22

Amanda woke bright and early on Thanksgiving morning, agitated.

Her mother didn’t expect her until around eleven, so the bright-and-early part meant only that she was wide awake and all alone, staring up at her ceiling with nothing to do but stew in her agitation.

It wasn’t fun.

She stayed in bed as long as possible, first trying to sleep again. Then thrashing angrily around. Then lying there, furiously staring at her ceiling.

After the joy of all that wore off, she got up and took a long shower until even that became too much. Or maybe it was that the water went cold.

But then, dressed hours too early and sitting there, fuming, in the living room that felt a lot less cozy and cute now that she kept seeing Brady all over it, Amanda decided she’d had enough.

“Enough,” she kept saying, out loud. And not under her breath.

She stomped down the icy stairs outside—but she respected the ice, so she stomped slowly and with precision—and she jumped into her car. Then she headed out over the hill. She didn’t see a soul as she drove over the cold roads, and that somehow made the restless thing inside her worse. More acute.

As she crested the hill, it was like looking out over the history of her family. Brady’s family too. And that made her even madder.

So many lifetimes were tangled up in these fields, and yet here they still stood. Her life was minor in comparison. She hadn’t set out in a covered wagon to an unfamiliar land. She hadn’t homesteaded through a Colorado winter. Her ancestors had made things work. Even her parents’ marriage, the one her brothers still complained about, had worked out in the end. They’d made it work.

Why couldn’t she?

Amanda was halfway down the county road toward the turnoff for Cold River Ranch when she remembered that the last time she’d visited the ranch, it had been Halloween.

You can’t do that again, she told herself firmly. Especially if this time, you’re the one attacking Brady.

She pulled over and sat there by the side of the road for a moment. Then she turned her car around. Maybe the best thing here was not to go in guns blazing, making a big deal out of everything, and essentially announcing to the entire Everett family that she was very much the overemotional, overdramatic teenage girl they all probably still thought she was, anyway.

Maybe the best thing here was to take a breath. To regroup.

Amanda took one of the dirt roads. This one skirted around what had once been Abby’s family’s farm, headed up into Everett land, then led into one of the lower Kittredge pastures. When she got to the pasture, she took a different dirt road, this one more of a scenic route. It wound around and would eventually drop her on the county road that led to her parents’ house.

When she saw the truck in the distance, still out in the network of dirt lanes, she sighed. Because it was inevitably going to be one of her brothers, and she didn’t want to deal with any of them. And because she couldn’t think who else could be driving around out here on private property, early in the morning on a national holiday.

But as the truck drew closer, she saw that it was Brady.

Her foolish heart thumped. Hard.

Custom dictated that since she had the smaller, more maneuverable car, she should pull off to the grassy bit on the side to let his much bigger truck go through. Instead, Amanda slammed on her brakes and stopped. She threw her car into park, switched off the engine, and then climbed out.

She wasn’t surprised when Brady did the same.

She walked toward him, keeping her eyes on him, not the vast sky overhead, heavy with the threat of snow. She didn’t look at the land all around them, rolling winter fields giving way to the forest land, then the evergreen march up the slopes of the steep mountains.

It was hard to get more private than out here in the middle of nowhere, with no one around for miles and miles.

“I’m done,” she told him, when they were a few feet apart.

And Brady laughed.

That felt unduly aggressive. Amanda scowled at him until he stopped.

“I’m tired of this,” she threw at him. “I don’t want to not hold hands, and talk on the phone, and then sit around hoping that my stupid brothers behave for once when they won’t. I don’t know why they’re a part of this discussion at all. I liked things the way they were before. I don’t understand why you got punched in the face and turned into some … Victorian.”

“I’m not a Victorian.”

“Do you have a concussion?”

“If I did, it probably would have gone away by now. Or killed me.”

“That’s not comforting, Brady.”

“I told you I didn’t want to sneak around anymore,” he said. “And I think you’re forgetting this, but neither did you.”

Amanda made a frustrated noise. “Surely there’s a middle ground between the naked late nights after the Coyote and supervised strolls that would make every pastor in the Longhorn Valley proud.”

“I can think of a decent compromise.”

But Amanda wasn’t done. “I don’t like you making decisions that you expect me to go along with when you can’t be bothered to talk them over with me. I don’t think you’d like it much if I did it to you.”

He started to answer, but she cut him off.

“And we can talk about the breakup barn like it’s funny, but you really were ending things with me. The only reason you didn’t is because I drove out to your house like a psycho, invaded your family’s home, and started yelling at everyone. Then you muttered something about courting me, and we never addressed the subject again.”

Brady was staring at her like she had a selection of heads, and that only made her more agitated.

“We address the subject all the time,” he said. “What exactly do you think we’ve been waiting for?”

Amanda flung open her arms because the only witness was the Colorado sky. She had a big mood on. “I don’t know!”

“I needed every single one of your brothers to get on board because you think they’re a barrier to the life you want to lead,” Brady said. With exaggerated patience. “Now they’re not. You’re welcome.”

“I already decided they had no say over my life. I was demonstrating it. I didn’t need you to drag us through the whole thing all over again.”

“It had to be done.”

“You keep saying that, but you won’t say why.” She shook her head at him and felt the cold wind pick up, slicing into her. “I think you didn’t like the fact that for once, the golden child quarterback of the high school football team wasn’t universally beloved. You didn’t like the fact that this time, your education and your charm and all your usual weapons couldn’t do you any good.”

“Wrong again, killer,” Brady drawled, though his gaze on hers was hard. “First of all, if my usual weapons worked out here, Gray would have sold the ranch a year ago. Second, I work with numbers. I’m methodical. When I close a deal, I like to make sure there are no loopholes. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

She told herself it was the cold that was making her fidget, and making her throat feel tight. “Right. Closing a deal. That’s very romantic.”

He looked almost surprised.

The agitation in her seemed to swell, expanding like a wave, until Amanda had to face the fact that she wasn’t agitated. That was fear threatening to knock her sideways. She’d been avoiding this conversation for weeks, and now she’d forced it.

But it might kill her to drag herself through another day, not knowing.

She was still afraid of what she might hear. But she reminded herself that she’d grown up on horses. Which was to say, falling off horses. Amanda had been practicing falling on her face and eating dirt her whole life. Getting up again hurt sometimes, but she’d always done it. She would again.

Even if Brady flattened her, she’d find her feet. One way or another.

What she couldn’t do was stay stuck in this limbo any longer.

“You used the word courting.” It also might kill her to actually say this out loud. At least then she wouldn’t have to worry about falling or climbing back up. There was that. “You’ve made the whole town think you mean marriage. But you can be honest now. Here. Is that what you really want?”

She didn’t want to ask that. Because she still didn’t want to know the answer.

Brady looked even more shocked. “What?”

Amanda ignored her own queasiness. “You wanted to end things. Then Riley walked in, and you had to make it right. He caught you, so your intentions had to be good. It’s like a shotgun wedding, but I’m not even pregnant.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I told you that I loved you, Brady.” And the bravado and agitation that had got her here deserted her. It all blew away on a gust of cold air, and all that was left was her growing, painful awareness of her own vulnerability. She didn’t like exposing herself like this. But what else did she have? “And I told you that I was pretty sure you loved me too. And neither of those things mattered. You were saying goodbye.”

The way he looked at her made her feel light-headed. “What I remember doing was kissing you when I shouldn’t have.”

Amanda felt so many things then that she couldn’t have picked them apart if her life depended on it. It was all a big, messy snarl. And yet, somehow, she finally understood.

He’d been so determined this past month to set things right. To take their scandal and make it a sweet story. She understood in a flash, then, that he’d been doing that for her. So what people remembered wasn’t Brady’s black eye, but those walks. Folks could speculate about what happened behind closed doors, but he’d balanced that out with what they’d seen. He’d created a counterargument.

It was so sweet, she wanted to cry. Maybe she was crying.

“I don’t think I love you because I was a virgin and I don’t know any better,” she told him now, because she was already too wide open. She felt like the sky, endless in all directions and gray straight through. “I loved you while we were having sex, and I love you even now that we’re not. It’s not going away. But, Brady.” And her voice cracked a little, because she wasn’t the sky after all. “I don’t think one person can do all the loving. I don’t think it works that way.”

He took another step toward her, but she put up her hands. And somehow, they got tangled in his. Amanda thought that later, maybe, she would marvel that the cold made her shiver, but the heat of his fingers made her shake twice as hard.

“It’s okay if you don’t love me,” she told him, and she wanted that to be true. She really did. “I mean, to be clear, I’ll probably hate you for it, but it’s okay. I would never want you to feel trapped. There’s no shotgun, and you don’t owe me anything. I’m the one who propositioned you.”

“Amanda—”

She tried to pull her hands away, but he didn’t let her. “I don’t think this is what you want. We should end it. For real this time.”

“That’s not going to work,” Brady drawled, the look in his dark green eyes so intense, she forgot to feel queasy and exposed. Or to breathe. “You’re not the only one in love here. You never were. I’m completely, totally, head-over-heels in love with you, Amanda. I think you’re going to have to stay with me.”

Then Amanda couldn’t tell anymore if she was the one who couldn’t breathe or if the world had collapsed all around them.

She also didn’t care.

“I’ve spent years going out of my way to not notice you,” Brady said, low and fierce. He pulled her even closer. “It was obviously a defense mechanism, because all it took was one glimpse of you where I wasn’t expecting you. One look at that freaking tank top, and I was done for. There was no pretending you were still a little girl anymore. And once I really saw you? That was it. I fell that fast, that hard.”

“Brady…”

“There is not a single thing on this earth that could make me go back on my word to your brother,” Brady said, urgent and intense. “Except you.”

“But ever since Halloween…”

“Listen to me, baby.” And she didn’t know which one of them moved, but she was in his arms again, and nothing else mattered. “You really are young. That’s not an insult, it’s a fact. You should go out there in your tight little tank tops and see what kind of trouble you can get into. That was what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what I wanted.”

“Yes, you do. And those are perfectly reasonable things to want. All those regrets and mistakes. All those adventures. You have all of that before you.”

She wanted to scream at him that she knew what she wanted now, and that was what mattered. That she’d found herself the best adventure, and she didn’t need to sample others to know that. Amanda knew quality when she found it. She knew what suited her.

But she couldn’t make her mouth work the way it should.

And Brady was still talking, in that same fierce way. “But it turns out, I really am a selfish man. I want you to do every little thing that your heart desires, Amanda. But I want you to do them with me.”

She couldn’t tell if she was sobbing or laughing, breathing, or maybe even dreaming. But his eyes were dark and green, and when he looked at her, the mountains moved. And the sky felt blue, even when, like today, it was a sullen snowstorm waiting to happen.

Then he made the summer sun appear because he sank down before her on one knee.

Amanda stopped worrying whether she was breathing or not. Maybe she said his name. Maybe she screamed it.

It didn’t matter because he reached into the pocket of his coat and he pulled out a ring.

Her heart, already working overtime, kicked into higher gear.

Because she recognized it.

“I went and saw your grandmother,” he told her, gazing up at her as if she were the sky. “We sat with her Bible and we looked through that family tree, looking for evidence that there had ever been an Everett and Kittredge match before. But no matter how we looked, we couldn’t find one. She figured old, founding families learned how to keep proper distances. I told her I had a better idea.”

Until this moment, Amanda hadn’t realized that a person could be laughing and crying at the same time. The human version of a fox’s wedding, like her grandmother always said.

“And she told me that regretfully, she didn’t think a whole lot of my father,” Brady continued. Almost gravely. “But she’d known my grandfather Silas, and a finer, more upstanding man had been hard to find around these parts. She wondered if I thought I took more after him.”

“She did like your grandfather. She’s always said that.”

“I said I expected that was a bit of a trick question. A man like my father would claim that, of course, he was like my grandfather. While men like my grandfather would be too humble. I’d have to settle for hoping I took the best of each man.”

“You’re the best of all men,” Amanda whispered fiercely. “And you don’t have to keep proving yourself to my family.”

“Don’t you understand, baby? I’m not proving myself to your family. I love your family, but it won’t keep me up at night if I’m not their favorite person every minute of the day.” Brady kept his gaze trained on her. “But you’re a different story. You might have moved out. You might have defied them by working at the Coyote. You might like to poke at them, whenever possible. But you love them.”

“Sometimes more than other times. And lately not at all.”

He didn’t smile, but still, the way he looked at her warmed her. “You could never be happy with a man who didn’t take the time to make sure they approved. Not for me, but for you. It matters to you what they think, or you would have dated someone just to date them. Years ago.”

He held the ring out between them. “Your grandmother told me this was a ring that had been passed down in your family for a long while. And that if you didn’t like it, I could go do what young men did and try to express myself in carats.”

He took her hand and slid the ring onto her finger. It was an old gold with a pretty ruby in the center. And she knew without having to ask that this was the ring she’d seen on her grandmother’s hand when she was younger. The one that the original Kittredges had made out of gold from the California rush and a ruby from the old country.

“It’s perfect,” she whispered. “You’re perfect.”

“I never want you to forget where you came from,” Brady told her. “Where we came from. This valley and these fields and all the people who came before us and made us who we are. Including your brothers. That’s what this ring is.”

“I love it, Brady. I love you.”

“But we also have a future,” Brady said, then. “And the future is all ours. I want so many things from you, Amanda. I want love. I want more mornings waking up with you next to me. I want a house on our own land, with a beautiful view and the sound of our kids roughhousing from the other side of a firmly locked door.”

They both smiled at that, but he kept going.

“I want that barn of yours to take off. I want my park project to bring in every single tourist from Denver and beyond. I want to take all that we’ve been given, put our spin on it, and hand it on to the next generation. I want to teach our children that it’s always okay to go out there and see what the world has to offer, but that this is their home, and they can always come back here. And that we hope they will.”

To her surprise, he pulled out another ring. And as he slid it onto her finger, moving it into place with the first ring, she understood that this was the kind of methodical he meant. That he’d planned for these two rings to sit there, side by side. One, the old, historical Kittredge ruby. And the other, a gleaming diamond she knew he must have chosen himself, set in a delicate rose gold that played off the ruby, then somehow, together, made one. Better than before.

Just like them.

“Brady,” she tried to say, though she was sobbing and laughing and wasn’t sure she’d ever stop. “It’s so beautiful. They’re both so beautiful. You’re so beautiful.”

“Amanda,” he said, still there on one knee, though he was smiling now. “Will you marry me? I want you to—”

“Yes,” she said, too fast and too wild. She sank down, so they were both kneeling there on the cold ground, but she couldn’t even feel it. There was only him. There was only this. “Yes and yes and yes, to everything. I love you.”

His mouth was on hers, then, and his hands were in her hair. And she was pressing herself against him, desperate and giddy. There was water on her face, but his mouth was so hot, she didn’t care.

Then Brady pulled back and hauled her to her feet.

“I love you, Amanda,” he said, very seriously, as if these were their vows. “I will spend the rest of my life making up for that morning in the barn.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she said in the same tone. “Because I love you too. And we’re going to have those babies, and a lock on our door to make more whenever we like. And every other good thing under the sun because it’s Thanksgiving. And you love me. And that’s the only thing in the world I can think of that’s better than my grandma’s sweet potatoes.”

“You humble me.” And there was laughter in his voice, but Brady’s gaze was serious.

“While you make me feel like I can fly,” Amanda whispered. “From one perfect Brady moment to the next. And I can think of a way you could make us both fly pretty high, right now.”

She braced herself for him to decline. To talk to her some more about the virtues of waiting.

But instead, Brady smiled.

“You do have my rings on her finger,” he drawled.

“I do, indeed.”

“And if I’m not mistaken,” he said, drawing her with him as he moved backward, heading toward his truck, “your education when it comes to the joys of pickup trucks in remote fields is patchy. At best.”

“I’ve probably forgotten everything you’ve taught me,” she said solemnly, then laughed as he picked her up. He tossed her through the open front door into his truck. Then crawled in after her. He slammed his door, turned on the ignition, and then jacked up his heater.

Then he turned to her on that bench seat with pure wickedness in his eyes again.

At last.

And it was truly the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

“I’m not afraid to do a little remedial work with you, Amanda,” he told her solemnly. “That’s how much I love you.”

She was smiling so wide, it hurt. “I appreciate your sacrifice. To education.”

And as if the land wanted to celebrate with them, it started to snow.

Then, out there in the fields, beneath a sky that couldn’t begin to contain how much they loved each other, Amanda and Brady stopped worrying about the past and started working on their future.

Together.

In the best way they knew how.