Fletch
I haven’t heard a thing from her in a couple of days and she hasn’t returned any of my texts.
She was camping somewhere with her sister where they didn’t have the best reception, but I know they had to go into town regularly, surely, she could’ve gotten in touch then.
The house has provided some distraction. With Bo’s help I have most of the kitchen dismantled and we’re in the process of painting the cabinets, replacing the hardware and doors, and building a new island around an old sideboard I found sitting out in the barn.
My first major project was supposed to be building a deck, but once I started tinkering in the kitchen, it kind of snowballed.
The large open concept space is a bit of a mess. My TV and couch—the only living room furniture I brought over—is covered in heavy duty plastic to protect it from paint and dust. Doors are off their hinges, two walls are only half painted, and instead of fixing either of those, I’m sitting here on the kitchen floor, sanding this old piece of furniture so I can convert it into a kitchen island because I thought Nella might like it.
So yeah, I’m pissed and about ready to hop in my truck and drive to Canada myself, when I hear a vehicle coming up the driveway.
I drop the sandpaper and get to my feet, brushing my dusty hands on the seat of my jeans as I make my way to the front door. I open it and barely have a chance to register the motorhome parked in my driveway when I’m nearly knocked on my ass by the woman running at me full tilt.
“It’s beautiful!”
Her smile is wide and unrestrained as she lifts her face to me. A little over a month ago, when I met her, I had trouble seeing how pretty she was. Now, it’s impossible to miss the sheer beauty that seems to radiate from her pores.
“This place,” she prompts when I don’t respond. “I’d seen it from the road but never had a close look. I had no idea the yard was so pretty, and those views coming down that driveway! The house is nice too. I love the porch, and—”
I swallow the rest of her ramble when I take her mouth.
Funny, I was pretty ticked off with her and had every intention of making her aware of it. It all seems pretty unimportant now. She’s here, she looks great, sounds happy, she feels fucking amazing in my arms, and tastes even better.
“Hey, honey. I’m home,” she jokes when I finally let her up for air.
“Good. Was about to come find you,” I grumble, but only for show.
She combs her fingers through my beard, giving it a light tug.
“I missed you too, Fletch.”
I’m clearly not fooling her for a second.
Right, a change of subject is in order.
“Where’s your sister?”
I glance over her shoulder at the RV.
“She’s at the rescue, next door.” She grins up at me. “We’re gonna be neighbors.”
“I’d hoped we’d be a little more than fucking neighbors.”
She bumps me with her shoulder. “I’m talking about us and the rescue.”
There it is again—us.
I fucking love it. Who’d have thought?
“I meant eventually, of course,” she adds.
Eventually, my ass.
“That why you brought the motorhome? You plan to camp out in my driveway?” I tease.
Her mouth tenses and she takes a step back. Clearly not enjoying the teasing.
“No. Lucy says I’ll always have a bed next door waiting for me,” she snaps.
Like that’s going to happen.
“You have a bed here.”
“Actually…I’m pretty sure we dropped off my bed at the dump just outside Cranbook last week.”
I tug at her hair. “You’re being a smart-ass.”
“Maybe. And maybe you should try actually asking. You know, actual communication of intent could prevent so much misunderstanding.”
I cup her face in my hands and press my smile against her lips.
“Babe…this place—including the big new bed I set up in the master—was meant to have you in it. Stay?”
“Oh, all right.” She rolls those gorgeous hazel eyes, and I stifle a snort. “I’ll stay.”
“So why the motorhome?”
“Aside from a few big pieces that didn’t fit, everything I own is packed in there.”
Then she pushes past me into the house, aiming straight for the old sideboard I was working on.
Wow.
This is happening.
Part of me is waiting for the urge to run to hit me, but there’s nothing. No panic, no anxiety, no second thoughts, just…happy.
“This is gorgeous!” she calls out, running her hands over the aged wood as she sits down beside it. “Where did you get this?”
She turns her head and beams that smile at me.
Nella, sitting on the floor of the kitchen I’m trying to make sure has enough room for my cooking and her baking, looking like there’s nowhere else she wants to be.
Yeah, very fucking happy.
Nella
“Oh, sweet Jesus.”
I literally see stars as his body collapses on me.
Fletch woke me up with his mouth. Best wake-up routine I’ve ever been introduced to. Better even than sipping coffee while watching the spectacular sunrise over Mineral Lake.
How we ended up in the bathroom, my body bent over the vanity with Fletch’s weight pressing down on me, I have no idea. All I know is my limbs are like Jell-O and I don’t think my heart will ever return to its normal rhythm.
“Morning, Babe,” he mumbles in my neck.
“Hmh…” I barely manage to grunt and he starts to chuckle, his body shaking on top of me.
“That good, huh?”
I keep my eyes closed and don’t react. It’s not like he needs the boost to his ego, it’s sizable enough.
I feel him push off me, his lips pressing a kiss between my shoulder blades before his weight disappears completely. Next, I hear the water in the shower turn on and Fletch’s voice call out.
“Come on, Nella. Get your butt in here.”
Groaning, I lift my face off the counter and stumble into the shower where I collide with his solid back. I instantly wrap my arms around him, pressing my cheek against his skin.
“You foiled my plan,” I mumble.
“What plan was that?”
“I was gonna wake you up this morning. I had the whole thing planned. You were supposed to be the one left feeling boneless and relaxed on your birthday.”
I feel his body shake when he chuckles.
“Are you complaining?”
I snuggle in a little closer.
“Well, no. But you wouldn’t let me buy you anything so that was gonna be your birthday gift. Happy birthday, honey.”
He removes my arms from around his waist and turns around to face me.
“Babe, waking up with my cock in your mouth would’ve been a fine start to my birthday, but nothing beats your taste on my lips.” He brushes the wet hair off my face as he pulls up one eyebrow. “That said, nothing says happy birthday like a blowjob in the shower.”
Fletch turns forty-eight today. I wouldn’t have known if Bo hadn’t mentioned it a few days ago when he came to work on the kitchen. Fletch brushed it off like it was nothing important and I gather he wasn’t in the habit of celebrating, but this is the first birthday we’ve been together and I want to make it special.
Unfortunately, with our kitchen still in disarray I wasn’t able to do any baking here. Alex was kind enough to let me use the big kitchen at the ranch yesterday. A few of the guys—including Fletch—had been off to Billings for a few days with a trailer full of young horses for a Livestock Commission horse sale—so the house was relatively quiet. Ama let me do my thing in the kitchen, but Thomas stuck close by for quality control. His idea, not mine.
We’re supposed to head over to High Meadow to look at the six-year-old buckskin mare Fletch brought back from Billings. I have a sneaky suspicion he got her for me, thus stealing my thunder on his own birthday, but I have a few surprises up my sleeve as well.
One is the lunch I know Ama and Alex are putting together in honor of his birthday and the other is the massive Black Forest cake taking up the entire bottom shelf in the ranch fridge. Both involve food and his ranch family so I’m sure he’ll enjoy those.
There is one more surprise I’m hoping to spring on him at some point, but I’m not as confident about his reaction to that one so I’ll play it by ear.
“You should turn this into a business. You can’t get shit like this in Libby.”
Bo shoves the other half of his Black Forest cake in his mouth.
“Fucking delicious,” he mutters around the massive bite.
We never made it out to the barn.
We barely made it out of the truck when we pulled up to the ranch. Thomas was already out on the porch and announced it was about fucking time we got there because Ama had been slapping his hands away from the food all morning.
Fletch tried to throw me a dirty look when we walked inside to find my sister and Lucy, along with the entire team, assembled in the kitchen but he wasn’t quite able to hide the upward tilt of his mouth underneath the beard.
The spread was amazing, Ama had apparently made Fletch’s favorite things and I made mental notes what they were. It’s only been a couple of weeks since I got back from Cranbrook and we’re still in the process of figuring each other out, learning likes and dislikes.
My cake was a success, as evidenced by Bo wolfing down his second helping.
“Eventually I’d like to,” I admit. “But it might be a while before I can actually work here. It’s a lengthy process.”
Bo raises an eyebrow before looking for Fletch, who is talking with Jonas over by the window.
“Yo, Fletch! Get your head outta your ass and marry her, brother. Solves her problem and we can have cake like this all the time. It’s not brain surgery.”
Fletch’s eyes come straight for me. I guess he’s checking to see if I said anything to prompt this, but I just throw up my hands.
“Wasn’t me.”
Still, he heads over, stopping right in front of me so I’m forced to look up.
“You saying you don’t want to?”
Wait. How did he come up with that idea?
“I never said that,” I quickly protest.
A triumphant smirk pulls at his lips and subdued chuckles go up around me.
“Good. That’s settled then,” he says decisively. “We can get your blood test done in town tomorrow and pick up a marriage license at the county clerk’s office.”
I’m not sure what’s happening, it feels like I just got the wind knocked out of me, and it takes me a moment to process what he says.
“Blood test?”
It’s Ama who answers, a grin splitting her face.
“Women need to undergo a blood test in Montana. Only state in the country where that’s still a requirement.”
“Just women?”
She shrugs. “Honey, that’s Montana for ya.”
“That’s barbaric,” is Pippa’s heartfelt contribution.
Over the next twenty minutes I let shared indignation at the archaic and misogynistic laws of this beautiful state distract me from what I fear may have been the closest I’ll get to a wedding proposal.
Then the impromptu celebration breaks up, and Fletch pulls me toward a small paddock behind the breeding barn.
“She’s beautiful.”
I hold out my hand for the mare to sniff. She lets out a small snort before nuzzling my palm with her soft lips.
“What’s her name?”
“Willow,” Fletch answers.
“That’s a pretty name for a very pretty girl,” I mumble as I lift my other hand to rub her forehead. Something she lets me do without complaint.
“You like her?”
“She’s really beautiful.”
“Then she’s yours.”
Yup. As I suspected, he’s stealing my thunder.
“Need I remind you this is your birthday and not mine?” I snip, giving him a look that does not seem to impress him much.
He’s leaning with a hip against the fencepost and his arms crossed over his chest, looking relaxed and mildly amused.
“So?”
“So maybe you can save your surprises for when there’s reason to celebrate me.”
“Every day is reason to celebrate the woman I love.”
Dammit.
That’s a really good comeback.
“With a blood test and a run to the county clerk’s office?”
He shrugs. “That’s what’s required for a marriage.”
“So is the agreement of both parties, yet I didn’t hear a question and I’m pretty sure I didn’t give an answer.” I cock my thumb over my shoulder in the direction of the ranch house. “Unless of course that back there in the kitchen was your idea of a proposal and you took my shocked silence as agreement.”
Understanding lights his eyes and he pushes away from the fence to take a step toward me.
“It’s important to you.”
I roll my eyes, but it’s mostly in an attempt not to show my emotions that suddenly wash over me.
“Seeing as it’s the only proposal I’m likely to get in this lifetime; yeah.”
He takes my hands in his and brings them to his mouth, kissing my knuckles.
“Gonna be honest with you, Nella. Married, not married. It doesn’t make a lick of difference to me or the way I feel about you. I didn’t realize it was that important to you or I would’ve handled that differently.”
“I don’t think it would be, normally, but—”
I’m about to share my last surprise with him when Willow suddenly neighs. I turn around to see she apparently caught sight of a few other horses in a neighboring field and is trotting along the fence line toward them. Fletch steps up behind me, folds his arms around my front, and rests his chin on my head as we watch her go.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles against my hair.
“Don’t be. I’m just being…hormonal.”
Not a word of a lie. I actually went to the clinic a few days ago to see if maybe I was perimenopausal. I’m forty-three, it would be well within the realm of possibilities. It wasn’t until I was actually asked if there was a chance I could be pregnant—started saying no and caught myself—that was even on my radar.
Once it was, all the pieces started clicking together.
I take his hands and place them low on my belly. It takes him a couple of seconds, but then I feel him freeze behind me.
I hold my breath; I have no idea how he’s going to react. It’s a lot. All of this is a lot and becoming more complicated by the minute.
I know it, though, I can’t look at this any other way than as a gift. No matter how he will react.
Fletch’s large hands slowly spread and relax on my stomach. His large body curves around me and he tucks his face in my neck, his lips brushing my ear.
“I’m holding perfection.”
THE END
Keep reading for a sample of the next book in the series:
High Ground