“But what if I had?” She went up on her toes and kissed him.
“Then I guess your parents wouldn’t have needed to come out after all.” He turned her gently toward the others, and standing there in front of his family and friends were her mother and father, smiling at them. “There’s no time like the present, sweetheart. Let’s make it official.”
“Ohmygod.” She spun around and searched his eyes. “Now? You want to get married now?”
“More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.”
She leaped into his arms and kissed him like tomorrow would never come—and then she kissed him again, because not only would tomorrow come, but every tomorrow would be better than the one before, as long as the three of them were together.
—The End—
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Please enjoy this sneak peek of Destined for Love (The Bradens)
The Bradens are hot, wealthy, and wickedly naughty
Destined for Love Excerpt - Chapter One
REX BRADEN AWOKE before dawn, just as he had every Sunday morning for the past twenty-six years—since the Sunday after his mother died, when he was eight years old. He didn’t know what had startled him awake on that very first Sunday after she’d passed, but he swore it was her whispering voice that led him down to the barn and had him mounting Hope, the horse his father had bought for his mother when she first became ill. In the years since, Hope had remained strong and healthy; his mother, however, had not been as lucky.
In the gray, predawn hours, the air was still downright cold, which wasn’t unusual for May in Colorado. By afternoon they’d see temps in the low seventies. Rex pulled his Stetson down low on his head and rounded his shoulders forward as he headed into the barn.
The other horses itched to be set free the moment he walked by their stalls, but Rex’s focus on Sunday mornings was solely on Hope.
“How are you, girl?” he asked in a deep, soft voice. He saddled Hope with care, running his hand over her thick coat. Her red coat had faded, now boasting white patches along her jaw and shoulders.
Hope nuzzled her nose into his massive chest with a gentle neigh. Most of his T-shirts had worn spots at his solar plexus from that familiar nudge. Rex had helped his father on the ranch ever since he was a boy, and after graduating from college, he’d returned to the ranch full-time. Now he ran the show—well, as much as anyone could run anything under Hal Braden’s strong will.
“Taking our normal ride, okay, Hope?” He looked into her enormous brown eyes, and not for the first time, he swore he saw his mother’s beautiful face smiling back at him, the face he remembered from before her illness had stolen the color from her skin and the sparkle from her eyes. Rex put his hands on Hope’s strong jaw and kissed her on the soft pad of skin between her nostrils. Then he removed his hat and rested his forehead against the same tender spot, closing his eyes just long enough to sear that image into his mind.
They trotted down the well-worn trail in the dense woods that bordered his family’s five-hundred-acre ranch. Rex had grown up playing in those woods with his five siblings. He knew every dip in the landscape and could ride every trail blindfolded. They rode out to the point where the trail abruptly came to an end at the adjacent property. The line between the Braden ranch and the unoccupied property might be invisible to some. The grass melded together, and the trees looked identical on either side. To Rex, the division was clear. On the Braden side, the land had life and breath, while on the unoccupied side, the land seemed to exude a longing for more.