Page 62 of Any Cowboy of Mine
Sophie looked at him with wide, wild eyes, and he laughed.
“Now?” she asked. She trembled against him, and that fear rolling off of her made him even more insistent that this needed to be put to bed, and fast. Even her teeth chattered, and he knew it wasn’t because of the chill. The room was like a sauna, even more so now that they’d done what they’d just done.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to put you two in the same room together until I’ve said my piece and laid out my terms. I was thinking you could keep my dad occupied so he doesn’t feel the need to pick sides.”
Sophie sighed, and her body relaxed against him.
“I can do that,” she said. “Your dad I can handle. It’s your mom who makes me feel like she’s Cruella and I’m the puppy whose skin she thinks would look better detached from my body.”
Brad kissed her forehead and threw his legs over the side of the bed. Sophie frowned at him.
“You meanrightnow?” she asked. She hid herself under the covers until Brad pulled them back, laughing.
“I meanright now. I want you in my life, and I don’t want my mom thinking for a moment that she has any right in convincing me otherwise. You’re my person, Sophie, and I want her to know it.”
Sophie smiled as another tear escaped down her cheek, but Brad cut it off at the corner of her mouth, kissing it.
Brad felt strongly that he had to handle this growing divide between him and his mom before he and Sophie could really start their relationship. Now that he was certain they both wanted the same thing, he couldn’t wait to start a life with her.
Walking the hundred or so yards from the guesthouse above the garage to the main house, Sophie was uncharacteristically silent, looking out at the fields with a neutral expression on her face. He realized “neutral Sophie” wasn’t a version he was remotely familiar, or comfortable, with. She was usually so expressive, each passing emotion she felt flitting across her stunning features.
“Whatcha thinking?” Brad asked, his voice booming across the otherwise quiet landscape.
She turned to face him, a subdued smile on her face. It seemed to take a herculean effort for her to even manage that, and Brad’s blood began to race. This was almost more nerve-wracking than seeing her upset with him. He squeezed her hand three times, a physical expression of the three words he’d just told her he felt for her.
“That’s usually my line,” she said, teasing him, but her eyes were distracted.
“Are you okay, Soph?”
“I am. I’m just worried, I guess.”
“About us?” Brad asked. He hoped he knew the answer to that already, but she was scaring him.
“No. No, not at all,” she said. She rubbed his palm with her thumb, and he had to work to focus on staying on the gravel path. “I am sure of you, of us, but what if she never accepts me?”
“My mom?”
Sophie nodded, her eyes damp again.
Brad was glad his mother wasn’t outside on the porch right then, or he would have said something unforgivable to her.Look what you’re doing, he wanted to scream at her.Look what you’re doing to the woman I love, and therefore to me.
“She’ll come around, Sophie, but if she doesn’t, that’s her loss. I want you to understand I’m not going anywhere no matter how this shakes out today. I am not going to leave you.” He said that last part with added emphasis, hoping she would make the connection to what she had told him about her father.
Her hand tightened in his. He followed her gaze to the fields, where Mike, his father’s best friend and trusted mechanic, worked on a combine. Mike looked up and waved, a smile on his grease-stained face. Brad waved back but continued towards the house.
“Thank you, Brad, and I know that, but you don’t know how difficult that will be, to not talk to one of your parents. It leaves a hole in you nothing else can fill.”
Brad risked a glance at her. A few tears had spilled over, darkening her sweater in a small, heartbreaking pattern of loss.
“I know what happened to you and your dad shook you, Sophie, but I promise, I’ll be okay. My mom and I will, too. She’s just hurt right now, and we’re her easy targets. The thing is, Julia’s mom wasn’t a great woman to begin with, so in time my mom’ll see her friendship wasn’t that big a loss anyway. Besides, what kind of woman in her sixties leaves her friend in the dust because their kids didn’t work out? It’s bullshit, and my mom’s a smart woman. She’ll figure it out.”
Sophie managed a smile that almost reached her eyes, but Brad could tell she was still unsure of everything. If he was being honest, so was he. His mother was a live wire right now. Brad would never let Sophie know he’d been worried about the same things she’d been thinking about since he’d been her date to the wedding and his mother had behaved like a spoiled teenager who wasn’t getting what she wanted. They’d always been close, especially when his sister, Paige had gotten sick the year before and he’d helped out around the farm more. In the past eight months, though, after he’d split with Julie, there was a rift he couldn’t get across with her. He was scared it would only grow wider as time went on.
The truth was, he didn’t know what his life would look like without his mother, but he knew what it would be without Sophie, and that was unacceptable. As they reached the wrought iron gate at the edge of the front yard, Brad took a deep breath, afraid to let it out. He could only hope, as he watched his mother inside drying dishes in the kitchen window, a deep scowl etched on her face when she saw him walk up with Sophie, that he could reason with her. He didn’t want to have to choose between the two women in his life who meant the most to him. Because he knew who would lose.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mending Fences
