Boone couldn’t believe the beautiful sound that flowed from Nicole’s body. She didn’t even seem to be trying, and he knew he’d never truly heard her sing around the clinic. That had been muttering. Maybe even just her normal speaking voice compared to the joy pouring from her.

He moved to stand in front of her, and he found the happiest expression in her eyes he’d ever seen on a human being. She finished the song, the last note still bouncing around his fourteen-foot ceilings.

He sucked in a breath, swept into her personal space, and took her face in his hands. He had no words to express how he was feeling in that moment. So he didn’t speak. He just kissed her, kissed her, kissed her.

As he did, he fell a little bit more in love with her. He embraced the emotions, because he’d never truly felt them before, and he liked the way they made him feel warm, and happy, and like he didn’t have to win a marathon or save an entire herd of cattle to be worthwhile.

“You are magnificent,” he whispered when he pulled away. He smiled down at her, letting everything he felt for her stream from him.

“I have terrible stage fright.” Her words barely reached his ears.

Boone stepped back and around her to the pizza. He flipped open the box and lifted out a piece of all-meat pizza. “You know, I don’t think you do.”

She sidled up next to him and glared. “Oh yeah? You know how I feel now?”

He took a bite of his pizza, the conversation he’d had just before she arrived bouncing around in his brain. He needed to tell her about it, but this seemed more important. “Of course not,” he said. “But I think you’re so used to being overlooked that you think you deserve it.”

He bit off the corner of his pizza and chewed while she gaped at him. He didn’t want to drive her away, and heaven knew he didn’t like it when his father tried to tell him how he felt, as if Boone couldn’t make sense of his own emotions.

He leaned closer, hoping she heard what he was going to say. “But I see you, Nicole. I always have, even when you weren’t very nice to me.” He took another piece of pizza, put it on his plate, and parked himself on the couch in front of the TV.

He’d left the conversation open for her to really tell him why she had treated him badly in the beginning, but she didn’t. She’d pushed through one door, but expecting her to throw open two was probably too much for a single evening.

He sighed and said, “You deserve to be up in that choir stand, singing the solos.” He bypassed the sports channels in favor of the cooking show he knew Nicole liked.

Nicole joined him, way down at the other end of the couch from where he wanted her. “I don’t think you know me as well as you think you do.”

“I know how you like your coffee in the morning, and that it’s not the same in the afternoon. I know you eat a chicken chop salad for lunch every Tuesday. I know you’re worried about your mama and feel absolutely worthless to help her or your dad. Should I go on?”

She gestured for him to do so, as if the things he knew about her were easily obtained. But Boone had probed, observed, and listened to learn everything he had about Nicole.

“I know you have a short temper, but hardly anyone gets to see it. I know—”

“Stop it.” She put her pizza on the end table next to the couch and picked up the throw pillow his designer had matched with the furniture. “Stop—it—right—now.” She punctuated each word with a whack from the pillow, a huge smile on her face.

“I’m apparently the only one on the receiving end of the temper.” He grabbed the pillow on her next swing and laughed, pulling her onto his lap. “I’ll admit, I kinda like it.”

She squirmed in his arms, but he held her fast. “You do?”

The moment lengthened, and Boone didn’t know how to make her believe that he liked her. Kissing her didn’t seem to do it. Maybe saying it outright would.

“Yes, Nicole. I like you.”

A smile bloomed on her face slowly, like one of her midnight orchids she’d told him about. He saw each ray of happiness as it touched her face, and he ran his fingers through her hair.

Her eyes closed, and Boone touched his lips to hers for only a moment. “I got a phone call a few minutes ago I wanted to talk to you about.” His stomach rejected the food though he hadn’t eaten for hours, and he forced himself to lay very still.

Nicole opened her eyes and looked at him, a hint of anxiety in her expression and her voice when she asked, “Who called?”

“A veterinary friend of mine—Doctor Drew. He’s starting a veterinary practice in Amarillo, and he wants me to be his partner.”

Her beautiful eyes rounded and her earlier emotion bled into shock. Her hands stilled on his shoulders. “What are you going to do?”

He exhaled. “Two months ago, I would’ve been packed by now and on the road in the morning.”

“You don’t like your job here?”

“I love my job here.” He kissed her quick on the lips. “Before though, the office administrator would’ve helped me pack in the blink of an eye, glad to be rid of me.”

Regret lanced through her expression. “I thought you were making my job more difficult on purpose.”

“Why would I do that?” he asked as she relaxed into his embrace, thinking he was finally going to get some answers.

“I could barely read what you wrote half the time.”

“That’s because I have dyslexia.” Boone had been wondering when he’d tell her, and the words had just appeared, the conversation easier than he’d thought.

She straightened again, her eyes searching his. “I—I don’t know what to say.”

“You’re the only person outside of my family who knows.” He stroked her hair away from her face again, and then again. “Do you want to help me pack and boot me to Amarillo?”

He prayed with everything inside him that she’d say no. For the first time in his life, he felt like he’d found somewhere he wanted to stay, with someone he wanted to stay with.

She shook her head, which sent relief cascading through him. “No.” She slipped off his lap but stayed next to him on the couch. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” He sighed and picked up the discarded pillow, replacing it on the end of the couch where Nicole had originally sat. “It’s a good opportunity, but I’m—I think I’m finally happy here.”

“You weren’t before?”

“There was this Nazi office administrator who—”

“All right.” She looked at him and laughed. “I was really awful, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, you were.” He finished his first slice of pizza. “And I think there’s more to it than just transferred anger from your siblings, for the official record.”

“You think you’re so smart. That’s one reason for my attitude right there.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so. I’ve never seen you give anyone as hard of a time as me.”

“That’s because you took my job.”

All the air rushed out of the Boone’s lungs. “What? How? There wasn’t a veterinarian in town before I came here. The clinic was going to close.”

She folded her hands in her lap and looked at them. “Exactly. I’d been taking online business classes, and I was going to buy the animal hospital.”

Boone had no idea what to say. “No one told me that. There wasn’t another offer on the table when I offered on the clinic.”

“I know.”

“Hey.” Boone reached for one of her hands and slipped his fingers between hers. “Can you look at me? Talk to me about this.”

She shook her head, her mouth a tight line, and lifted her eyes to meet his.

Helplessness filled him at the pain that swam in her green depths. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I—” He didn’t know what to say.

He’d come to Three Rivers for a couple of reasons, only one of which was the animal hospital. He hadn’t told her about the other one quite yet, and he wondered what she’d think of him then.

Before they started dating, he would’ve taken the knowledge of the misdiagnosis to the grave. But now…now he trusted her and wanted her to know everything about him. The good, the bad, and the painful.

“You just seemed to soar into town on your white horse,” she said. “And save the hospital. Everyone talked about you like you were God himself.” Nicole’s eyes stormed and her bottom lip shook the teensiest bit. “It was easier to dislike you,” she admitted. “Until….”

“Until what?”

“I had myself convinced you were a monster until that day in the dog park.”

Boone remembered the first time he’d looked at Nicole with the thought that he’d like to get to know her better. “That was a great day, wasn’t it?”

She finally allowed a smile to cross her face. “It was a pretty great day. Today doesn’t feel like a great day, though.” She turned toward him, a muscle in her jaw jumping. “I don’t want you to go to Amarillo.”

“Well, I’m going,” he said. “There’s a marathon in February I’ve been training for.” He tossed her a grin and took a huge bite of pizza while she shook her head and laughed under her breath.

“You’re impossible,” she said.

“Now, the veterinary job is up in the air,” he said. “I mean, I have this great house. A job I love. A gorgeous girlfriend….” He glanced at her to judge her reaction.

A smile brightened her face, and Boone tucked her into his side. “I think I should just stay right here for a while. What do you think?”

“I like you right here, yes,” she said, and Boone spiraled a little further down the pipeline toward being all the way in love with Nicole Hymas.

The opportunity to be a partner at an animal hospital in a bigger city rolled around in his head as a celebrity chef made a double chocolate cake on the screen in front of him.

He’d have to tell Cash Drew something, but a flat-out no didn’t feel quite right. He pulled Nicole closer, the thought of leaving her absolutely wrong too.

A week later, Boone arrived at Nicole’s a full two hours before the wedding was supposed to begin, but there was already a pile of cars taking up the street. So he parked down the block a ways and flung his garment bag holding his tuxedo over his shoulder. He wasn’t planning on getting dressed for a while, but when he stepped into Nicole’s house and found her bustling around the kitchen in a bright pink party dress, he wondered if he’d gotten the time wrong.

“Hey,” he said, stepping into the narrow space and pulling her into him. “Mm.” He kissed her, tipping her back until she giggled and swatted at his shoulder.

“That is not proper behavior for a wedding,” she said as he brought her back to standing.

“I think it’s exactly what people do at weddings,” he said. “They dance, they kiss, they go home happy.” He lifted the garment bag. “Should I change now? I thought we were finishing the decorations and then fading into the background.”

“We are, but then the bride called and asked if she could use my oven to keep some appetizers warm.” She arranged tiny little meatballs on a sheet tray, her fingers working double time.

“Why are you doing this in such a sexy dress?” He slid behind her in the tiny kitchen and put his arms around her waist, bending to touch his mouth to the nape of her neck.

She laughed and squirmed away. “Stop it. I’m busy here.”

“I can see that.” He chuckled, moved back into the living room, and draped his bag over the back of her couch. “I’ll go check the backyard.”

“The lights need to be strung in the orchard,” she said as he passed her again. “I ran the extension cord already. The lights are on the patio table.”

“Lights on the patio table,” he repeated and stepped into the backyard. The scene beyond her fence showed one of the most beautiful evening skies he’d ever seen, deep with blue and purple and pink. He took a deep breath and sent a prayer of gratitude for this life he had now.

He thought he’d been happy before, but he’d never known as much joy as he’d experienced in the few months he’d been dating Nicole.

He strung the lights, humming the song she’d sung for him a few weeks ago. He started singing the lyrics, his bass voice nowhere near the right octave. “I feel pretty….”

“You are pretty.” Nicole burst into laughter as she joined him in the orchard.

“Almost done,” he said. “What’s the song for today?”

She slanted a wary look at him. “Want to guess?”

“Sure. Give me a few lines.”

She sang the rock lyrics in a rough voice, a slight accent in there he couldn’t place.

“Livin’ on a prayer. Classic.” He burst into laughter. “Eighties hair band,” he said. “How do you know that song?”

“Remember how all my siblings are ages older than me? That’s how.”

He brought her close for a kiss and started to sway with her, joining his voice to hers in a slower, softer version of the song. She practically yelled the last line. She trilled out a laugh, and Boone spun her through the grass.

He brought her close again and held her against his body. “I think you’re amazing, Nicole.”

She froze, her eyes lit by the tiny fairy lights and making her seem softer and more beautiful than ever. He leaned down and kissed her until the fear in her touch evaporated.

But he’d definitely need to figure out what it took to get her to believe that he liked her, because he was already several steps down a path that led to love when it came to Nicole Hymas.