Promise Me Forever (Sweet Beginnings Book 3)

by Maggie Dallen

  “She’s not going to fire you.” It was James’s hand on hers that stopped her frantic paranoid speech more than his words.

  She found herself staring at their intertwined hands, her mouth going bone dry at the familiar, completely asexual contact. After what felt like a lifetime of listening to her heart pounding, she dragged her gaze up to meet his stare.

  She stopped breathing at the intensity she saw there. He looked like he was trying to will his confidence straight into her skull. He believed in her even when she didn’t believe in herself.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she managed through a shaky exhale. “I mean, Katy’s going to be family soon, she can’t really fire me, right?”

  His hand tightened on hers. “She’s not going to fire you because you’re going to do a great job.”

  He sounded so positive that it made her smile.

  “You, Alice Deckland, are the smartest, strongest, most bullheaded woman I know.”

  How on earth he’d managed to make bullheaded sound sexy she had no idea. “Bullheaded, huh?”

  He lifted one shoulder. “In a good way.” When she smirked, he added, “Most of the time.” He squeezed her hand again. “Seriously, Alice. You are going to knock ‘em dead out there.”

  She flipped her hand so she could squeeze his hand in return. “Thanks.” She took a deep steadying breath and told herself to pull away from the warm hand and take three steps back—metaphorically, not literally. She was seated and the restaurant was too crowded for her to steal that much space.

  Still, metaphorically or literally, she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. After all, she’d be leaving soon enough, so maybe there was no real harm in letting herself revel in this feeling for just a little while longer…

  Amanda’s arrival forced her hand. Literally, her hand was forced to retreat or be smashed beneath a big bowl of meat-and-cheese covered lettuce as Amanda set their meals down, in an obvious hurry to get back to her other tables.

  Good. She stared down at the bowl. Great. Thank goodness, Amanda had come along when she had.

  She speared some food with her fork and shoved it in her mouth.

  And thank goodness she was leaving Twilight and Montana to get some much-needed space—not to mention the amazing experience she’d get at the job, and all the sights and cultural opportunities.

  Some of her initial excitement was back in full force. “You’re right,” she said, lifting her chin. “I’ve got this.”

  His smile flashed wide and sexy as sin. “Of course you do.”

  She caught her breath and held it as her heart did a somersault in her chest.

  Space, she reminded herself. Space was exactly what she needed to move on. If a thousand miles of countryside couldn’t help her get over her stupid childish crush, then nothing would.

  Chapter Two

  James was certain he would never survive.

  He gripped the reins of his favorite mare as he headed back to the stables.

  I’m not going to survive, that’s all there is to it.

  The thought was ridiculous and melodramatic but it plagued him with every jostle of his horse and every pang in his chest.

  Of course he’d survive. He’d survived four years of Alice being away at school, hadn’t he?

  Of course he had.

  But then again, she’d only been an hour and a half away by car, which meant she’d been home most weekends and every holiday to help out on the ranch. And even though she’d been gone throughout the week, and sometimes for weeks at a time, it had done nothing to ease the fierce draw she had on him whenever she was near.

  Sometimes he swore her absence had only made it worse, because when she was home on breaks, and then when she moved back home after graduating, he couldn’t seem to get enough of her—her time, her smiles, her affectionate hugs and her sweet voice...

  He let out a huff of exasperation and his horse, Mable, gave an answering snort that made him grin. Reaching over he patted her neck. “You’re going to miss her too, aren’t you, girl?”

  She didn’t answer but he knew the proud horse well enough to guess that was a yes. Alice was as much a part of their ranch life as the grass in the meadows and the fences that lined the pastures.

  While he’d been taken in, Alice had been born to this place and Twilight was as much a part of her as she was of it. Maybe that was why he knew without a doubt that even when she left, he’d see her everywhere. He’d hear her laugh and see her smiles as if she were a ghost haunting his dreams.

  He gave his head a shake. He had to stop thinking about Alice before he got any more melodramatic. Alice once teasingly called him Heathcliff, as a reference to the brooding gothic hero from Wuthering Heights. He’d of course had to go off and read the romantic novel and hadn’t known whether to laugh, scoff, or be miffed at the comparison.

  But right now?

  Right now, his thoughts were putting Heathcliff to shame. The moors of England had nothing on the grazing pastures of Montana.

  He rode up to the stables but his eyes never veered from the main house. She was in there. Alice, of course. There was only ever one woman constantly on his mind and her time on the ranch was coming to an end in a matter of days.

  Which is good. It’s for the best.

  Yeah, it didn’t sound any more convincing this time than it had the last twenty thousand times he’d told himself that.

  He just wanted to be over it…over her. Was that asking so much? He scrubbed a hand over his face and slid from his horse, leading her over to her stall. The darn stalls which were haunted.

  That’s right, haunted.

  They might as well have been, since he couldn’t seem to be in there anymore without thinking about that kiss five years ago that had changed everything.

  Okay, maybe the kiss hadn’t changed everything. They’d changed. Their relationship had grown and developed naturally over the course of months…maybe years. But the kiss had brought it out into the open, made it impossible to ignore. The kiss had dared him to deny that he loved Alice as more than a friend.

  He could’ve tried to deny it but he’d have been a liar.

  That kiss wouldn’t let him have his safe little lies, it brought them all out into the light. He scowled over at the stall where it had happened.

  He almost wished it had never happened.

  Almost.

  He headed to the main house like his feet had a mind of his own. She’d be in there. Funny how a little thing like love made the mere act of grabbing lunch something so bittersweet he couldn’t for the life of him tell whether it was torture or sweet relief.

  It had been a year of this. A year of Alice being back full time, a year of the kind of intimate, perfect connection he’d never known he could have, a year of torture as he watched the woman he loved show him every day just how much she’d grown and changed. She was still the same Alice who was a part of the ranch with every fiber of her being, but she was also more.

  She still had big dreams that she told him and no one else.

  But Katy had seen it in her. She’d known. Maybe she’d taken one look at her and seen how she practically hummed with energy and vitality.

  He saw it; he always had. He’d always wondered why he was the only one. He should have known that it wouldn’t be long before someone else saw it too. Someone who not only saw her potential, but could help her.

  He opened the door to the main house and heard her voice talking to Dax.

  Yup, sweet torture.

  Thank heavens she’s leaving. The thought was accompanied by an ache that called him a bald-faced liar. You hate that she’s leaving.

  He shoved all those thoughts aside and walked toward the voices coming from the kitchen. Like every home, the kitchen was where the siblings always seemed to gather, despite the fact that it was a sprawling old ranch house that could fit his entire place in one corner.

  “But I can’t put it off indefinitely,” Alice was saying as he walked in.<
br />
  Neither she nor Dax looked his way. They seemed to be deep in conversation and both wore matching looks of consternation. For two people with such different personalities, it was kind of amusing to see them look so much alike.

  That always happened when they were worried about something or deep in thought. Both big laid-back brother and the little high-intensity sister got matching creases between their brows.

  Katy was sipping on some tea in the corner of the room, watching them both with an amused smile that probably matched his own. “Alice, it won’t be the end of the world if we need to reschedule some meetings,” she said.

  Alice whipped around to face Katy and in doing so she caught sight of him. Her smile was bright, brilliant, and gone before he could properly savor it. She always gave him that smile. Always. No matter how down she was or how tense the silence between them, she never failed to give him that smile when he entered a room—the one that made him feel like he was the only person on the planet.

  The one that made him want to fall on his knees before her and beg her to stay with him always.

  He looked down at the wooden floorboards and leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed, taking a moment to regain his composure as Alice went into a long winded spiel about how important it was that she make a professional appearance in front of Hannah Bailey.

  Hannah. He couldn’t even count how many times he’d heard mention of this lady. Her name was uttered like a prayer around here, and he wished he was exaggerating. Alice was clearly starstruck by this woman and she hadn’t even met her yet.

  Katy was friends with the TV star, who was also her main client. Her wedding next summer was billed to be the wedding of the decade, according to Alice.

  And it was to be held at Twilight Ranch.

  Needless to say, it was a coup for the ranch and would mean the kind of publicity that could put their guest operations on the map for the rich and famous.

  So, no pressure, obviously.

  Alice’s main role in heading to LA was to be the liaison for Hannah as well as keeping the day-to-day operations running for the million other projects on Katy’s work plate. Katy would be helping to run the show from the ranch as she reveled in her newfound rural bliss and made plans for her own wedding.

  “I promise she’ll understand,” Katy said, her tone reassuring even as she held that amused smile that said she found Alice’s freak-out just a little bit funny.

  Alice let out a huff, not nearly as amused by whatever it was that was upsetting her.

  “What seems to be the problem?” James asked.

  Alice whipped around to face him, her eyes wide and pleading. Whatever she needed, he would give it to her. He knew that deep down in his soul. It had always been this way between the two of them. He was utterly powerless in the face of those eyes.

  “The airport is closed down for a strike,” Alice said.

  He blinked slowly. Now that, he wasn’t quite certain he could fix. “When will they start up again?”

  Alice shook her head but it was Dax who answered. “We don’t know. Could be hours, could be days, could be weeks—” Dax stopped when Alice let out a squeak of horror.

  All three of them stared at her with a mix of concern and just a little bit of amusement. Alice had always been a bit of a drama queen—not in a bad way, just in a way that made James laugh.

  Dax and James were so very quiet and laid back that without her daily presence during her college years, this ranch had felt like a graveyard some days.

  Then she’d come back and brought life with her. At least, that’s how it felt to James. And now she was leaving again…

  Something cold and hard settled in his gut, but once more he shoved it to the side. He had her in his sights now, didn’t he? He’d be a fool to waste one precious second in her company moping over the inevitable.

  “Is driving an option?” he asked.

  Heads swiveled to face him and Alice’s eyes widened.

  Dax scowled.

  Katy grinned like a Cheshire cat, her eyes glinting with mischief over the rim of her mug. “Only if she has company.”

  She was about as subtle as a sledgehammer but he still found himself looking to Dax and Alice for more information.

  “We were just talking about that,” Dax said. “It’s a long drive—”

  “Eighteen plus hours,” Alice supplied.

  “And through some remote areas,” Dax continued as if she hadn’t interrupted. He turned back to Alice with another fierce scowl. “I can’t get away from the ranch and Katy has too much going here.”

  “I know that,” Alice started with a huff. They’d clearly already been over all this before he’d arrived. “Which is why I could go by myself.”

  Dax placed his hands on his hips and sighed. “I’d hate to see you go alone, Al.”

  They all knew what that meant. She was old enough now to make her own decisions, so he couldn’t outright say he forbade it, but he clearly didn’t approve.

  Poor Dax was relegated to scowls and fatherly tones. All bark and no bite now that she was a grown woman with a mind of her own.

  Alice knew it, too. She patted his shoulder in a patronizing manner. “Has anyone ever told you that you’ll make an excellent father someday?”

  Dax let out a little growling sound that made Alice laugh.

  “I tell him all the time,” Katy piped in.

  Dax turned his scowl to her and that sent both ladies off into a fit of laughter. Even James felt a smile tugging at his lips at his best friend’s predicament. Sometimes the guy was too serious for his own good and meeting someone like Katy—someone who shook up his world and made him see something other than business and ranch chores—it had been the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  Alice’s next words killed James’s burgeoning smile dead in its tracks. “It makes sense that I drive though, doesn’t it? I mean, I need to get all my belongings down there eventually.”

  The thought of her on the road alone killed him. But then again, so did the thought of her alone in a new city, not to mention the thought of her leaving at all. That thought just about slayed him every time.

  But right now the pressing issue was how she would leave. Focus, you idiot. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, ignored the pressure building inside him. It felt like a ticking time bomb and he had no idea what would happen when it went off.

  A little part of him feared he’d open his mouth and beg her not to go. He took a deep breath. No, he would never do that. He loved her too much to be selfish. That was what it always came down to.

  With that thought firmly grounding him, he took a deep breath and focused on what Dax was saying.

  “What car would you take? We can’t spare one here and it would be silly to take one anyway when you’ll already have Katy’s car waiting for you when you get down there.” Dax had a decisive tone when he added, “I’ll bring your belongings in my truck when Katy and I come down to visit you next month after the cattle’s shipped off.”

  He could practically see Alice’s impatience rise at the talk of waiting a full month for her stuff. Though she’d been unusually mum about leaving, he knew her well enough to know that she didn’t see this as a short-term arrangement.

  She’d want to dive in headfirst—that was the only way Alice knew how to act. She was all or nothing. She was impulsive and passionate and…

  Well, she was just about perfect, as far as he was concerned.

  It was Katy who had helped her to see that she ought to try it out first before committing entirely to a new city. He hadn’t been privy to those talks but he was glad she’d managed to get through to her.

  It had eventually been agreed that Alice would give this trial run in LA until the holidays, at which time she could decide whether to stay on there full time or come back home and run the guest ranch. Katy would just have to hire someone else to help her in LA if that were the case.

  James refused to let himself think any further
ahead than Thanksgiving. Whatever happened would happen. He couldn’t control the future and he had to believe that there was a path for everyone.

  Her path just didn’t happen to include him.

  The thought twisted in his chest like a knife. A familiar knife, but no duller than the first time he’d felt its sharp sting.

  “But that doesn’t solve my current crisis,” Alice said.

  “Crisis?” Dax repeated, running a hand through his hair, exasperation written all over him. “Really?”

  Katy let out a little snort of amusement from her corner, which Alice ignored. “Yes, really. This is it. Everything I’ve been dreaming of. Katy is giving me the opportunity of a lifetime and I need it to go off without a hitch.”

  She kept going but James had heard this impassioned speech before, or at least variations on it. Alice had kept her dreams of working in a big city from her older brothers. She’d known as they all had that money was tight and that she was needed here. But all that was changing now, and Katy’s offer to take her place here and have her run her LA office was the opportunity Alice had never dared to dream of.

  It was everything she wanted, and everything she deserved. He didn’t hear her words so much as see the longing in her eyes. It made his heart twist in his chest but it also reminded him of one thing.

  He would do whatever it took to give Alice everything she dreamt of. Even when that meant letting her go.

  “I’ll do it,” he said abruptly, before he could overthink it.

  His words silenced Alice in the middle of her speech and had all eyes on him. He was typically the quiet one in this house so whenever he spoke it seemed to cause a start. But this time was different.

  This time, Alice was blinking at him like she’d never seen him before. For the life of him he couldn’t make out what she was thinking as she said woodenly, “You?”

  He shrugged and turned toward Dax. It was far easier to focus on his best friend and logistics than the strange brew of emotions going on behind Alice’s expressive blue eyes.