“Could we just stand here like this until I can convince myself I’m not still back there in my hospital bed, dreaming I’m with you?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“You’re home,” Brynne assured him gently, rising onto the balls of her feet to plant a light kiss on his mouth.
He let his forehead rest against hers. “I’m with you. That’s what home means to me now, Brynne.”
“Funny,” she whispered, her amazing navy blue eyes misting over as she spoke, “but I feel the same way about you, Sheriff Garrett.”
He touched his mouth to hers, breathing his answer more than speaking it. “Hell of a coincidence, Bailey.”
She laughed, and the sound was the audible version of lying on his back on a Montana mountaintop, watching the northern lights fold and flex against a dark, star-strewn sky.
“I love you,” he said, and before she could answer, he kissed her.
It was their first real kiss in a long time, and it left them both dazed.
Another kiss followed, even more heated than the last, and Eli finally eased Brynne’s arms from around his middle, took her hand and led her to his bed.
Their lovemaking was passionate, since they were starved for each other, but it was profoundly tender, too. Sweet beyond anything Eli had imagined—and he’d imagined plenty—while he was recovering from his injuries.
After every pinnacle came a slow, delicious descent into drowsy contentment, soon followed by another climb.
At some point, Eli must have fallen asleep, and he awakened with a start, ribs aching a little, thinking he was back in the hospital.
Brynne stood beside the bed, wearing one of his T-shirts and nothing else. She switched on the lights and set a steaming bowl of chili on the nightstand, along with a plate with two thick slices of cornbread piled on it.
He was ravenous.
“Sit up,” Brynne told him, “and eat your supper.”
“Is there dessert?” he asked.
Brynne made a face, fluffed the pillows behind him when he did as he’d been told and sat up. “You’ve already had that,” she said, with mock primness. From her tone, never mind her angelic appearance, nobody would have known what a tigress this woman could be, under the right circumstances.
Under him.
“I’m a hungry man,” Eli drawled. “A very hungry man.”
“Behave or I’ll call your sister.” She sat down on the edge of the mattress. “Or Marisol.”
He laughed, took the bowl of chili in one hand and held the spoon with the other.
The stuff was delicious.
“What do you want to drink?” she asked.
Eli jabbed a chunk of cornbread into the chili and filled his mouth, rendering himself unable to answer, a man enjoying the first decent food he’d had in weeks.
“Milk’s good with chili,” Brynne suggested.
“Beer,” Eli managed.
“Scoundrel,” Brynne said, but she left the room, returning a couple of minutes later with an ice-cold can of brew.
Cord, J.P. and Dan had smuggled various emergency supplies into his hospital room, but the beer had been warm and the pizza cold.
Brynne joined him on the bed, leaning against the headboard, watching him eat and drink.
“I am a contented man,” he said.
“I suspected as much,” Brynne teased.
“Aren’t you going to eat?”
She shook her head. “Festus and I had our suppers two hours ago.”
He was surprised. “I’ve been asleep that long?”
“Contentment will do that to a man,” she observed, with a nod. “Also, getting smacked on the head with the flat part of a snow shovel.”
Eli winced, but he didn’t slow down on the chili—or the beer. The stuff was ambrosia, and Brynne was even better.
“I guess you know Gretchen Lansing is still in the psych ward, undergoing evaluation,” he ventured, between bites and gulps. “As I understand it, she’s been in a catatonic state from the first.”
Another nod. “Do you think they’ll find her fit to stand trial?” Brynne asked, straightening her long, beautiful legs. The sweatshirt barely reached the tops of her thighs, and Eli found himself pondering dessert again.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he answered, setting his empty bowl aside, along with the spoon. All that remained of the cornbread were a few crumbs and a butter-slick. “It’s probably safe to assume she’s full-out crazy.”
“Fred, Sr., has been by her side from the beginning, according to Marisol,” Brynne said. “He must love her, in his own strange way.”
“First decent thing I’ve ever known that man to do,” Eli remarked.
“No more beer tonight,” Brynne said, before he had a chance to ask for seconds. “It’s time for your meds.”
“Okay,” he conceded, because there was no arguing with this woman when she was right and she knew it.
Brynne fetched the pills and a cup of water.
Festus was with her when she came back to the bedroom.
Eli took the pills. He’d be glad when the prescriptions ran out, because he’d had about all the pharmaceuticals he could handle in the hospital, but he had to do what he had to do.
If he wanted to go back to work, he had to pass muster with Marisol.
And then there was the thing he wanted more: to ask Brynne to marry him.
He couldn’t do that when he was a semi-invalid. His pride wouldn’t allow it.
“I’ve been looking at properties,” Brynne informed him, out of nowhere.
That caught his attention. “Why?”
She drew a deep breath, let it out slowly and smiled. “Running Bailey’s isn’t the same, now that Mom and Dad are home to stay.”
Eli was careful, weighing the implications of Brynne’s sudden interest in real estate. He’d hoped to build on to this house, when and if she agreed to marry him, put up a barn and some fences and buy a few horses.
He’d thought they were on the same page, that they’d be together for the long haul. But maybe he’d been wrong, if she was looking at places to buy.
He frowned, pensive.
“What?” Brynne prompted, snuggling closer.
“You’re buying a house?”
She laughed. “No,” she replied. “Just a building. I need something to do, now that my career in the restaurant biz is winding down.”