Page 47 of The Rancher's Wedding

“Soon,” Jacob said. He mulled the thought over in his head. “Well, please take this in the spirit of what I mean, but I think you’re a mighty fine woman and my brother is lucky to have you. You’re telling me ‘soon’ and so I’m going to believe that that’s the truth. But just like I came in here to apologize and only did something else to say I was sorry for, I hope you’re not making yourself a bigger liar by telling me that.”

He tipped his hat to her. “I’m gonna head back to my cabin. It’ll be dark soon enough. You have a good evening.”

“You, too, Jacob,” Estelle said.

She had meant it when she’d told him that she would tell Michael soon, but he was right. If she didn’t actually do what she said she was going to, then that’d just be another lie, wouldn’t it? Estelle didn’t think of herself as a liar, but the problem with lies was that once you told one, you ended up having to tell more and more. A single lie was like a snowball rolling down the hill—if you didn’t stop it while it was still relatively small, it’d just get harder and harder to deal with.

Chapter Eighteen

Something changed in Michael the night of the town fair. It stuck with him as he tended to the chickens, pulling the eggs out of their nests and placing them in his basket for later.

The night was magical, and there wasn’t any better way for Michael to describe it. As a child, he’d loved going to fairs—he always ate as much as he could fit in his tiny belly and played all the games until eventually he passed out from sheer exhaustion, a smile plastered on his face as he slept.

As he grew, however, the fair began to lose its charm. Every year was the same and, as a young teenager, all of the joy was gone. He knew what to expect and there wasn’t ever anything new. So, he’d go, as it was only once a year, and enjoy watching Jacob having fun, but once Jacob reached his teenage years, they stopped going.

But this time was different because there was something new.

And that something was Estelle. She brought back something inside him that he’d thought was gone forever. To say he felt like a child would be incorrect, because he was still very much an adult. But he was an adult with hope and dreams and a sense of fun. It had been so long since Michael had enjoyed honest-to-goodness fun that he assumed it was just a feeling that left once one became an adult.

But it was very much there. Sometimes, it just took another person to find it.

Being alone on the ranch for so long with only Jacob had drained him of everything except for his day-to-day duties.

Of course, there was more to life than that. And Estelle was the embodiment of it. There was a word in his head that he was scared to even think because it didn’t feel appropriate. It felt even slightly illicit, like he was somehow committing a sin by even considering it, or violating a personal oath.

But there wasn’t anything wrong with the word and, at the fair, he’d felt it even if he didn’t think it. Only after the fact did he consider that this one word could summarize his feelings.

The word, of course, was love.

And love was a sneaky devil. It had a tendency to sneak up on you, then lodge itself in your heart. He had felt it on the cattle drive, too. Just being around her made everything brighter. He was excited to start the day, and even if all he was doing was the same routine, having Estelle with him made it seem fresh and exciting again.

Why had he closed off his heart to love?

Because he didn’t think he’d be able to have it, and sometimes a little hope could be worse than none at all. It placed him in a very dangerous situation because he felt that Estelle might have similar feelings for him. But it wasn’t part of their arrangement, and what if she didn’t? What if she was just a naturally sunny person who made everybody’s lives better? She’d made more progress with Jacob in just a few weeks than Michael had in years.

Michael wanted to share his feelings with Estelle. In a perfect world, she’d respond in kind, saying she felt the same way.

With his basket full of eggs, Michael returned to the house to drop them off. Along the way, he considered the response he feared. What if, instead of mirroring Michael’s feelings, Estelle told him that she didn’t feel that way and was, perhaps, offended since that wasn’t what she had agreed to when she’d come out to the ranch.

And then she’d leave.

Those weren’t the only two possibilities, but they were the only two that Michael’s mind could consider without getting overwhelmed. It made telling her a gamble. If he didn’t say anything, she would stay at the ranch indefinitely and they would stay married and he would have her. But if he told her, there was a chance she could love him, too, and they could have a true marriage, the likes of which Michael had never dreamed of.

On the other hand, he could also lose her forever. Was it worth it? Was he willing to risk the possibility never seeing her again for the chance at a life of love?

He went to go check on the cows, wondering what they thought had happened to their friends that had left them forever. They didn’t seem to mind. They continued to graze, chewing their cud, which was a pretty good life for a cow. One could have a good life in general, just doing what they were made to do.

The Michael of a few months ago felt a bit like the cows. Day in and day out, he’d do the same routine, and there was comfort in that. What if one of the cows he’d taken was in love with one of the other ones? Were cows capable of love? They could certainly express affection to each other, as well as to people, but could they trulylovethe way that a human could?

No, Michael thought, love had to be human. And, of course, godly. He turned toward the sky, sending a mental prayer to God, asking for guidance, but God couldn’t make the choice for him.

He loved his parents and they were abruptly taken from him. And his brother, though not taken, wasn’t the same brother that he’d known. People could change and people could leave. If he woke up to learn that Estelle had run off or vanished off the face of the Earth, he knew he would regret not telling her and not knowing.

That gave him an idea.

The night of the fair, he’d felt that Estelle truly loved him. They had danced together, and he’d never been so close to another person. It was as if all of the people were on the other side of the world and the music existed just for them to enjoy in each other’s presence. There was more than one way to say, “I love you,” and, in their dancing, he had felt Estelle was saying it to him.

He thought he’d seen it in her face, too. It was a bigger and truer smile than he’d ever seen on anybody before, and it was contagious. The event had gone by in an instant, like the flash when the camera took their picture. And yet, every single moment was still ingrained in his head—if he closed his eyes, he felt like he was right back there with her.

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