LEAH HAD NEVER been so glad—or so troubled—at the same time. She’d been in the stable when she got Aiden’s call, and she continued brushing down the horse she’d ridden that morning. Aiden could wait for her a few minutes if she was late getting to the stock tank.
Her life was about to change. King hadn’t lost Kingdom Come, but she wouldn’t be here to fight Matt over possession of it. She’d agreed to be a wife, which meant she would be living with her husband at the Lucky 7.
Presuming she didn’t back out of their bargain.
She wanted to trust Aiden, but she didn’t. She wanted to be with him, but she wanted them to live at Kingdom Come. That way, if he ever left her, she would still have the ranch.
Leah wished she believed in the fairy-tale version of happily ever after. That Aiden would never disappoint her again, that he would always be faithful, that he would never walk away from her.
She just didn’t. She’d been disappointed and betrayed and abandoned by loved ones in the past. It wasn’t that easy to shrug off a lifetime of negative experiences and believe that Aiden would turn out to be different.
She was scared. And wary. And wanted so badly to believe in him that she felt sick to her stomach.
The buckskin nickered, and she ran a comforting hand over its nose. “I know you’re hungry. I’m done. I’ll get you some oats and get out of your way.”
She drove the truck with the snowplow attached. The wind had drifted last night’s three inches of powder into eighteen across parts of the unplowed road.
Sure enough, Aiden was there before her. No wonder. He finally had what he wanted. She was the one being asked to step off a cliff and hope someone was there to catch her. She wanted to be married to Aiden and have his children. At the same time, she was terrified that he would walk away someday and leave her so devastated she would never recover.
Leah felt like a trapped animal. She’d heard a wolf would gnaw off its own foot to escape steel jaws. She felt equally desperate. What should she do? Which decision was the right one? Did she dare reach for happiness? Or was she just fooling herself?
Leah had no better idea of what she was going to say to Aiden now than she’d had when she answered his excited call early that morning.
Aiden didn’t wait for her to come to him. He came running toward her, yanking her truck door open and pulling her out and into his arms. He swung her around, a smile as big as Wyoming on his face.
“Put me down!” she protested.
“I can’t believe this is real.” He stopped swinging her long enough to kiss her with abandon. “Finally, you’re mine.”
She shoved at his shoulders, feeling panic at his possessive words and at her body’s avid response to his kiss.
This feels real. This feels like love. But what if I’m wrong? What if it’s just passion? What if he abandons me like my mother abandoned my father? She was happy at first, too.
Her fear overwhelmed her desire for a life with Aiden, and she kicked her booted feet until he released her. It seemed like she sank through the snow forever before she hit solid ground.
When he reached for her again she said, “Aiden, stop! We need to talk. Stop!”
She saw the sudden wariness in his eyes. And the love.
She held out her hands in supplication. “Please. Can we talk about this? I’ll be happy to celebrate—”
“You will? Really?” he said sarcastically. “You asked me to perform a miracle, Leah, and I did it. Now you’re acting like I should go away and leave you alone.
“We had a deal,” he said in a hard voice. “And I’m, by God, holding you to it! You’re my wife, and it’s time—past time—you acknowledged that fact to your family and mine.
“I want us to live together. I want to wake up with you in the morning and make love to you in my own bed. I want to make babies with you. I want us to raise a family and—”
“Don’t,” she said. His voice had softened, and she wasn’t unmoved by his entreaty. “Don’t say any more.” Tears glistened in her eyes and one spilled over.
In days gone by he would have offered comfort. But he stayed where he was, his hands stuffed in his pockets, probably to keep from reaching for her, while his jaw remained clenched.
“Tell me what I can do, Leah. Tell me what I can say to make things right between us. You can’t be this unforgiving. You can’t intend to hold one mistake against me forever.”
“All right.”
“All right, what? You’ll tell everyone we’re married? You’ll move in with me? What?”
“Did you tell your father we’re already married?”
His lips twisted cynically. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I wasn’t sure what he would do.”
“Then we have time, Aiden. Let’s take it. Let’s tell everyone, and I mean everyone, we’re dating.”
“Dating?” He pulled his felt Stetson off his head and swatted it against his jeans. “Dating?”
“It’s what people do to get to know each other better. It’ll give me a chance to learn to trust you again.”
He stuck his hat back on and yanked it low on his forehead. “We’re already married,” he shot back. “You’ve already said ‘I do.’ ”
“That was before I knew you’d tricked me into liking you.”
She saw him flinch when she used the word “liking” instead of “loving.”
“How do I know what my feelings for you really are?” she said. “How do you know what you really feel for me? You had as much to drink as I did before we decided to get married in a wedding chapel in Vegas. You must admit, that’s not the behavior of two rational adults.”
“I wasn’t drunk, and I wasn’t out of my mind, Leah. I love you. My feelings haven’t changed. What I want hasn’t changed.”
“If you love me, you’ll give me a chance to be sure that marriage to you is what I want.”
He looked sick, like he might throw up, at her suggestion that whatever love she might have felt for him no longer existed. He met her gaze and said, “I think you could learn everything you need to know about me more easily by living with me than by living apart from me.”
“I don’t agree.” She took a deep breath and said, “There’s something else.”
He looked at her, his heart in his eyes, like a man waiting for the ax to fall and end his life.
“Matt doesn’t own Kingdom Come yet. I don’t intend that he ever should. Married or not, I intend to manage the ranch when he’s gone.”
“You know the Lucky 7 will be mine eventually,” he said. “I need to live there.”
“I know.”
“How do you propose we resolve this little problem? Where do you suggest we raise our kids?” His lips twisted. “Assuming we’re married, of course.”
“When Kingdom Come is mine, and you have control of the Lucky 7, we’ll merge the two ranches.”
He looked stunned. “Our fathers—”
She interrupted in a steely voice, “Our fathers have messed up our lives plenty. I plan to consolidate my position and get my right to Kingdom Come in writing. Once you’ve done the same thing at the Lucky 7, what’s to keep us from doing whatever we want? There would be no question of you living at your ranch and me living at mine. We’d be living at ours.”
Aiden whistled. “You think big, little lady. By the way, my father thinks I’m wooing you.”
“You will be.”
“He wants you to live at the Lucky 7 when we marry. That’s his price for taking his foot off your father’s neck”
“I will. When it’s merged with Kingdom Come.”
“He’s going to want to see our courtship progress.”
“You can bring me to dinner. I promise to bat my eyes at you.”
He laughed. “I promise to be suitably impressed.”
She grabbed the lapels of his sheepskin coat. “I need you to be honest with me from now on, Aiden. You need to prove yourself trustworthy.”
“Just be aware that if you back off—if we end our relationship—my father will back off on his promise as well. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I hear you. I understand. But I can’t commit to a marriage I think will fail. Even to save my father.”
“Fair enough. Just tell me what I have to do to make you trust me again.”
She looked troubled. “I don’t know, Aiden. I guess we’ll just have to spend time together and see what happens.”
They had plenty to do while they “dated.” It could take months of planning to get legal possession of their respective ranches. Aiden would have to convince Angus to cede him the Lucky 7 sooner than his father might have wished. She would have to evict Matt and get King to transfer ownership of Kingdom Come to her. It wouldn’t be easy, but the result would give them both what they wanted.
She held out her hand and said, “Do we have a deal?”
He pulled off her glove and his own, then took her cold hand in his warm one. “Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you, Miss Grayhawk. I mean, Mrs. Flynn. You have a positively devious mind. And yes, we have a deal. I suggest we seal it with a handshake.” He shook her hand. “And a kiss.”
Leah warned herself not to let her emotions get out of control. It was only a kiss. But when Aiden’s lips touched hers, she felt as light as air. Her heart threatened to beat its way past her rib cage, and her insides did somersaults of joy.
Aiden broke the kiss before she was ready for it to end. He looked into her eyes and said, “You and I are more well-matched than you know, baby.” He winked and said, “I don’t give up on the things I want, either.”