Eve felt the flare of temper, but Lawson quickly cooled it with a kiss. “I agree with him. On this,” he added. “He shouldn’t be Aiden’s father, and if you’re okay with it, maybe I should take the daddy thing...when Aiden or you need a daddy thing, that is.”
This certainly wasn’t the conversation she’d expected, but it was a good one. “I’d like that,” she said around the lump in her throat. “Aiden would like it, too.”
From the way Lawson swallowed hard, he might have also had a lump. “That would work out better if you were here in Wrangler’s Creek so I could see both Tessie and him.”
That lump just kept on growing, and with the afterglow of great sex, she would have agreed to anything.
Except...
This wasn’t about afterglows. Heck, this wasn’t even about sex. This was about Lawson. And coming home.
Being home.
“I’m staying,” she assured him, and it earned her a breath of relief and a kiss from Lawson. In that order.
After the breath and kiss, he put the boxes on her lap. “I was going to give you both. It’s sort of a choice,” he added.
A choice about what? But rather than ask that, Eve opened the first box and had a look for herself. It was a rodeo buckle. A shiny silver one. And while it was nice, it did have her raising an eyebrow.
“I’d given you a rodeo buckle before,” he explained. “Remember?”
Oh, yes. She remembered. “It was the first time I told you I loved you.”
He nodded. “Well, I thought the buckle could be a way of you choosing love. Just love.”
She wanted to point out that there was no such thing as just love when it came to kids and Lawson, but then he opened the second box, and she saw the ring. It was gold and had a little bitty diamond in the center.
“It’s a promise ring,” he explained. “It was a promise to love you and to be with you forever.”
As each word sank in, Eve felt the tears, but she blinked them back. This was the choice. She could have the “just love” rodeo buckle or she could have the whole shebang.
Eve wanted shebang. But she also wanted to make sure Lawson knew what he was getting into.
“I’m a package deal these days,” she reminded him. “Aiden and Tessie. You’d definitely have to do the daddy thing and do it full-time.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.” Lawson slipped the ring on her finger. “You need a microscope to see the diamond,” he added. “But the promise part of this ring was that I’d buy you something much better when we were adults.”
It was hard to blink back those tears now, but again a kiss helped. “There’s nothing better than this ring,” she assured him. It was the shebang plus. She looked at the ring again. “But isn’t this like a...commitment?”
Lawson smiled, gave her that look that would almost certainly lead to sex, and he hauled her onto his lap. “It damn well better be.”
*
Texas rancher Dylan Granger has always had
a way with women, but when life-altering news
brings the one who got away back home to Texas,
Dylan isn’t sure if his heart will ever recover...
Don’t miss
LONE STAR BLUES,
the next book in the
A WRANGLER’S CREEK NOVEL series,
by USA TODAY
bestselling author Delores Fossen!
COWBOY DREAMING
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER ONE
“UH...IS THAT, uh, our boss walking this way?” Josh Whitlock heard the new ranch hand ask.
While Josh dragged the saddle off the gelding he’d just ridden, he wondered why the heck the new hand, Tommie “Termite” Tompkins, had added those “uh”s to the question. After all, there was only one woman on the Applewood Ranch, and that one woman, Hope Applewood, was indeed the boss. So, seeing a female heading toward the barn shouldn’t have caused much confusion even from a hand who seemed proud of the nickname Termite.
However, when Josh threw a quick look over his shoulder, he saw the reason for Termite’s puzzlement.
Holy crap. It was Hope all right. But she didn’t look much like the boss of a successful ranch. Nope. For one thing, he could see some of her legs and thighs since she wasn’t wearing her usual crud-crusted jeans. She had on a dress that was red enough, and short enough, to stop speeding interstate traffic. It certainly stopped Josh and made him take a long look.
Oh, man.
Josh groaned. He was thinking thoughts that he darn sure shouldn’t be thinking about his boss. Like how it would feel to slide his hand under that little red dress and discover if she preferred cotton or lace when it came to her panties.
Actually, Josh wondered what it would be like to get her out of those panties, too. But then, that was a thought he was always fighting when it came to Hope. She was a looker all right with that honey-blond hair, fresh face and thunderstorm-gray eyes.
The rest of Hope’s “outfit” thankfully didn’t fuel the fantasies going on behind the zipper of Josh’s jeans. She’d paired that smoking-hot dress with what appeared to be a tablecloth that she was using for a shawl, and she had on cowboy boots. Not the fashion-statement kind of boots that city girls wore, either. These were the same ones she’d worn for the entire three years that Josh had worked for her.
“Uh,” Hope said as she stepped into the barn.
Apparently, “uh” was the preferred word of communication today, but Josh didn’t think it was aimed at him but rather Termite. “This is our new hand,” Josh told her. “Tommie Tompkins.”
“Termite,” Tommie corrected him, extending his hand for her to shake. “I used to chew on number-two pencils when I was a kid, and that’s how I got the name.”
She shook his hand, nodded, smiled, but shaking, nodding and smiling seemed to be the last things that Hope wanted to do right now. She seemed nervous or something.
Josh checked his watch. “You’re not out here to work, are you? Because you’re supposed to be getting ready for the party right about now.”
No need to clarify what party because it was indeed the party. An annual one put on by Wrangler’s Creek royalty, the Grangers. To the best of Josh’s knowledge, it was the only party that Hope ever attended, mainly because she saw it as a business obligation, but for the past three years, she’d worn the same black pants outfit.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to do—get ready,” Hope answered, and she volleyed a few glances between Termite and him. “Uh, I need some help,” she added to Josh. “Could you come to the tack room with me?”
Hope didn’t wait for him to answer. She took hold of his arm and started leading Josh in that direction.
“My date canceled,” she grumbled. “And Karlee, who was supposed to help me get ready, had to cancel, too, because she’s running late. Personally, I think that’s an excuse, and she just doesn’t want to face me. She tossed my pantsuit so I’d have to wear this dress she bought instead.”