The Cowboy's Bride, page 18
“Aha. I have no right to ask that. I know. I have no right to ask anything of you and I’m not. But—”
“Theo, I can’t really—”
“Wait. Don’t hang up,” he said, his voice going uncharacteristically desperate. “I wanted to—I need to explain about what happened. And to … apologize.”
“Thanks for that, Theo. But there’s really no need. What happened, happened. And in the end, it was for the best.”
A shocked silence stretched between them. “Do you really think that?”
She watched an airplane lift off from the runway and veer south. A contrail followed it and made her imagine all the lives aboard, leaving behind things that didn’t belong to them. “I don’t want to know why. Or when or how. I don’t need to know,” she surprised herself by saying. “All I know is that you and I would have been a mistake. You know it, too.”
“You’re probably right,” he said. “I was the one that made a terrible mistake. I admit that. And I was wrong. And wrong not to tell you. Gina is—well, I never expected her to—” He cut off the thought. “But, for the record, I did love you, Isabella.”
She had no answer for that and no stake in arguing the point anymore. “I sold the ring,” she told him unapologetically.
“It was yours to sell,” he said. “I gave it to you.” Again, silence stretched between them. Then, he said, “I guess I’ll always wonder if … from your end of things … well, if you ever really loved me? I mean before all that went down.”
Somehow, she knew he wasn’t blaming her for what happened. How could he? But he was right. She hadn’t really known before Will what real love should feel like. Even though it hadn’t worked out with Will, a new bar had been set by him. A bar she vowed now she would never allow herself to go below again.
“I thought I did,” she told Theo. “But not the way she apparently loves you, and you definitely didn’t love me the way I deserve to be loved. Whatever we had was never going to be enough for either of us. It all would have ended in some horrible divorce and neither of us wants that.”
A toddler with auburn curls ran up beside her as she stood at the window and grabbed her leg, belatedly looking up, only to realize she wasn’t her mother. Her actual mother came running over, apologizing in a whisper before swooping her child away. It made her smile, imagining that one day Will’s child would have that color hair.
She turned back to the runway, searching for distraction. “I hope you’re happy with her,” she said at last. “I mean that. And your baby. I wish you both the best. Really, I do.”
“Gina’s not speaking to me right now, either.” Theo’s voice was thick with some emotion even she had never heard before. “But that’s my problem. We’ll work something out. I never deserved you, Isabella. I hope you find what you’re looking for. And one day, you’ll be able to forgive me for what happened. Not just at the church, but all of it.”
“You want to hear something crazy? I do forgive you, Theo. For all of it. Because somehow, out of all that, I found myself. Really, for the first time, I know what I want. So, let’s both let it go. All right? Take care, Theo, okay?”
“You, too, Isabella.”
“One more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Delete my phone number?”
He exhaled a chuckle. “That’s the least I can do. Bye, Isabella.”
“Goodbye, Theo.”
For a long time after she ended the call, she stood, looking out the window feeling happy to have put all that behind her. Maybe she would pull it out to think about it sometimes, but the end of her and Theo wouldn’t sting like it had before. And that was a relief. She was cleaning the slates, getting ready for the new, whatever that was going to be.
The airline attendant announced the first group to board and people began to line up. She gathered up her bag and got in line. Outside the huge glass windows, the 737 waited, all shiny and ready to carry all of them off on some new adventure. She wanted that, too, even though she had no idea what that would look like.
Surely, they offered something to spike her coffee onboard. A little something in her drink wouldn’t hurt her feelings at all.
Behind her, she heard someone moving through the line, excusing himself again and again. She turned and her heart leapt at the sight of—
Will.
He was standing a few feet away, looking all fierce and broken at the same time. Torn between wanting to throw her arms around him and running onto the plane, she found she could do neither of those things.
Self-conscious now, she glanced at the crowd around her. “Wh-what are you doing here, Will?”
“I couldn’t let you just get on that plane without a word.”
“But … how are you … how’d you get through security?”
He held up a boarding pass. “I just bought a ticket. The first thing I could find a seat on. Not this plane because apparently you bought the last seat.”
“You … you bought a ticket to … Minnesota so you could say goodbye again?”
She heard an under the breath Awww from a couple in line near her. And others began to listen in.
“No, but I’ve done dumber things,” he said, not caring at all who was watching. “Like letting you drive away from the ranch without getting the chance to explain.”
“Explain what, exactly?” she asked, tamping down the hope rising in her.
The flight attendant was checking people in with a little ding-ding-ding and the line began moving forward. She moved with it. He followed.
“To explain myself and what you overheard this morning on the phone.”
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but what I heard seemed pretty clear to me,” she said, clutching her boarding pass as if it could protect her from the despair in his eyes.
“What I told Isaiah was just my own fear talking,” he said, forcing her to meet his gaze. “’Cause you and me, well, what happened is a little crazy, you’ve got to admit. And that feeling that the other shoe’s gonna drop is just something that’s etched into my DNA. I’m working on that. But Isaiah was right. Good things can happen when you least expect them. When you’re the least prepared for them.”
But none of that matters if you don’t want it to happen.
Ding-ding-ding.
She was nearly at the front of the line. She shook her head. “The plane’s boarding, Will. I have to—”
He grabbed her hand, seemingly not caring that everyone was staring at him. “I was trying to protect you with the lie to my family but also trying to protect myself. I’ve been trying damn hard not to get hurt again for a long time now. And at first, I thought I could do that with you, too.”
“I know that.” How could she not? He was afraid to let his own family love him. “But you never said—”
“I never said a lot of things. Like the truth to you or to my family about how I feel about you. And how the thought of you disappearing from my life—even after this short time together—feels impossible because … well, because I’ve fallen hard for you. I’m in love with you, Izzy. I love the way you stand up for what you want. And tell me off when I’m wrong. I love the way you make me laugh, the way you jump, feet first, into life. I love the way your eyes sparkle when you’re happy. I love all of you. And I should have said all that sooner. I heard you say it the other night and I was too damned scared to say it back, because I thought you wanted to go.”
Tears stung her eyes at his words. I didn’t. I don’t.
“But rebound or no, I found you because Theo didn’t have the good sense to love you the way you deserve to be loved. And I want to change that. Please don’t go, Izzy. Give us a chance. Stay with me.”
The brown-haired girl standing behind her swiped at her cheek and sighed. “How come nobody ever says stuff like that to me?” she whispered to her friend standing next to her.
Isabella’s throat tightened. She stepped out of the line and pulled Will aside. “It’s not that easy.”
“It can be. It can be that easy. Just say yes. We can go to Seattle if you want, if that’s what makes you happy.”
“This trip to Seattle wasn’t really about Seattle at all. It started out being all about getting as far away from my past as I could. But along the way, I ended up finding myself again. And you helped me do that. Because I’ve spent half my life—well, most of my life—trying to please everyone but myself. I was the good daughter or the good girlfriend. The one who didn’t make waves. I was always trying to prove myself worthy to them. Trying to justify who I am, why I am. But I can’t do that anymore.”
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me. Or anyone. Not your grandmother or my family either,” he told her.
She lowered her head. “But you never said you wanted this to be anything but temporary, even as things changed between us.”
“I saw you waiting for your documents in the mail every day,” he said. “I thought you wanted to go.”
She nodded. “I just wanted my things back. The only things that are truly mine. My independence. My choices. And in case things didn’t work out, I didn’t want to be a burden to you or your family. But I can see how that must have looked.”
He shook his head. “What happened between us happened because just for a minute we let go of all that stuff we don’t need anymore,” he said, taking her other hand. “All that crap that’s crushed old dreams and kept us from moving forward. But the risk here for me, I realized watching you drive away, isn’t loving you, Izzy. It’s losing you.” His jaw tightened. “I don’t want to lose you. But I want you to be happy. Whether it’s with me or not. But if you tell me that you don’t love me, that it was all a mistake, that I’m wrong about us—if you can honestly do that, then I’ll walk away. You can get on that plane and go find your life in Seattle. But if you can’t, Izzy, if you can’t say you don’t love me, then stay with me. Give us a chance.”
The last of the passengers were passing through the gate and the attendant was looking directly at her, waiting for her decision. If she got on that plane, she’d regret it for the rest of her life, because going forward without him wasn’t really an option for her either. Not because she needed him. No, it was more than that. Because finally, she knew where she belonged.
Over the loudspeaker, the attendant called last call for the flight. Izzy shook her head at the attendant at the security door and she closed it.
Tears filled her eyes as she looked back at Will who looked hopeful for the first time. She lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed him there. “You probably don’t know this, but I kinda fell in love with you the moment you broke that JUST MARRIED sign over your knee, tossed it to the curb, and stood up to Theo. And when you put your jacket over my shoulders in that limo and when you held me in that awful motel, I knew. Against all odds, I met you at the craziest moment of my life and you made everything suddenly make sense. And no. I don’t want to go forward without you either. I don’t care about Seattle or if I’m your rebound or you’re mine. It doesn’t matter how we found each other. It only matters that we did. So, yes, Will. Yes. I’ll stay with you. Let’s go back and make a life together.”
His smile grew and he pulled her close and kissed her. “Thank God,” he murmured against her mouth. It was a permanent kind of kiss, the kind that made her knees go weak and her heart swell. He pulled her up against him, his fingers in her hair, his kiss full of all the things he’d tried to say and all the things he’d left unsaid.
Behind them their uninvited audience of airline attendants began to applaud. They pulled apart then and, embarrassed, she sent them a final smile over her shoulder as they walked away from the gate, hand in hand.
She rested her cheek against his shoulder. “Your family must think we’re—”
“Don’t you worry about them,” he said. “They’re all nuts about you. The lie I told them—which turned out not to be a lie after all—is on me, so they have to forgive me. Or…” he added optimistically, “they’ll dump all their chores on me for months to come as payback.”
“Hmm. And you might just deserve that,” she whispered in his ear.
He grinned back. “Well, love, if you really want to teach me a lesson, I can think of other, more creative ways.”
“Oh, really,” she said, breathlessly. “I bet you can.”
With his arm around her shoulder, he laughed and gave her a gentle squeeze. “What do you say? Let’s go home.”
That word, home, had always been a loaded word for her. But now, for the first time in her life, she began to imagine herself belonging—in the home that they’d make together and in the love they’d share with his family.
This, she thought—this was how it should feel, this complicated, crazy thing called love. Not full of doubts or fear, but a knowing that it felt absolutely right and true.
Because here Will was, with his arms around her reminding her that, for the record, she’d always believed in love.
The End
If you enjoyed The Cowboy’s Bride, you’ll love the other books in…
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The Canaday clan is like so many modern families today: blended, flawed and full of love for each other. The series follows the Canaday sisters—Olivia, Kate and Eve—strong yet vulnerable women who have careers and challenges that most of us face as they search for balance in their lives. As is also so often true, their strengths are also their weaknesses when it comes to finding and recognizing true love when it knocks on their door.
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About the Author
Barbara Ankrum has a thing for the West and has written both historical and contemporary romances, all set in that magical place. Twice nominated for RWA’s RITA Award, her bestselling books are emotional, sexy rides with a touch of humor. Barbara’s married and raised two children in Southern California, which, in her mind, makes her a native Westerner.
Visit Barbara’s website BarbaraAnkrum.com
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Barbara Ankrum, The Cowboy's Bride
