Caught Up in a Cowboy, page 28
They’d waited so long, so many years to finally be together. She knew in her heart that if she just drove toward him, she would find him. They would find each other.
Busting out the last line of the song, she sang with joy in a pure, clear voice, grinning from one ear to the other, her chest bursting with happiness.
But her grin faded as the song played its last notes and the engine of her car sputtered and died.
“What? No,” she cried, slamming her palm against the piece of crap car’s steering wheel.
This couldn’t be happening.
Just moments ago, she’d felt like the universe was working for them, guiding them to each other, and now she wondered if this was the true sign. The sign that said as much as she and Rock thought they should be together, that it wasn’t meant to be.
Climbing out of the car, she slammed the door shut and gave it a swift kick. “You piece of crap,” she yelled, her euphoria gone, blown away like the dust on the side of the road.
Forget it.
She was going home.
This was too much. Too hard. Screw the whole damn thing.
Leaving the car on the side of the road, she pulled off her heels and strode down the shoulder, walking away from Rock’s ranch and toward her own.
* * *
Rock slowed the convertible, shielding his eyes from the sun as he drove down the dirt road toward the ranch.
He shook his head.
No way.
It couldn’t be.
He pulled up next to the gorgeous blond who was marching down the road, her high heels hanging from her fingertips as she kicked up dust with every barefooted step.
“Hey there, darlin’. Need a ride?”
She turned her head, her eyes going wide, then blinking back the tears that suddenly appeared there. “Rock?”
“Hey now. None of that. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I mean, everything’s wrong. I mean…oh hell, I don’t know what I mean.”
Rock leaned across the seat and pushed open the door. “Get in.”
The seat held a white plastic bag from a fancy kitchen store in Denver, and she picked it up to sink into the luxurious seat.
Holding the bag in her lap, she took the bottle of water Rock offered her and tipped it to her mouth, drinking thirstily, then handing it back. She peeked into the bag. “What is this? Why did you have to drive all the way to Denver to get a mixing bowl?”
“It’s for my mom. It’s a long story.” He draped his hand around the back of her seat. “Tell me what’s going on with you?”
There was another item in the bag, and she pulled it out and held the zippered money bag embossed with his bank’s name on it out to him. “First, tell me about this. Is it what I think it is?”
Dang it.
“Wellll, why don’t you tell me what you think it is.”
“I think, I’m afraid, it’s money that you’re planning to use to pay Monty off so he’ll leave us alone.” She unzipped the bag and gasped down at the strapped fifty dollar bills. “Holy crap. How much is this?”
“It’s not that much. It’s only twenty thousand.”
“Only?”
“Yeah. He asked for fifty.”
“Fifty?” Her eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped open. “He asked you for fifty thousand dollars?” she stammered.
He nodded. “Yeah, and I considered paying it.”
“You did not. That’s crazy.”
“That’s nothing. A drop in the bucket to what your and Max’s happiness is worth. I would pay ten times that much to know that asswipe was out of your lives.”
She shook her head as if trying to comprehend what he was saying. “Monty told me he asked you for money and my dad had paid him off before, but I had no idea it was that much. Is that how much my dad paid him the first time?”
He winced. “No, and I’m sorry you found out about that. I know Ham was just trying to protect you and Max. Your dad originally gave him ten thousand, so I figured if I offered him twice that, he’d take it and run. But this time, I’m going to get a guarantee that he’s gone for good.”
“No. I appreciate the thought and that you went to all this trouble, but no. I can’t let you do this.”
“Quinn, the money means nothing to me. You’re what matters, you and Max. I would pay anything, do anything for you.”
“But—” she started, but he held up his finger and set it tenderly on her lips.
“Don’t say anything. Not yet. I’ve spent the last few days thinking about this, thinking about nothing but this—about you, and Max, and my life, and how empty it feels without you in it. The life I lead in Denver is full of excitement and parties and late nights, but I feel like I’ve spent several years chasing after something that was always just out of my grasp. But now, the last few weeks that I’ve been here, with you and with Max, I feel like I’ve found what it is I’ve been missing, what it is I’ve been chasing all this time. And it’s you. It’s family. I know I’ve made mistakes in the past, but I’m trying to show you that I’ve changed. That nothing is more important to me than you and Max. Not the money. Not even hockey. In fact, I had a meeting with my coach this morning, and I quit the team.”
“Rock, you can’t. You love hockey. It’s part of who you are.”
“But I’m nothing without you. My life is nothing without you in it. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I love you, and I want you, you and Max, in my life. More than anything else.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the other purchases he’d made that morning. Handing her the small, flat box, he said, “Open it.”
Her hands were clasped in her lap, her fingers twisted together as she stared at the box. “What is it?”
He grinned. “Just open it.”
She took the box gingerly from his hand and gasped as she lifted the lid. A silver chain lay nestled on the black velvet inside. Hanging from the chain was a diamond-encrusted pendant in the shape of a key. “It’s beautiful.”
“I told you that I had better taste now.” He pointed to the necklace. “That key is just a substitute for the real one.”
Her brow furrowed. “The real one?”
“Yeah, the real one that goes to the house I’m going to build you. We can pick a spot, anywhere on our land, and I’ll have your dream house built on it. That way we’ll be close to both our families.”
She stared at the key, her lip trembling, then drew her gaze back to him. “No. You can’t. I can’t. I can’t let you give up hockey, give up your career for me. It’s what you love.”
“You’re what I love. And it doesn’t matter. I would give up anything for you.”
“But why? I never asked you to give up hockey for me.”
He shook his head, confused at her statement. “But it’s the reason I left. It’s the thing that came between us.”
“No, it wasn’t. The thing that came between us was your big head and how full of yourself you were over becoming a professional athlete. You acted like you were better than me and that you’d outgrown me. It wasn’t about the sport itself. I never asked you to choose between me and hockey. You don’t have to quit the team to be with me, with us. All I want, all I’ve ever wanted, is for you to let me be part of that life with you. You don’t have to give up what you love to be with me, with us. Just let us share it with you. Let us be with you. You don’t have to move up here. We can move down to Denver to be with you.”
“You would do that? You would leave Creedence? You would leave your dad? Your brother?”
“Of course I would. I’ve just been waiting for you to ask me to.” She shook her head, letting out a small laugh. “It’s not like it’s that far away. And we can come back to visit. Besides, we’ve spent the last eight years living with my dad and my brother. Believe me, I’m fine moving out.”
He chuckled with her, then opened the box and pulled the necklace out. “Okay, consider this the key to my house in Denver, and we’ll put the dream house on the back burner until I retire. Then we can move back up here.” He slid the chain around her neck and fastened the clasp.
She looked down at the necklace and gingerly touched the key-shaped pendant. “I love it.”
“I’m glad. But it’s not quite complete. It’s missing the heart.” He reached back into his pocket and pulled free the second box he’d purchased that day. “The necklace also represents the key to my heart. You’ve always had it, and you always will. But what’s in this box represents our lives. Yours, mine, and Max’s.”
Her eyes were wide as she stared from the box to his face and back to the box again.
“Wait,” he said, opening his door and climbing from the car. He circled around the back end and opened her door, then knelt in the dust on the road where he first saw her a few weeks ago, dressed like a pirate and riding a bicycle, and still as beautiful as she had always been.
She’d made his heart start beating again that day, and now it pounded hard against his chest as he looked into her gorgeous brown eyes.
He held up the small box and opened it to reveal a heart-shaped diamond ring. “Quinn, my life is nothing without you. I have never loved anyone the way I love you, and I don’t want to spend another day of my life without you in it. I already gave you my heart a long time ago, but now I want to make it official, for the whole world to see. Quinn Rivers, will you marry me?”
Bringing her hand to her mouth, she gazed at the ring, and her eyes filled with tears. The diamond sparkled in the Colorado sun.
Lifting her head, she nodded, a smile breaking across her face. “Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes.” She leaned forward, throwing her arms around his neck as she pressed her lips to his.
She tasted like chocolate, and strawberry lip gloss, and the love of his life.
She pulled back, gazing into his eyes, uncertainty shining in hers. “You know I come as a package deal.”
“Of course. And I’m going to do everything in my power to be the best dad I can be, to make Max feel like he’s my own son. Monty’s not interested in being his dad. He didn’t find religion or come back to make amends. He heard about you and me being together again, and he thought he could run a con, score some cash off me. And I’m still planning to offer him the money, but with the condition that he lets me officially adopt Max.”
Her breath caught as she gasped in surprise, then her smile returned. “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”
He offered her an impish grin. “You know what I like to say, go big or go home.”
She threw back her head, letting out a burst of laughter, then she kissed him again, a tender kiss filled with love and joy.
Her eyes sparkled with happiness as she drew back and grinned. “I’m here with you, the man I’ve loved since I was fourteen years old, the man I plan to marry and love until the day I die. So for me, I’m already home.”
The End…
…and just the beginning…
Read on for a look at the next book in Nicole Helm’s Navy SEAL Cowboys series
Jack Armstrong stood outside the stables of Revival Ranch almost wishing he were back in a war zone. He knew how to go about completing a mission.
He didn’t know anything about talking to a therapist.
He didn’t have to talk to her, of course. Gabe had reminded him of that at least ten times today. No one was pressuring him to take this step.
But here he was, and he couldn’t even pinpoint a reason. Maybe it had something to do with the way his nightmares had started to include people from his civilian life—Mom and Dad, Becca and her goat. Those definitely ate at him more than nightmares that were distorted memories of a day over a year ago, and the friend he’d actually lost.
Maybe it was watching Alex, his former SEAL brother, put weight back on, come back into himself after making regular appointments with Monica. Alex had gotten together with Becca, the co-owner of their ranch and partner in their foundation, and infused a lightness into their little world that hadn’t been there for a very long time.
Or maybe he was just in a rut. Summer equaled plenty of work around the ranch in general; plus, they were putting the finishing touches on the bunkhouse that Alex, Gabe, and he would move into. At the end of the day, he was bone-deep weary and his injuries ached and ached.
But he couldn’t sleep, and when he did, the nightmares often plagued him. He was tired. Exhausted. And if this was going to help…
Hell.
“If you’re waiting for a welcome dance, I’m afraid I don’t know the steps.”
Jack tried to smile at Monica, Revival’s on-site therapist. She’d appeared at the stable door, that kind smile on her face. Jack liked her enough as a person, and he really enjoyed her ten-year-old son, who helped around the ranch sometimes. But he’d been irritated this spring when Becca had announced she wanted an on-site therapist for their foundation. He wasn’t sure he’d gotten over that irritation, but he’d learned to deal with Monica the person.
Neither of them were here as regular people right now though.
“What am I supposed to do, just…walk in?”
Monica made a grand gesture. “Simple as that. Walk in. Grab a brush. I told Becca and Alex we’d handle the horse grooming this afternoon.”
Even though Alex had told Jack a little about how his sessions went, Jack still had this prevalent idea in his head of a couch in a corner and a shrink with a notebook. But Monica went straight to the horses they’d all used out on the ranch earlier in the day and got to work with grooming.
Jack could only follow suit. He grabbed the bucket of tools for his horse and started the tasks he’d learned only this spring. He may have grown up on a farm, but they’d never had horses.
Jack eyed Monica suspiciously, but she didn’t talk. She didn’t study him. She was doing nothing he expected a therapist to do. Her focus was all on grooming Becca’s horse, Pal.
“So, aren’t you going to ask me questions?”
“What kind of questions?”
Jack frowned. “I don’t know. About whatever we’re supposed to talk about.”
“Well, what would you like to talk about?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, wholly baffled. “Whatever I’m supposed to talk about.”
“There aren’t any supposed-tos, Jack.”
“Then how are you going to fix me?”
She raised her eyebrows at him over the back of the horse. “I can’t fix your PTSD.”
“Then why am I here?” he demanded, exasperation winning out over his confusion.
Monica took a few seconds of silence, as though she was considering the answer, but shouldn’t she have known? Wasn’t it her job to know?
“My job isn’t to be your life coach. It’s to listen to whatever you want to say or have to say. It’s to offer coping mechanisms if you’re having a particular issue, and it’s to maybe try to guide you a bit to your own epiphanies. But they have to be yours—your choices, your feelings. I can’t map them out for you.”
“That’s crap.”
She laughed good-naturedly. “Perhaps. But it’s working for Alex. So why don’t you tell me what changed your mind about this?” She waved a hand to encompass the stables. “You didn’t want me here.”
Jack scowled and focused on his horse. He hadn’t wanted Monica, or any therapist, here. Hadn’t thought it necessary. Sometimes, he still didn’t.
Then he remembered the bone-deep fear of watching Alex fall apart. Alex, their leader, a guy Jack had hero-worshipped in the beginning of his SEAL career, who’d devised this plan for them after the attack that had gotten them all removed from military life.
Even though the past few months had shown Alex getting better, Jack was still haunted by how gaunt and lost Alex had been.
Jack didn’t feel that bad off, but he knew he wasn’t right. He knew at some point he needed to find a purpose because, with each passing day, he felt like he had less and less of one.
“Alex is better,” Jack said, staring hard at the horse’s flank.
“He is. And you’d like to be?”
Jack ran the brush over his horse, focusing on the animal’s hair. “Yes.” He’d like to be, though he wasn’t sure he was ready for the work it would take to become better. Didn’t that take a certain amount of acceptance? He didn’t think he had acceptance in him. Not the driving force kind that Alex had found anyway.
“The first step is realizing it’s not a fix or a switch I can flip. Getting better is a process, and it’s not going to be comfortable or happen overnight. It’s hard, grueling work.”
“I was a Navy SEAL.”
“You were, and now you’re not.”
* * *
After a few weeks of sessions, no matter that they’d touched on a great many things—his military service, his childhood, his hopes for Revival—the words “you were, and now you’re not” repeated over and over in his head like a loop.
He felt worse after having talked to Monica a few times now, and that pissed him off, because he was supposed to be better.
He stalked across the yard from stables to house after another session, grumpy as hell and not in any mood to talk to Alex or Gabe, but they were both on the porch as if waiting for him.
“How’s it going?” Alex asked, leaning against the railing, failing at casual.
Jack merely grunted and shrugged. He hated that they both waited after every session and asked if he was okay, if things were okay. He wanted to pretend he’d never been so stupid as to think therapy could fix him.
But he still went to every session, and he still went to where Alex and Gabe were waiting after each one.
“It’s not easy. Nothing important ever is. Think of it like BUD/S training,” Alex offered with the kind of straightforward pragmatism Jack couldn’t help but appreciate, said in a sympathetic tone Jack wanted to burn to the ground.
