“Right?” Ginger nodded toward the chair she’d been sitting in. “I was just getting my payroll done.”
“Go finish it,” Nate said. “I’ll go sit with Connor.” He pressed his lips to her temple, and Ginger stepped over to the chair and picked up her tablet. Nate stepped out into the sun and said, “Connor, show me how you float on your back.”
Later that night, after they’d packed and loaded Ginger’s truck, after they’d driven back to Hope Eternal Ranch, after Nate had been out to the stables to see the horses he’d left behind, he picked up his cowboy hat and said, “Come on, Connor. We’re eatin’ next door tonight.”
Somehow, everyone else had left the Annex without him and Connor, so Nate took the little boy’s hand and led him out the back door, across the deck, and down the stairs to the grass. “What did you and Ginger do while I was gone?”
“I got to sleep in Spencer’s room,” Connor said, though Nate already knew that. He’d spent some time this afternoon gathering all the little boy things from Spencer’s bedroom and thanking the man profusely.
“Yep,” Nate said. “And what else?”
“One time, Jack took me on the four-wheeler.”
“Did you like it?”
“Yep.”
“What did you eat?”
“Dad, Emma made grilled peanut butter sandwiches.” Connor danced in front of Nate, his face animated with wide eyes. “Can you believe it? They were so good, and maybe she’ll make them again.”
“Maybe I can ask her how she did it, and then I can make them.” He wasn’t sure how to make the two pieces of bread stick together if the peanut butter melted, but Emma would tell him.
“But you have to use the right kind of bread,” Connor said.
Nate smiled at his drama. “Yeah? What kind of bread is that?”
“It’s the blue bag bread.”
“Oh, the blue bag bread.” They climbed the steps to the back porch of the West Wing, and Nate reached over the top of Connor’s head to knock on the door before they went inside. With the door open, Nate couldn’t hear anything, and that immediately alerted him that something wasn’t right inside.
His heartbeat stuttered, but he kept moving. Connor skipped ahead of him, clearly not concerned by the silence inside. But Nate was. He’d never been to the West Wing where there weren’t at least two women talking and laughing. Never.
He rounded the corner to enter the kitchen, and he took in the group of people all standing together across the room, facing him. “Welcome home!” they shouted as a single unit, and Nate stalled.
He couldn’t stop smiling, especially as Emma went over the pizza on the counter, the macaroni salad—“Your favorite,” she said—and the giant chocolate-frosted cake.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you all.”
Everyone seemed genuinely happy to see him, and while that was somewhat difficult for Nate to believe, he’d never known any of the men or women here at Hope Eternal to be fake. He enjoyed dinner, with all of the chatter and laughter he’d come to expect from the West Wing.
“Let’s go, Connor,” Spencer said, and Nate lifted his head from the conversation he’d been having with Jack and Jessica. “I’m gonna take him back. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” Nate said. “You sure?”
“We’re both tired, huh, bud?” Spencer grinned down at Connor.
“Can Ursula come?”
“If you can get her to come, she can come.” Spencer glanced down the table to where Ginger sat, Ursula at her feet. In the end, Connor couldn’t convince the dog to come with him, and Ginger promised to bring her over later so she could sleep with Connor.
Spencer and Connor left, and the party broke up in little pieces after that. Nate felt like he could sleep for a year, but he didn’t want to leave without kissing Ginger. Now that he knew he loved her, he wanted to be at her side all the time.
“Go,” Emma finally said, and Ginger tossed down the wash rag she’d been using to wipe the counter. She met Nate’s eyes, and he started for the back door. Behind him, Ursula barked, and then she came out of the house with Ginger.
“Walk with me?” Nate asked, reaching for Ginger’s hand. She slipped her fingers between his, and Nate sighed. “Thanks for that dinner.”
“Oh, that was Emma.”
“I know, but you let her.”
“Did you hate it?” She looked at him with a bit of apprehension in her expression.
“No,” he said. “You thought I’d hate it?”
“You don’t really like crowds.”
“No, I don’t.” He gazed up into the clear, night sky. He loved how dark it was out here, and how the stars seemed to be caught in this wide, black net. “But I like the people here, and I could eat that cake every day of my life.”
“Emma is a genius with butter and flour,” Ginger said.
Nate sighed, relaxing more and more the farther from the homestead they walked. He took her down the road where they’d shared their first kiss, the silence between him and Ginger so soothing.
“I’m so glad to be back,” he said. “I really am sorry I left. I’m sorry I involved Nick. I’m—”
“Nate, you don’t owe me any apologies,” Ginger said.
Nate nodded. “Sometimes the apologies aren’t for the person receiving them,” he said. “So can I just finish them?”
“All right.”
“I’m sorry I asked you to take care of Connor. You’re amazing for doing it, but it wasn’t fair.” He pressed his teeth together, making his jaw jut out. “I’m sorry I put you through all of this, and I’m hopeful that once the six months are up, that you’ll consider hiring me on full-time here.”
“This is what you want? I thought you were going to go live in Ward’s house in White Lake.”
“I belong here,” he said simply. “And if you’ll have me, I’d love to stay.”
“I’d love for you to stay,” she said. “And Nate, we should probably talk about you know, what we said earlier.”
“Which part?”
“Oh, come on.” Ginger rolled her eyes by the light of the moon, and Nate’s heart softened toward her again.
“You mean the part where I said I was in love with you?”
“Yeah,” she said. “That part.”
“You think I was lying?”
“No,” she said. “I’m just wondering what you think the next step for us is.”
Nate had been thinking about Ginger nonstop since he’d been pushed to the ground and re-arrested in front of her. For weeks now. Weeks.
“Well, I think most people get married,” he said, watching her closely.
She nodded, and he didn’t detect any apprehension in her. “And that’s something you want to do?”
Nate let a smile spread across his face. “With you, Ginger, it’s exactly what I want to do.” He leaned down and kissed her, feeling her melt right into him, and for once, his reality was much better than what he’d imagined from the inside of his prison cell.