Page 55 of Coming Home to Maverick

Maverick picked up a bouquet of daisies and headed to the middle school. He knew it had only been two days since he’d last seen her, but in his mind, that was two days too long. He had a pile of paperwork on his desk and some tough decisions to make on the ranch, but first, he wanted to see his woman. He grinned. Bailey was his woman again. What an awesome thought.

He had already thought about proposing. She seemed as much in love with him as he was her. But the thought brought out a shuddering fear through him, so he’d pushed it off to think about later. Last time, he’d been certain she loved him, and he’d fully expected a beautiful bride to walk down the aisle toward him. But she hadn’t.

Would she do it again? Nothing was certain, ever. And at least for now, he had a willing, fun Bailey. He didn’t want to risk changing things.

He stopped by the front office. “Hey, Peggy.” The woman sitting at the front desk was a friend of theirs from high school.

“Oh, she’s gonna love those.” Peggy leaned forward, almost pouring herself onto the table between them. The girl’s starry eyes made him smile and step back toward the door. “You just take those right on in. Do you know where she is?”

He shook his head. “The choir room, right?”

She gave him directions, and he scooted out of there as quickly as he could. As he walked through the halls, he considered his fears. He had good reason to be afraid she would walk out again. He’d been so blindsided the first time, he had no reason to think it wouldn’t happen again. Except that it couldn’t. Bailey would never do that a second time. Would she?

He rounded the corner and stopped in front of the choir room door. He could hear the kids singing. So he peeked in, careful not to let Bailey see him. She stood at the front, waving her arms at them like he’d seen all conductors do. She was leaning in, her face intent, her smile genuine, and the kids watched her, their eyes shining with hope. Maverick grinned. She loved this, and the kids loved her.

Then she stopped them. “That was beautiful. So good, in fact, that I want to give you something special to try. Only the really good singers can handle it, but I think you guys can do it no problem.” Even Maverick was intrigued. She sang, and her whole face transformed. While she was enjoying leading the kids, she was full of joy when she sang. Her heart seemed to fill her song. She swayed for a minute and then stopped. “Did you see what I did there? Who can tell me?”

The kids raised their hands, and she continued as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but Maverick felt changed. He knew singing was her passion. Using her voice in the way she just had made Bailey who she was. But she’d been beaten down enough to give it up. She’d put her daughter first and worked so that they could survive.

But her voice was part of what made Bailey who she was. He’d like to pound some sense into that man Daniel for more reasons than one. And into his past self. He was grateful to realize now what he hadn’t seen when they were younger. They needed to focus on her dreams as well as his.

The class worked on repeating what she had done. After a minute of mediocre attempts, she told them to take a break. And as she turned to walk back to her desk, he smiled through the window at her.

She stepped back in surprise, and Maverick was gratified to see just how happy she was to see him. She rushed to the door, flung it open, glanced over her shoulder, and then stepped out into the hall. “Maverick, hi.”

“Hi yourself.” He held up the flowers. “I just wanted to drop these by.”

She took them from him. “My favorite.” But her eyes held questions.

“Really I just wanted to see you.”

Her grin melted him further. “Good, ’cause I wasn’t gonna survive another day without seeing you.”

“Come over after work. Let’s ride.”

Her eyes lit. “Oh, I’d love that. Can I bring Gracie?”

“Gracie is always welcome. I want to see her almost as much as I want to see you. Besides, I have some tricks I want her to work on with her pig.”

“Has she named it yet? She won’t tell me.”

“I don’t know. For now, she calls it Pig.”

The students were getting restless, so she stepped back toward the door.

But Maverick pulled her closer. When their faces were kissably close, he murmured, “I love you.” Then he pressed his lips to hers, their softness making him only want her more. “See you soon.”

She swayed, dazed for a minute, and then smiled a soft, sleepy smile. “See you soon.”

“Who was that?” Maverick heard as he walked back down the hallway, satisfied for a moment that he’d seen her.

His mind moved to the paperwork for the ranch. As he pulled up to the house and made his way into his office, he thought about the losses and the stress on all the brothers, and he wasn’t sure what he would do about any of it. If the ranch became no one’s priority and everyone’s chore, then it wasn’t what his dad had meant for them.

A stack of mail waited. His books and financials waited. Decker had written up a plan to bring in some more money that he needed to look at. And his own pending decisions waited.

One letter sat on top, from a real estate developer. He suspected he knew what it said. They got these all the time, people hoping to buy pieces of the property and build them out. But he’d tossed every other letter in the trash. Not only did he not want to sell his father’s land, he didn’t want the ranch to be surrounded by new developments.

But he opened this one, wondering if it was time to start at least considering it. As he glanced through the proposal, he was happy to see they would subdivide into larger acreage plots with nicer homes. He felt better about that than a set of stores, a strip mall, or high-density housing.

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