Page 1 of Mine To Keep (Southern Wedding)

prologue

Dearest Love,

Boy, has love been busy.

Every single time I turn around, I see two people falling in love.

It’s amazing and magnificent.

Unless you are Grace and Caine, who think their time for love has come and gone.

He’s a divorced father.

She’s just starting to live her life.

And they just found out they will be working together.

Can they survive without killing each other?

Only time will tell.

XOXO

Love NM

one

Grace

“This is it,” I tell myself as I press the button to turn the car off before grabbing my keys and pulling the handle to open the door. The hot, humid air hits me right away as I put one foot down on the gravel and dust on the side of the road.

I slip my phone into the back pocket of my jean shorts as I turn to look at the house where I spent so much of my childhood. Scratch that, it’s the house where all of us spent most of our childhoods. It was like the foundation of our lives. The thought makes my heart squeeze just a touch, but I push it away. I smile when I look toward the back of the house, where I see the big fields. The sound of kids running and screaming fills the air. People stand around in groups talking to each other. The smell of the barbecue hits my nose as I make my way from the front of my house to the back.

As soon as I round the corner, I see there might be over a hundred people here today, which is the normal every Sunday lunch at my great-grandparents’ farm. It started with just the family, and then the workers were invited, which then led to anyone who was in town and had nothing to do could come on over and have a place to be.

I spot my cousins sitting around a white plastic table, laughing at something that one of them said. I quickly do a scan of the yard, knowing the first people I have to go say hello to are my great-grandparents, who sit at another round table talking to a couple of friends of theirs. My great-grandmother Charlotte sits beside my great-grandfather Billy, who always has his arm draped around her chair. I even know his thumb caresses her shoulder. His cowboy hat sits on his head. In all my twenty-four years, I’ve seen him without his hat maybe two times, three at most.

I zigzag through the people, smiling as I make my way toward the table. “Hi,” I greet them when I get close enough. My great-grandmother looks up at me, her light-green eyes lighting up even more when she sees me.

She puts her hands together before holding them up for me to bend and give her a kiss. “Sweetheart.” She calls me by my nickname, but truth be told, all the girls are called sweetheart. My cousin Audrey says it’s because there are so many of us, and she can’t keep up anymore. “You came.”

“Of course, I came.” I lean down to hug her and kiss her on the cheek. “Wouldn’t miss this on my last day.” I smile at her as I see the tears form in her eyes. “No crying.” My voice is tight as I blink away the tears starting to form.

“Come here, girl,” my great-grandfather says, and I walk around to his side of the chair. He holds out his hand to me, and I grab it. This same hand held mine when I said I was ready to ride the horse by myself, but shocking, I was wrong. He knew even then, and instead of just leaving me, he held it like a vise. “You going to ride Daisy Bean before you leave?” He asks me about my horse.

“Yup,” I answer, looking around for my dad. “I promised Dad I would go on one more ride before I leave town and ship out to war.” I wink at him as he laughs.

“I’ll see you in a bit, then.” He releases my hand, not looking at me, but I can see the tears forming in his eyes.

I don’t know why I thought leaving would be easy, but I did. I never expected it to hit me like this. I was sitting in the barn one day, looking around, and all I kept thinking was is this it? Is this where I’m meant to be? I had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business, but I still had no idea what I wanted to do. So, after college I came back home, and for the past year, I’ve been running my father’s companies. He has ten equine therapy farms. He started when he was twenty with two horses, and it took off. The busiest one of all is the military rehab facility he has. I help run the schedule and take care of the books. It’s when I started taking care of the books that I got more and more interested in accounting. So, while I go off on my own, I’ll be taking online classes to earn my accounting degree to become a certified public accountant. I haven’t even told my family about it. The minute I got accepted into the program, I told my parents I was thinking about moving. It shocked them, but then again, it didn’t shock them if that makes any sense. I wasn’t happy. I was literally just living day by day. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I was content, but they knew I was getting bored.

After I told them I was leaving, I put the second plan into motion. I sent my CV to a friend who works at a recruitment agency. I got a couple of offers but accepted one because she told me it was a family-run company. Something just pulled me toward it, so I accepted being a personal assistant to the vice president. All they know is I got a job working for a company in the city. I kept the rest to myself because everyone can get in your business when you have a family like mine.

“There she is,” I hear from beside me and look over to see my mother walking toward me, her black hair blowing in the wind. “Your father was wondering when you would be getting here.” My parents met when he found my mother unconscious after being left for dead. He pulled her out of the house and never let her go. “Did you finish packing?”

“I did,” I tell her, smiling. “It’s all done. No turning back now.” I try to make a joke of it as my heart spasms in my chest.

“I hope not,” she says as we turn and walk toward the barn. “I don’t want you to freak out,” she says, and I stop walking.

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