CALDER HAD NEVER worked so hard chopping wood in his life. But, he wanted to destroy something, make it match his insides, so chopping wood seemed as good of an option as any.
“That bad, huh?” Tanner was there, looking him over like a smug son of a bitch.
“Don’t you have somewhere better to be? I mean, honestly, you basically run the whole ranch, and I see you standing around snooping in my business more often than not.”
“I don’t have anywhere to be.”
“I could use some help,” Chloe said, coming out of the barn, with a horse on a lead. “There are stalls to muck,” she said pointedly.
“And that’s your job,” Tanner said.
“Well, if you don’t have anything to do, you could help me do it.”
“As it happens,” Tanner said, “I have a date.”
Chloe’s whole face turned red, and she turned on her heel, concealing her expression as quickly as possible. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll do it myself.”
Calder watched Chloe leave, and he thought about asking Tanner if he realized just how messed up the situation with her was getting. It would derail the train Tanner had coming for him, that was for sure.
But he didn’t want to make things tough for Chloe either.
“What the hell is up with you?” Tanner asked.
“I got dumped,” he said. “I would have thought that was pretty obvious.”
“Did you really want to take all that on?”
“Yeah,” Calder said. “I really did. I love her. It didn’t seem like a lot. It didn’t seem like a burden. It just seemed... Right.”
“Teenagers? A widow? That just seems like... A lot.”
“Yeah, well, I always figured if I ever fell in love it was going to be easy. It was going to be nice. More like what Dad found with Chloe’s mom. Not what he had with our mom. Not what he had with any of those other women he married. But this isn’t like any of that. I’d kill someone for her. For those girls. I’m obsessed with her. I don’t want anything but her. I want the hard stuff and the easy stuff. I want... Everything. And I didn’t know feelings like that existed.”
“I’d rather never have them.”
Chloe appeared again, right when Tanner said that, her eyes looking determinedly anywhere but at Tanner.
“What?” she asked.
“Do you agree with him?” Calder asked, because he was in a mean mood. “No love?”
She lifted a shoulder. “If I did fall in love, it wouldn’t be with a hardheaded rancher.”
Maybe Chloe wasn’t as much of a lost cause as he’d imagined.
Calder smiled, but Tanner’s face remained blank. “Good choice.”
He saw a car off in the distance, and when it drew closer, he recognized it.
His heart jumped up in his chest. Like he was a thirteen-year-old boy about to catch a glimpse of his crush.
Hell, when he had been a thirteen-year-old boy, the same woman had been his crush.
“Excuse me,” he said, abandoning his ax and his brother and stepsister, jogging toward the house as fast as he could. By the time he got there, she was just pulling her car to a stop.
Lauren.
“What are you doing here?” he asked as she got out.
When she looked up at him, her eyes were full of tears, her expression pleading. “I’m here for everything,” she said. “Because... That’s what you said I had to take. And that’s what I... It’s what I want. I want everything, Calder. Everything.”
“What changed?”
“Me. You’re right. That’s what needed to change. You are right that I—” she cleared her throat “—that I was punishing myself. I thought that I was just protecting myself, but it’s more than that. It’s deeper than that. I made a mistake, marrying Robert. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe life isn’t that simple, and I’m trying to make it too simple. I almost melted my brain last night trying to figure out... If he was wrong for me and you were right, then was anyone the one? And was any of what happened with him supposed to happen? Was all of that a life I wasn’t supposed to live?” She shook her head, a tear falling down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away.
“And then I just realized that it was that road that led me here. That marriage. It led me to this house, with my daughters. And it brought me to this point, as this woman.” She cleared her throat. “I had a talk with Savannah the night of the birthday party. She said something that I didn’t think about enough until last night. I have to trust that the woman I am now is different enough that I’m not repeating the same mistakes. But more than that, the woman I am now is the woman who was meant to love you. Who was meant to be loved by you. I’ll never know if the woman I was would have been right for you. But this woman, this woman I am right now... She is. She wants you. I want you. I love you. And I have to stop living my life as a monument to my mistakes. And start being grateful for where my choices brought me. Because right now, with you, with Ava and Grace and the house, I’m happy. I’m whole.”
“Lauren, your past matters to me. Because everything that built you matters to me. Everything you’ve been through, your pain, it matters to me. But what matters to me even more is your present. What matters even more is your future. Our future. It’s one we can build together. You don’t have to solve those questions by yourself. It doesn’t have to be simple. Not if we’re not alone.”
On a sob, she launched herself toward him, and his own heart squeezed in response. Dipped in his chest.
He held her. Just held her. And then she whispered in his ear. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
Over and over and over.
Not a curse. A promise.
A promise for the both of them. A promise for the future. A promise for better.
“I love you, too,” he said, brushing her hair out of her eyes.
“Is it too late for me to say yes?”
“It’s not too late for you to say anything. But yes to what specifically?”
“To the proposal. I want to be your wife.”
“That works out pretty well, then, because I want to be your husband.”
She held on to him tightly. “Good,” she said. “Because I wasn’t going to let you spend the night with the girls there unless we had a commitment.”
He laughed. “Is that the only reason that you said you’d marry me?”
“It’s not the only reason. But, it’s a damn compelling one, you have to admit.”
“It is.”
“How will that work? You live here, right? On the ranch?”
He nodded. “I do. But it’s just a small cabin. And I like your place just fine.”
“Well, you helped build it.”
“We built it together.”
Lauren smiled, and it made his heart feel full to bursting. “I have a feeling it’s just the first of many things we’ll build together.”
“You can count on it,” he said. “Whatever we do, we’re partners.”
“It’ll never be one-sided with us.”
He shook his head. “No. It’s you and me. Always.”
Lauren Bishop had been his ultimate fantasy when he was a boy. But she was better than a fantasy now, she was real.
And he wasn’t a boy anymore. He was a man, and he was going to spend the rest of his life being the man she needed.
He’d always known that she was beautiful, but he’d never dreamed she would become his happily-ever-after.
But that’s exactly what she was.