Chapter Twelve
Getting Casey to visit was easier than she’d thought it would be. All she had to do was phone and ask. He’d booked his flight before he’d got off the phone, and arranged to arrive the following day around midday, travel willing. Rowan told everyone at dinner that he was coming and Lenore, lovely Lenore who’d talked and coaxed and told Rowan her own life story and who Rowan had nothing but respect for … Lenore said she and Mab were heading into town for supplies. Her father, unasked, said he had things to do in town too so he’d drive them. It meant privacy and one less worry in the form of confrontation between Casey and her father and for that Rowan was grateful.
“How are you going to tell him?” Lenore asked as she passed the potatoes, and Rowan laughed a little because this was the level of openness Lenore and Mab had brought to her life and she cherished it and craved more.
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“Don’t start by telling him you’re off to a rough start,” her father offered gruffly. “That one’s a kicker.”
“I won’t.” Lesson learned.
Her father had since revealed her mother’s pregnancy histories. The rough first trimesters and the settling in the second and the blossoming in the third. Her mother had bled out. A torn placenta close to term and medical help too far away. Her father had kept all the medical records; they’d been filed under N for no and he’d brought them out and talked and talked. Rowan had learned more about her mother in one night than she had in twenty-four years, her strong and silent father splitting himself open the better for them to mine any bit of information that could be of use, and it had hurt him but he’d done it.
For Rowan and the baby in her womb.
“How did you tell Jock?” Rowan asked Lenore.
“You don’t want to do it that way either,” said Lenore dryly.
“You tell Casey how you feel about him first. That’s what I’d want,” Mab said quietly. “’Cause there are two issues to think about here. Whether you love him. And how you feel about having his baby. Then whether you want to be a family. That’s three things,” Mab amended.
“That’s my boy.” Lenore’s smile was soft and proud.
“Aaw, you made your mama cry,” Rowan teased, and Mab shot his mother a startled glance.
“Mom, don’t. Stop.” He looked helplessly toward her father. “Why?”
“So what does Mab stand for?” asked Rowan between smiles.
“Macallister Ahtunowhiho Beowulf Morgan,” said Lenore with relish.
Mab blushed beetroot red. “Again with the why?”
“Family names, all of them, and all of them beautiful.” Lenore smiled unrepentantly.
“They’re going in the naming box,” said Rowan. “All of them and Lenore too.” Because they’d both made this so much easier than it could have been.
“Casey’s been hauled over the coals again for not being committed to the tour,” her father said. “He won’t be riding next year, even if he wants to.”
“But, what?” She’d heard nothing. “Why? Did you have anything to do with this?”
“No, but you did. He nearly missed his ride, taking care of you. If you hadn’t been okay he wouldn’t have ridden at all. They say he’s too distractible.”
“Shows what they know,” said Lenore scathingly. “Where are their family values now?”
“He also got fined for an incident involving me and him at the chute before a ride.”
“No wonder you want to come into town with us,” said Lenore. “But keep going. Confession is good for the soul. What else do we need to know?”
“I argued against both the fine and the ruling for next year.”
“Would you like applause?” said Lenore, but her father ignored her and focused on Rowan.
“He can be a vet anywhere once he finishes his studies. Even here. Start his own business, be his own man, but do it here. With you. What I’m trying to say is give him a chance and plenty of options to be going on with. He might be shocked speechless, he might not. It’s a lot to take in, but I know what I saw on his face when he carried you off. It was terror. Nothing but you and only you, the end of his world right there in his arms. And I do know how that feels.”
*
Casey turned off the road and drove beneath the ironwork arch declaring the ranch Harper Bucking Bulls. He was in Northern Wyoming and already calculating the distances from this place to Montana. Not as far as he’d thought. Not that far away and maybe …
His world was full of maybes these days and one of those maybes involved the reason behind Rowan’s continued absence from the tour. Mab was gone too. Joe Harper had returned home and that was the clincher.
If Rowan hadn’t phoned and invited him to come he’d have hightailed it here regardless, because something was wrong and maybe, just maybe, it had to do with fainting and lack of appetite and a reason for that that didn’t involve a stomach bug.
No one was saying she was pregnant, not in front of him, but it was on his mind and the minds of others, and if she was … God. If she was pregnant, the last she’d seen of him was him swearing off children forever.
And that was all kinds of wrong.
Fear had driven that statement. His total inability to absorb what he’d been feeling and handle it rationally rather than with a gut response for it to stop.
He’d do whatever she wanted, whatever it took in order for him to remain a part of her life. More riding, although he’d screwed that well and good. Another tour. A different tour. No tour at all and a job here in Wyoming. Get sponsored to finish his education in pieces. Give him a chance and he’d sort it, and the Harper ranch was quality acreage, no doubt about it. No wonder she was invested. He would be too if this was half his and likely to be all his one day. A family legacy, built and paid for by years of hard toil and sacrifice. He didn’t have to be part of it, but he sure as hell wanted the chance to work around it.
The barn was a mansion. The main house was almost as big. Both were orderly and somewhat bare around the edges. There was no whimsy here. He parked out front of the house and headed left, as directed. Rowan’s quarters were to the left of the main double doors. Walk the porch, go around the corner—this was her part of the world.
A tiny, mostly bare rose had been planted in the middle of the grass lawn that ran this side of the house, the earth still bare around it. So new it hurt to look at, because his mother planted roses, one for every family pet that died, and if that was a death rose what was beneath it? Rowan had never spoken of pets.
Rowan had never spoken about a lot of things.
His footsteps were loud as he walked the planks of the porch and stopped at the door that another set of steps led up to. He knocked, loud in the silence, but the beating of his heart seemed louder still.
She came to the door and opened it, and one of his concerns fell like a weight from his shoulders because Rowan was standing; Rowan looked well, good color in her cheeks and a smile on her lips.
“You made it,” she said, and there was a lot going on in her eyes. Hesitation. Shyness. Fear. And welcome.
“Your directions were good.” He leaned down to kiss her, lips, no hands, so she could pull away if that was what she wanted, only she didn’t pull away. She opened to him, sweet as nectar, and he needed no second invitation as he deepened the kiss and got lost.
“You missed me,” she said, when finally she pulled back. He still hadn’t touched her anywhere else, and his body near vibrated with the effort of holding back.
“So much.”
She was hovering halfway between inside and out.
“May I come in?”
“Can we—” She hesitated and her gaze slid past him to the view of the barn and the rolling hills and the higher ones on the horizon. “Can we sit on the steps and talk first?”
So he sat with her on the steps and stared at the rose and something was coming but he didn’t know what.
She sat close enough for their shoulders to brush, so she wasn’t against his touch, but her eyes were on the horizon and her hands were clasped around her knees and her knuckles were white.
Small hands but there was strength in them—and sinew.
“So this is my home, and I’m beginning to appreciate it more and more,” she began. “What it could be if someone decided to stay here and love it the way it should be loved. I have you to thank for that, or maybe your mother and Mab’s mother too. She’s been staying here and doing things. Fixing things up the way I’ve never thought to, but that’s not what I wanted to talk about, not really. It’s only part of it. I’m not rejoining the tour. I’m done with it.”
“Why?”
“Long time coming?” she replied with a lilt to her voice that made it a question. “But that’s not where I wanted to start. Can we start again?”
He looked at the rose and the freshly dug earth and swallowed. “Sure.”
“I love you. You should know that straight up. I fell in love with you that first morning at breakfast when I bolted my food and you pushed yours aside, half finished, and asked if I was ready to go shopping.”
“I fell in love with you when you scolded a bad-tempered bull as if it were a piddly puppy and then proceeded to feed him slices of pumpkin from your pocket. Wasn’t a puppy, Ro.” Casey smiled at the memory. “I fell in love with you even more when some supermodel type criticized your working-woman hands and you shoved them in your pocket and walked away. I wanted to follow.” He took a deep breath and turned to look at her profile. “I had a quiet yet raging epiphany when you fainted on me. I’d follow you anywhere.”
“I’m pregnant.”
He closed his eyes, awash with relief. No loss buried beneath that bare little rose. “Good.”
She sagged against him, her bony shoulder digging into his arm, and it was familiar enough to be comforting but if he reached for her now he wouldn’t get to say what he needed to say and they had to talk.
“You told Huck you didn’t want kids.”
“That was fear talking. Cowardice. I can’t imagine feeling more vulnerable about children than I feel about you. It’s too big already. I couldn’t even imagine it. That depth of love.”
“I’m drowning too,” she murmured. “Want to go down together?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll come with you if you want me,” she said next. “To Davis, California, while you finish your studies. To Washington State. I want us to be together, but after that I want us to be here. I want to raise my family here, not on the road. I want to build my life here. With you. You could build your practice here. Arrange things so Harper Bucking Bulls doesn’t swallow you whole.”
“I can do that.”
“There’s more.”
How could there possibly be more?
“Mab and his mother are shifting here too. She’s a bookkeeper. She’s going to be keeping our accounts, going forward. We’re combining stock operations with Jock Morgan and taking on a third business partner.”
“Mab?”
“Mab’s mother, until he’s old enough. They’re good people. And Jock won’t be around to look after them. My father gets the son he’s always wanted and I get to pull back and concentrate on taking care of myself. Because there’s more.”
Dear Lord.
“It’s a high-risk pregnancy. I’m small and underweight and can barely keep anything down but it’s getting better. I’m resting a lot and taking good care.” Her hand crept into his and he squeezed and brought it to his lips and vowed not to fall apart in front of her.
“Okay.” Her hands weren’t soft like some. They were calloused, same as his. “But if it comes to a choice you should know I’ll always choose you. Write it on your heart, because it’s written on mine.”
“College boy with the fancy phrases,” she whispered.
He could say plain words too. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“Will you marry me?” He wasn’t on his knees but she wasn’t standing up either.
“When?”
“Soon.” As soon as possible. “Vegas.” End of the tour, beginning of a whole new world.
“What if you don’t win there?” He’d get there; they both knew that. “You’ll be cross.”
“No I won’t. I’ll be with you.” Now he could reach for her, pull her into his lap and hold her and never let her go. “I’ve already won.”
“Then yes,” she whispered against his lips. “I’ll marry you.”