“Josie, you have more fight in you than anyone I’ve ever met. More than those mustangs, even. And remember what happened to them? Just when we thought they didn’t have anything left, they proved us all wrong.”
“But I don’t have anything left, Seth. And I don’t have anything left to give you.” She spun around on her heel, but Seth jumped in front of her.
“The only thing I want from you is your heart, Josie.”
“Oh, is that all?” she snipped.
“I want you, Josie. Just you. As you are.”
She dropped her head back and shut her eyes. “Why are you making this so difficult?”
“Because walking away from this—from you and me—it shouldn’t be easy. If it is, then maybe you don’t actually feel the way I thought you felt. Call me crazy, but I thought you were falling for me, too.”
Seth’s dark eyes didn’t match the growing detachment in his voice. They were wild, insistent, searching hers for any hint of reciprocation. All Josie could do was shut hers completely to keep from exposing her entire heart to him right there on the roadside.
“I don’t want to come between you and your family anymore, Seth,” she resigned.
“My family is a mess, but you have nothing to do with that. We’ve been a mess for a long time now. Some of that is my fault; some isn’t. But none of that is on you,” Seth said. “But pretending to be a family with you? That was the first time I’ve ever truly felt at home at the ranch, Josie. You felt like home to me.”
Josie looked back at her fifth wheel hooked up to Darrel’s truck. She thought that if she carted it off of the property, everything would be fixed. That was the joy of having a mobile home. Home was wherever you hauled it.
But that didn’t explain the homesick tug in her gut that increased with each mile she drove in the opposite direction of the ranch. In the opposite direction of Seth.
“I don’t know what to do Seth,” she admitted after a weighty pause. “How do we even do this? Where do we even start?”
Hope as bright as the sun burst onto his handsome face, he stepped close, and he wrapped her in the security of his strong embrace when he asked, “How about with a first date?”
Epilogue
The trailer door crashed open.
“Josie! Josie, where are you?”
She had to laugh. It wasn’t like the trailer had many hidden places to search. She spun around under the showerhead’s misty spray and called out, “I’m taking a shower!”
With the same enthusiasm he’d entered the trailer with, Seth threw open the bathroom door. It slammed into the thin wall behind it, likely leaving a dent.
“Whoa! Careful!” Josie spat.
“Only another week until the house is done,” he justified. He flapped something in his hand. “Look, Josie. It finally came!”
She rubbed her palm on the glass shower door like a windshield wiper. “What came?” A fuzzy outline of her husband filtered into view. He held a large, white envelope that looked all kinds of official. “Oh! Is that your acceptance letter?”
“Let’s hope.”
He ripped the top of the envelope open while Josie turned around to shut the water off. She gathered a pile of her hair and wrung it out.
“Get out of there so you can open it with me,” he insisted.
“Just give me a moment, will you?” Josie teased as she cracked open the shower door and jutted out a hand. “And give me that towel, too.”
Seth cast a sly look at the waiting towel that hung on a hook behind him. “Nope.”
“Come on, Seth. Give me the towel. I’m freezing.”
“I can think of a better way to warm you up.”
Josie rolled her eyes. They’d been married for over a year and were coming up on the expiration date of the term newlywed, but that did nothing to squelch their passion for one another. “The towel?”
“After I open this.” Seth’s fingers dipped into the envelope and pulled out a stack of papers that were typed on fancy letterhead. His eyes roved wildly over the sheets and Josie tried to read his body language but couldn’t interpret a thing.
“What is it, Seth?”
He tossed the papers into the air. They spiraled down to the bathroom floor like confetti.
“I got in!”
Josie gasped. “You got in?”
“I got in! I’m going to veterinary school, Josie!” He yanked on her arm and pulled her from the shower. Her slick skin pressed against his shirt and he spun her around, pinning her up against the wall. He nipped at her neck and groaned low in his throat.
“Seth!” She swatted him. “Let me get dressed.”
“I think I’m the one who should get undressed,” he teased with the most enticing, devilish look in his chocolate eyes. “We have some celebrating to do.”
The house was perfect. A little porch that could fit two rocking chairs, maybe three. A large baker’s kitchen that Seth had already put to use the day before to make cookies for Gramm’s eighty-fifth birthday. Four bedrooms, two and a half baths. And a gorgeous brick fireplace. That was Josie’s only real request when they drew up the plans. Well, that and her insistence that Seth always stoke the fire shirtless. That sight did all sorts of things to her, harkening back to that night when she first fell for him, when he’d ignited something within her that she didn’t even knew could exist.
“Can you believe all of this is ours?” Seth wove his arms around Josie’s middle and dropped his chin to her shoulder. He gazed out the window above the kitchen sink and took in the sight of their newly purchased Riverburn acreage.
She let the dish she had been washing slip from her hands back into the sudsy basin and spun around in the circle of his arms. “I can’t believe all of this is mine,” she said, her mouth hovering just above his lips.
“Oh, you better believe it.”
His mouth came over hers in a kiss that made her knees sag. He pulled back. “What’s on your agenda for today?”
“I promised Gramm I’d go into town to grab a few items she’ll need before she and Gus set out on their road trip tomorrow. I still can’t believe they’re heading across the country with my trailer in tow.”
“I can’t believe she would want to be trapped in a vehicle with that cranky, old man for over a month.”
“Seth, I think she plans to be with him for much, much longer than that.”
Seth’s chin pulled into his neck. “They’re not just friends?”
“Um, no. Are you blind? I caught him with his hand on her backside at her party. And I think she liked it.”
Seth plunged his fingers into his ears. “I do not want to hear that about my Gramm.”
Josie laughed but buttoned her lips. Gramm had been nothing short of a godsend to them and they had her to thank for many of their recent blessings, most notably their little patch of land to call home.
When Seth’s parents had filed the insurance claims relating to the barn fire, it somehow triggered a little more investigation into the rightful ownership of the farm. As suspected, nothing Donna or Mitch had done was legally aboveboard, which came as no surprise to Seth and Josie. The deed had always remained in Gramm’s name, that was until she accepted the highest offer in an all out bidding war that had the town in a tizzy.
The Ford Cattle Company was officially no more, and while Josie assumed Seth would be sad about that reality, he had very little reaction to it at all.
“It was never in my blood,” he had explained to Josie the night Gramm signed the paperwork and gave the new owners the keys. “Cattle ranching isn’t the legacy I want to continue, and I’ve come to realize that’s okay. I’m ready to forge my own path with you right by my side.”
That path led them to a ten-acre parcel Gramm gifted them as an over-the-top wedding present. At first Seth couldn’t accept it, but once Gramm convinced him she had always planned to leave the ranch to him—something a hundred times greater in size—he conceded.
“Would you just let this litt
le, old lady do something nice for you? Consider it repayment for all of those cookies you’ve baked me over the years, dear.”
Seth countered that he could bake her cookies until his dying day and it would never match her generosity.
“It’s just what grandmas do. We take care of the ones we love.”
Josie was now on the receiving end of that love and she was grateful for it each and every day. Maybe not all of Seth’s family welcomed her with open, outstretched arms, but the ones who truly counted did and that was all that mattered.
The timer chiming on the stove made Josie’s spine straighten and tugged her from her wistful daydreaming. She slipped out from Seth’s hold and rushed to turn it off.
“Are you cooking?” Seth followed her.
“Baking, actually.” Josie opened the drawer and took out two oven mitts, then slipped them onto her hands. “Stand back.”
Bending over, she pulled on the oven handle and withdrew a cookie sheet. Her heart was in her throat, her pulse a rapid trill that almost made her dizzy.
Thankfully, the cookies turned out great. The edges were a crisp, golden brown, and the cutout letters and numbers held their shape, making them completely legible. She turned around and held the cookie sheet out for Seth to view.
“You made cookies, Josie? I love that.” He haphazardly reached out to snag the closest one from the bottom row and had it almost to his lips when Josie yelled at him.
“Did you even read it?”
“Read what?”
“The cookies, Seth.” She smacked him with a mitt. “Put that one back where you found it and read it out loud.”
“July nineteenth,” he spoke slowly. “What’s July nineteenth?”
“It’s a date, Seth.”
“Our anniversary?” He made an unsure face.
“No, Seth. Our anniversary is May tenth.”
“Right.” He nodded. “Yes. I knew that.”
“Sure, you did.” Josie settled the cookie sheet onto the counter. “Try again.”
“Our first date?”
“Nope.”
His nose wrinkled in a frown. “Your birthday?”
“Not mine.”
“Mine?”
Josie’s hands flew into the air. “Are you serious?”
“I don’t know. You’re making me nervous.”
Josie grabbed a handful of cookies and chucked them at his stomach. “It’s our due date, Seth.”
“Due date...?” he repeated, then a dawn of understanding hit him like a ton of bricks. “Due date! We’re pregnant?”
“We are.”
Seth bounded across the kitchen and immediately smothered Josie’s small bump with his palm. “We’re having a baby?” Tears collected in his eyes and his voice trembled with emotion.
“We’re having a baby!”
They held each other in the kitchen, a mess of tearful celebration that ebbed and flowed from doubt to sheer joy.
“Is this why you haven’t been riding Bruiser lately?” Seth had yet to remove his hand from Josie’s stomach, his warm touch a sweet confirmation of his excitement.
“Yes. The doctor says it’s okay to ride for a few more months, but I thought I should take it easy. Bruiser hasn’t been under saddle all that long yet. I don’t want to take any chances.”
The fact that the mustang found his way back to Seth and Josie was nothing short of a miracle. The day the sale of the ranch closed, they had been at Seth’s house packing up the last of his things when Josie saw a figure in the distance, galloping across the foothills.
They saddled up Scout and Sally and trekked out to investigate, neither one believing their eyes. Somehow, Bruiser had returned. The once-wild mustang came home. It was only fitting that they bring him with them to their new home, too.
“Josie, I’m going to be a dad. You’re going to be a mom.” Seth held her tightly. “Is this even real life?”
“I ask myself that everyday.” She pressed her cheek to his chest and squeezed. “Sometimes I wonder what I ever did to deserve this. To finally be happy like this, with you.”
“You deserve it all, Josie. I’ve always said that. All of this and more,” Seth affirmed.
“I think this little one is the ‘more’ part of that equation,” Josie said, patting her belly. “I don’t know about you, but I’m sort of terrified.”
“A one-thousand pound, rank animal doesn’t intimidate you, but a teeny, tiny little bundle of joy does?”
Josie’s eyes went wide. “Absolutely. Babies are scary, Seth. Plus, I don’t have any practice with them. It’s totally reasonable to fear the unknown. Babies are a big unknown.”
“They might be, but we’ll get the hang of it. We make a good team, you and me. Always have,” Seth said. “From fake marriages to real, true and lasting love, there’s no one I’d rather have by my side, Josie. You have my heart.”
“You’ve got mine, too, Seth.”
Josie held her husband close, the joy of their news wrapping around them. She rested in the arms of the only man she’d ever loved, knowing he kept her safe, protected, and secure in the truth that she deserved every bit of this happiness life afforded her.
All of it and infinitely more.
The End
If you haven’t already, get to know Maren Friar in Take the Fall,
the first book in the A Cowboy’s Promise series. Start Reading Today!
He’s pretending not to love her. She’s pretending not to care.
Growing up, they shared a fence line, first kisses, and a romance that had the whole town talking. But Maren Friar traded her barbed-wire life for city lights and gave up on her childhood dream of marrying the cowboy next door. He’d made it clear that had been nothing more than playing house.
Rodeo pickup man Grady Cutter works hard, loves harder, and when he gives his word, it’s his bond. But agreeing to stay away from Maren hurts worse than being bucked off a wild bronco.
Now Maren’s returned home to her ranch and Grady is done pretending. With her father no longer standing in their way, they’re finally learning what the grown-up version of their love can look like. But the pretty blonde constantly at Grady’s side makes Maren second guess everything. And she can’t stomach the fact that Grady seems to be the only man in Riverburn to know the real truth behind her father’s mysterious death.
Will digging up past secrets ruin their chance at a future forever? Or will they discover that the best love stories are often a lifetime in the making?
About the Author
Growing up with only a lizard for a pet, Megan Squires now makes up for it by caring for the nearly forty animals on her twelve-acre flower farm in Northern California. A UC Davis graduate, Megan worked in the political non-profit realm prior to becoming a stay-at-home mom. She then spent nearly ten years as an award winning photographer, with her work published in magazines such as Professional Photographer and Click.
In 2012, her creativity took a turn when she wrote and published her first young adult novel. Megan is both traditionally and self-published and Take the Reins is her thirteenth publication. She can’t go a day without Jesus, her family and farm animals, and a large McDonald’s Diet Coke.
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Take the Reins (A Cowboy's Promise Book 2) Page 19