it was way too early for proposals.
“Say something,” he whispered against her hair. “Don’t leave me hanging, Stanford.”
“Kayla Wilder. I like the way that sounds.”
He picked her up and twirled her around him. It wasn’t a proposal, but he knew when it was meant to be. He put her back on her own two feet and kissed her again. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on, as if he was her lifeline.
“I love you, Wilder.” She whispered the words a few minutes later. “I’m so glad you’re in my life.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Stanford. Because I plan on being in your life for a long, long time.”
He led her back into Duke’s, back to her family. But this time he stayed. He let the Martin brothers tease him. He endured the looks from the women.
Kayla sitting next to him was all that mattered.
Epilogue
Kayla walked out of the school on a sunny day at the end of May. She’d been a substitute teacher since December. Last week the school had offered her a permanent position as a second-grade teacher.
She had found herself in Martin’s Crossing. She had a career she loved. She had a home, the cottage Samantha had vacated. Duke had given her a pretty bay gelding.
She had a man who cherished her. And she loved him right back. He had texted her an hour earlier asking her to meet him after school. He wanted to take her on a date.
He was waiting in the parking lot. Gorgeous. He was absolutely gorgeous. Even from a distance she knew she could drown in his espresso eyes. He had a dimple in his right cheek that she enjoyed kissing.
He smelled like mountains and autumn air. And in jeans low on his hips and a T-shirt that hugged his shoulders, no one was more gorgeous.
“You coming with me, Stanford?” he called out from the tractor he’d driven to town to pick her up in.
“I’m coming, Wilder.” She crossed the parking lot as he got down from the tractor to open the door for her. “My chariot awaits. This is going to be some date.”
“Honey, we do things right here in the country.” He winked as he said it and he climbed up in the seat with her. “Do not touch anything.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” So she scooted to the far side of the tractor.
Then he kissed her. “I’ve been waiting two days for that. You aren’t going to deny me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
They drove out to the Wilder ranch, cars passing them one at a time. He pulled onto the drive and through a gate. She remembered this field. They’d been here before. Last fall when he hadn’t cut down the wildflowers.
“I brought a picnic from Duke’s.” He pointed to the bag of carryout food on the floor.
“Sounds perfect.”
The tractor chugged along over rolling hills. When it got to that same back pasture, he stopped. Bluebonnets spread out before them, making a carpet of wildflowers.
“Isn’t this something?” he asked. “They’ve been blooming for a while. I should have brought you sooner.”
“No, this is perfect.”
They climbed down from the tractor and he led her through the field of flowers and down to the creek.
“There’s nowhere else like it.”
“No, there isn’t.” She turned to look at the field behind them, captured in late-afternoon sunlight. The bluebonnets stretched to the base of the distant hill.
“I’d like to build our house here,” he said. The words hung in the air, like the sweet scent of wildflowers.
“Our house?” She looked up at him, sensing the moment, her heart skipping along in agreement.
“Yes, our house.” He spoke as if he was talking about the weather. She wanted to hit him.
“When would we build this house?” She tried to match his tone of indifference.
“We could start in a month or so and have it finished and ready to move into this fall.”
“This fall? But aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked, as serious as she could be when she saw the teasing glint in his eyes.
“Have I forgotten something?”
She nodded, her breath catching as he reached for her.
His hand brushed down her arm and he took her hand in his. And then he went down on one knee and smiled up at
her, that mischievous light in his dark eyes turning to something warmer and undoing her composure.
“Kayla Stanford, will you marry me? And live here in this field of bluebonnets? We could build a big house and fill it with pretty little girls and ornery boys. If you’ll just say yes.”
He pulled a ring from his pocket and held it up, waiting.
“Yes. Oh, Boone, yes.” She pulled him to his feet and he slid the ring on her finger. “I want to marry you. I want to have a farmhouse and babies. With you.”
He kissed her then, and she sank into his embrace. She was home. And she couldn’t imagine being anywhere but in his arms.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE AMISH MIDWIFE’S COURTSHIP by Cheryl Williford.
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Dear Reader,
It is so hard to believe we’ve been in Martin’s Crossing for over a year! Kayla Stanford, heroine in Her Rancher Bodyguard, is a half sibling to the Martins. She’s a little lost but a whole lot determined. Her journey to Martin’s Crossing and into the life of Boone Wilder and his family will help her discover her softer side. She’ll find that there are people she can trust, with her life and her heart.
I hope you enjoy this addition to the Martin’s Crossing series!
Brenda
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Her Rancher Bodyguard Page 17