Page 31 of Destined for the Cowboy

Get her out of here. Now. Before you do something unforgivably stupid. She’s Jackson’s sister and a widow who clearly still loves her dead husband. Don’t be an ass.

Mental lecture concluded, he spun on his heel and walked over to the fridge, trying to remember what he had. “I really don’t have much in the way of food,” he admitted when he sensed rather than saw her come up behind him.

“What did you plan on having?”

He shrugged. “Probably scrambled eggs and hash browns.”

“I love breakfast for dinner,” she said.

And the next thing he knew they were both working at the kitchen counter, him on the eggs and her shredding the two potatoes he had left for the hash browns. He spared a moment to be thankful his kitchen was wide open and not one of those enclosed rooms that would have them bumping into each other all the time.

And as they sat down to eat, he stared more at his plate than anything. Because he didn’t dare look at her. It was too much, and he’d say more stupid things, or worse, do something far beyond stupid.

Something she’d said, benignly and unrelated to his thoughts popped into his head, and all he could think was how apt they were.

Tell me if I make a wrong turn…

You did, he thought, his jaw tightening.The moment you turned up my drive.

She didn’t seem to know that. But he did. So it was up to him to make sure that turn wasn’t something she would regret forever.

Chapter Seventeen

Privacy hasn’t beenan issue since I moved into this place.

For some reason those words kept circling in her brain as she drove home. Of all the things that had happened today, she picked this to fixate on? All the things they’d seen, the delight on her nephew’s face, the growing peace and happiness so obvious in her beloved brother, and yet here she was consumed by those words Logan Fox had said?

Did he mean no one came here? No one spent time in that rustically charming cabin with him? Was he that isolated?

Or did he mean no one had been there who wanted privacy? Now that, she could believe. She could easily picture a female guest being secretly glad the bed was right there in the open, and so close…

She was more than a little stunned at herself. Ever since she’d run into him—literally—in the Baylors’ barn, she had started to think about him differently. He was no longer just the man she’d heard about, the expert blacksmith and the more whimsical but undeniable horse whisperer. Now he was also the unexpected history buff who felt the same need she did to see and experience the places where that history had happened, and a voracious reader who bought or checked out books by the stack, again just as she did.

She also found his reticence rather charming, and his quiet contemplations intriguing. And now she knew he was instinctively protective of Jeremy, and even Jackson, which warmed her to her soul.

She busied herself with her nighttime routine, focusing on it more intently than usual to try and keep herself from focusing on the other now undeniable facts about the man she’d—again—spent the day with.

That he was a tall, strong, beautiful man with the most amazing green eyes she’d ever seen.

She sat on the edge of the bed, putting her phone on the nightstand. Her gaze, as always, went to the framed photograph that sat there beneath the lamp. Her and David, laughing and delighted at the unveiling at the high school. Less than a year later, they would be in the fight of their lives, and a year after that they would lose that final battle.

She grimaced slightly at the dichotomy of what she’d done. She’d moved out of and sold the house they’d lived in because she couldn’t bear to be inside those familiar walls without the man who had always been there. Yet she brought with her the picture that had been in the same spot all that time because she couldn’t bear not to.

It was a different nightstand, yes, and definitely a different bed—there was no way she could continue to sleep alone in the bed they’d shared—but the photo was still there, within reach, one of the first things she saw every morning and one of the last things every night.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered to the image.

Yes you do.

As clearly as if he’d been there and spoken she heard David’s voice. And thought about the letter that lay locked away in the top drawer of her desk. The letter she’d read once and never again. The letter she’d thought about tossing in the fireplace of their old home, sending it up in a spiral of smoke just as her life had been.

Seven years.

When she’d stood at his funeral, she’d known she would love him forever. Seven years later she knew it was still true, but the kind of love had changed. She had changed. She’d made progress.

Hadn’t she?

Or was she the same, mired-in-grief woman she’d been that day in the cemetery, standing by his newly dug grave? Had she truly not made any progress at all?

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