“Because walking away from this—from you and me—it shouldn’t be easy. If it is, then maybe you don’t actually feel the way I thought you felt. Call me crazy, but I thought you were falling for me, too.”
Seth’s dark eyes didn’t match the growing detachment in his voice. They were wild, insistent, searching hers for any hint of reciprocation. All Josie could do was shut hers completely to keep from exposing her entire heart to him right there on the roadside.
“I don’t want to come between you and your family anymore, Seth,” she resigned.
“My family is a mess, but you have nothing to do with that. We’ve been a mess for a long time now. Some of that is my fault; some isn’t. But none of that is on you,” Seth said. “But pretending to be a family with you? That was the first time I’ve ever truly felt at home at the ranch, Josie. You felt like home to me.”
Josie looked back at her fifth wheel hooked up to Darrel’s truck. She thought that if she carted it off of the property, everything would be fixed. That was the joy of having a mobile home. Home was wherever you hauled it.
But that didn’t explain the homesick tug in her gut that increased with each mile she drove in the opposite direction of the ranch. In the opposite direction of Seth.
“I don’t know what to do Seth,” she admitted after a weighty pause. “How do we even do this? Where do we even start?”
Hope as bright as the sun burst onto his handsome face, he stepped close, and he wrapped her in the security of his strong embrace when he asked, “How about with a first date?”
Epilogue
The trailer door crashed open.
“Josie! Josie, where are you?”
She had to laugh. It wasn’t like the trailer had many hidden places to search. She spun around under the showerhead’s misty spray and called out, “I’m taking a shower!”
With the same enthusiasm he’d entered the trailer with, Seth threw open the bathroom door. It slammed into the thin wall behind it, likely leaving a dent.
“Whoa! Careful!” Josie spat.
“Only another week until the house is done,” he justified. He flapped something in his hand. “Look, Josie. It finally came!”
She rubbed her palm on the glass shower door like a windshield wiper. “What came?” A fuzzy outline of her husband filtered into view. He held a large, white envelope that looked all kinds of official. “Oh! Is that your acceptance letter?”
“Let’s hope.”
He ripped the top of the envelope open while Josie turned around to shut the water off. She gathered a pile of her hair and wrung it out.
“Get out of there so you can open it with me,” he insisted.
“Just give me a moment, will you?” Josie teased as she cracked open the shower door and jutted out a hand. “And give me that towel, too.”
Seth cast a sly look at the waiting towel that hung on a hook behind him. “Nope.”
“Come on, Seth. Give me the towel. I’m freezing.”
“I can think of a better way to warm you up.”
Josie rolled her eyes. They’d been married for over a year and were coming up on the expiration date of the term newlywed, but that did nothing to squelch their passion for one another. “The towel?”
“After I open this.” Seth’s fingers dipped into the envelope and pulled out a stack of papers that were typed on fancy letterhead. His eyes roved wildly over the sheets and Josie tried to read his body language but couldn’t interpret a thing.
“What is it, Seth?”
He tossed the papers into the air. They spiraled down to the bathroom floor like confetti.
“I got in!”
Josie gasped. “You got in?”
“I got in! I’m going to veterinary school, Josie!” He yanked on her arm and pulled her from the shower. Her slick skin pressed against his shirt and he spun her around, pinning her up against the wall. He nipped at her neck and groaned low in his throat.
“Seth!” She swatted him. “Let me get dressed.”
“I think I’m the one who should get undressed,” he teased with the most enticing, devilish look in his chocolate eyes. “We have some celebrating to do.”
The house was perfect. A little porch that could fit two rocking chairs, maybe three. A large baker’s kitchen that Seth had already put to use the day before to make cookies for Gramm’s eighty-fifth birthday. Four bedrooms, two and a half baths. And a gorgeous brick fireplace. That was Josie’s only real request when they drew up the plans. Well, that and her insistence that Seth always stoke the fire shirtless. That sight did all sorts of things to her, harkening back to that night when she first fell for him, when he’d ignited something within her that she didn’t even knew could exist.
“Can you believe all of this is ours?” Seth wove his arms around Josie’s middle and dropped his chin to her shoulder. He gazed out the window above the kitchen sink and took in the sight of their newly purchased Riverburn acreage.
She let the dish she had been washing slip from her hands back into the sudsy basin and spun around in the circle of his arms. “I can’t believe all of this is mine,” she said, her mouth hovering just above his lips.
“Oh, you better believe it.”
His mouth came over hers in a kiss that made her knees sag. He pulled back. “What’s on your agenda for today?”
“I promised Gramm I’d go into town to grab a few items she’ll need before she and Gus set out on their road trip tomorrow. I still can’t believe they’re heading across the country with my trailer in tow.”
“I can’t believe she would want to be trapped in a vehicle with that cranky, old man for over a month.”
“Seth, I think she plans to be with him for much, much longer than that.”
Seth’s chin pulled into his neck. “They’re not just friends?”
“Um, no. Are you blind? I caught him with his hand on her backside at her party. And I think she liked it.”
Seth plunged his fingers into his ears. “I do not want to hear that about my Gramm.”
Josie laughed but buttoned her lips. Gramm had been nothing short of a godsend to them and they had her to thank for many of their recent blessings, most notably their little patch of land to call home.
When Seth’s parents had filed the insurance claims relating to the barn fire, it somehow triggered a little more investigation into the rightful ownership of the farm. As suspected, nothing Donna or Mitch had done was legally aboveboard, which came as no surprise to Seth and Josie. The deed had always remained in Gramm’s name, that was until she accepted the highest offer in an all out bidding war that had the town in a tizzy.
The Ford Cattle Company was officially no more, and while Josie assumed Seth would be sad about that reality, he had very little reaction to it at all.
“It was never in my blood,” he had explained to Josie the night Gramm signed the paperwork and gave the new owners the keys. “Cattle ranching isn’t the legacy I want to continue, and I’ve come to realize that’s okay. I’m ready to forge my own path with you right by my side.”