Cher wore the expression that Glo felt. And her words voiced her own disbelief. “Wait, what happened? Because maybe I haven’t had enough coffee, but I thought I heard you say that you and Tate broke up.”
Glo sat on a high top chair in the kitchen of her mother’s sprawling Nashville-area estate in an over-sized T-shirt she’d stolen from Tate, a pair of jammie bottoms, and a short kimono with flamboyant pink flowers. She’d pulled her hair back in a headband, letting it curl out in every direction, and wore nothing of makeup.
Not that it would help, because her eyes felt like sand. Glo stared at her yogurt, stirring her spoon through it, not really hungry.
She didn’t have much room left anyway after consuming most of a freezer-burned carton of Moose Tracks last night.
“Yep,” she said and put the yogurt down on the granite countertop. Outside, the sun shone bright on the pool, but it only stirred up memories of when Tate had shown up after she’d driven him away with her stupidity and he told her he loved her.
Said that he’d never leave her.
“We had a fight,” Glo said now to Cher’s question.
“So what?” Cher set her bag, filled with wedding magazines, on the counter. “You don’t break up every time you have a fight.”
“Oh, if we broke up every time we had a fight—no, no, this was…it was different.” She scooted off the high top, the travertine cool on her feet as she went to the fridge. Something in there should make her feel better. “He got shot.”
Silence behind her and, seeing nothing in the fridge except carrots, she closed it and turned back to Cher.
Her friend was staring at Glo, wide-eyed. “Shot?”
“Yeah.” Glo put her hands on her hips. “While in Vegas.”
Cher sat back on one of the chairs. “What on earth was he doing in Vegas? Last time he was there, the Russian mob hunted him down and nearly killed him.”
“I remember. And so did he, which is why he didn’t tell me about it. Hashtag trust. Hashtag what-else-is-he-doing-that-he-isn’t-saying?”
“Wait—stop. What was he doing there?”
Glo grabbed a browning banana off the counter. “Looking for Sloan.”
A beat.
“But why?”
Glo looked at her. “Well, see, he thought Sloan was—is—in league with the Russian mob.”
“Sloan?”
Glo peeled the banana and broke the top part off. “Frankly, I might agree if he hadn’t shown up at the bridal shop the other day.”
Cher just stared at her. Glo popped the banana in her mouth. Nodded.
Finally, “He says he’s being set up. That he had nothing to do with Tate getting hurt. And apparently, he’s also being linked to a murder in Seattle.”
“A murder? No, that can’t be right. Sloan is…well, he’s a little arrogant, but he’s harmless.”
Glo dumped the rest of the banana in the garbage. “I know, right? But Tate doesn’t agree, and when he found out that Sloan talked to me, he completely freaked out.” She poured herself another cup of coffee. “Never mind that he was sitting in some sleazy hotel, bleeding. He could have been killed.”
She turned, her hands wrapped around the warm mug, her eyes glazing again. “I can’t live like this, fearing for his life every time he’s not with me. He’s…”
“A hero.”
“Scary.”
“Oh, Glo. I thought you worked through all this. You told me that you would rather have Tate in your life the way he is than not at all.”
“And I thought so!” She put her coffee down, whisked away the tear across her cheek. “I thought so. But then I had this crazy dream about Sloan killing him—”
“You had a dream that Sloan killed him?”
“Yes. And then he started lying to me, or at least keeping things from me—and we have a rule…no secrets.”
“Girl!” Cher smacked the counter. “He’s still trying to protect you! Of course he’s not going to tell you that he’s walking into your greatest fears.”
Glo narrowed her eyes. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am. Tate. Hello. The man is crazy about you. And you’re crazy about him. And you’re going to have to trust him a little.”
“I do trust him.”
Cher’s voice softened. “Then what’s the deal?”
The sunlight was pouring into the room in long, glorious beams of gold. Glo walked over and stood in it, staring out at the fresh-cut grass, the blooming goldenrod bushes that flanked the pool area. Sighed. “I’m too happy.”
“Glo. What?”
She couldn’t look at Cher if she wanted to tell the truth. But it had sunk like a ball into her gut the moment she’d voiced it to Dixie and Kelsey, and now with Tate’s injury… “You know my mother always loved my sister best. She doted on her, and when we lost her, my mother just…she could hardly bear to look at me.”
Cher, behind her, didn’t say a word.
“When I met Tate, I felt like I was at the center of his world. He made me feel seen, and more than that, brave and pretty and…well, like I mattered. Of course I fell in love with him. And when he asked me to marry him, I was so happy it was nearly painful.”
She walked back to the counter and slid onto a high top. “And then the shooting in Seattle happened, and Tate became consumed with finding the shooter and suddenly…I started to think maybe I was too happy. Even selfish to want to be the center of Tate’s world. And that probably all this was designed to put me back in my place. To remind me that no one gets to be that happy.” She took a sip of coffee.
Cher was frowning at her, as if Glo had lost her mind.
Maybe. But, “It’s not about my fear of him dying, although that’s true. It’s about feeling like I can’t trust the happiness. I’m pretty sure all this happiness, all these good things are a fluke and someday it’s all going to blow up in my face.”
“Why would it blow up in your face?”
Glo lifted a shoulder.
Cher slid off the stool. Took her by the shoulders. “No one is perfect, Glo. We all have our flaws and our issues and our regrets. I know one of those is that you couldn’t help your sister. That she died even though you gave her a kidney. But it doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve love and happiness.”
“I don’t know, Cher. Maybe it’s not about deserving it or not. Dixie said that the sun shines on the good and the bad. So maybe it’s not up to me. But if it’s not, how do I live with the fear that it could all end?”
“So instead, you end it yourself?”
Glo looked away, her eyes sheening again.
“That’s called self-sabotage. Making yourself miserable simply because you’re afraid of being miserable.”
Glo looked at her, made a face.
“Just speaking from personal experience,” Cher said. “I’m afraid to ping the cutest guy on my dating app because I just know he’ll reject me, so I go out with the guys I know won’t make me happy so if they do hurt me, I can tell myself I didn’t want them anyway.”
She pulled Glo into a hug. “Or I break up with them when I like them too much because I’m sure I’m the one who’s going to get hurt.”
Cher let her go.
Glo drew in a breath. “I am afraid of losing him.”
“Of course you are. But is that fear worth pushing him away?”
The doorbell sounded into the house.
“I have flowers coming,” Cher said. “I need you to pick out a bouquet.”
Glo headed toward the front door. “But the wedding is off—”
Glo opened the door.
Tate stood on the step, such a fierce, exhausted, drawn expression on his face it looked as if he’d waged a small but brutal war on his way to her door. He wore a blue T-shirt with the words Shelly Lions on the front, a pair of baggy jeans, dress shoes, and his suit coat. His hair was unkempt, his eyes red, and he took one look at her and stepped across the threshold into the room.
“Our wedding is not off,” he said as he shut the door behind him. Then he wrapped his arm around her waist, backed her into the wall, and without a word of hello, kissed her.
Not a sweet, I’m so glad to see you kiss, either, but one of possession. Of desire and hurt and fear. He tasted like cinnamon, as if he’d chewed gum on his way here, and smelled like freshly applied deodorant, but his unshaven whiskers, his worn shirt, and scent of salt on his skin told her that probably he’d taken a red-eye.
Maybe the moment she’d hung up on him.
And that only shattered the hard ball of anger inside.
Tate.
The man is crazy about you.
Indeed.
And yes, she was just as crazy about him. What had she been thinking?
She slipped her arms up around his neck and sank into him and slowed them down, gentling his mouth, and his heartbeat settled down from the terrible thunder against her. She wrapped a leg around his, holding him tighter. Deepened her kiss. Hello, tough guy.
No, the wedding was most certainly not off.
He finally let her go, pushing back from her, touching his forehead to hers.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.” His mouth was a grim line.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Me too, babe. Me too.”
She just stared into his blue eyes, lost, found. Happy.
“We are getting married,” he said as he drew away, then caught her hands. “But not here. And not next week.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“We’re catching a plane for Montana. We’re getting married on Saturday. Let’s get this done.”
“That’s in two days.”
He glanced over at Cher, who had returned to the kitchen but was still close enough to hear. “Cher?” he said, raising his voice.
“I can make that happen!” she called back.
Glo laughed. “All right then.”
He smiled, and it was a blast of pure light right to her soul.
“Hungry?” she asked.
“I could eat a rhinoceros.”
She took his hand and walked him through the family room.
He stopped, staring at a wall of family pictures, candids, and other shots. She and her father fishing, her mother on a horse in her youth. A family safari trip with the foundation. She hated that picture, the one posed with her near a dead elephant.
“Where is this?”
“Africa. We were on a safari hunt sponsored by our foundation. Brought a few of the biggest donors.”
He pointed to a man near the front holding a rifle. “Is that—”
“Sloan? Yes. He was the one who shot the elephant.”
Tate drew in a breath, looked at Glo, the ferocity back, this time with a hint of fear. “Pack your bags. We leave in an hour.”
RJ was going to prove to York he wasn’t a bad guy. That his dark memories were simply shadows. That he wasn’t the man he feared he was.
She just needed to get them someplace safe while she figured out how.
“This place is breathtaking, RJ.” York sat in the passenger seat of the rental car they’d picked up in Helena and stared out at the rolling, pine-dotted hills of west central Montana. In the distance, the black hump of the Garnet Range glistened with the smallest rim of white, snow already finding the mountains.
“How many acres does your family own?”
“Around nine thousand. We have about twelve hundred head of beef cattle, but Knox started raising prize bucking bulls after my father died, so he poured all the money into that. I’m not sure what direction Reuben is taking the ranch—he took over a couple months ago.”
York had changed into a pair of jeans, a gray T-shirt, and tennis shoes and appeared so, well, normal, she just couldn’t wrap her head around the guy who seemed actually nervous to meet the rest of her family.
“They like you,” she said, resisting the urge to take his hand and squeeze it. “You met them already. You just don’t remember it.”
“I remember some of it. Like Ford jumping me in Russia—that was Ford, the SEAL, right?”
“Yes. But he didn’t know who you were.”
“I think Wyatt nearly got me shot, too, if I remember—”
“The rest of them are really nice. And no one is going to get shot way out here.”
And it was way out here. A hundred miles from Helena, the closest town, Geraldine had a population of thirteen hundred. Cell service was sometimes spotty, and it wasn’t unheard of to see a cowboy on horseback riding fence or herding cattle. With the blue sky arching high over the land, the pine-laced wind stirring the evergreen trees that dotted their property, it seemed a land lost in time, right out of the Wild West.
But to RJ, it always felt like one place she could relax.
Even hide.
“What river is that?” York pointed to a lazy silver thread that wove through the foothills.
“The Geraldine River. There’s a falls that you can see from a point behind the house. We used to swim in it.”
“Is that the river—”
“The one with the cave where Ford and I got lost? Yes.”
York trimmed his mouth into a thin line. “A lot of memories here.”
“Most of them good,” she said. She pulled up to the Triple M Ranch gate sign cast in iron and hanging between two soaring log braces.
“I’ll get it,” York said and got out before she could stop him. He unhooked the gate, opened it, and waited as she passed through. Then he relatched it and got in.
“You’re a regular cowboy.”
“Please. I’d fall right off a horse.” But he smiled.
Oh, how she liked it when he smiled.
The ranch house came into sight as she topped the first hill. It sat in the notch of a second hill, a dark log-sided, two-story house with a stone front porch. Her mother’s flowerpots, flanking the red door, boasted orange and red chrysanthemums, and blankets hung over the two rocking chairs. Almost as if waiting for her.
“This is gorgeous, RJ.”
“You forget about it when you’re gone, but yeah. Every time I drive up here I realize what I have to come home to.”
He reached over and took her hand, squeezing.
Such an odd, affectionate gesture for York, but perhaps not for Mack.
She rather liked this new, merged version.
She parked near the barn, noticing the unpainted new wood on the back where Reuben had rebuilt it after the fire earlier this year. And in the corral, Gordo, Knox’s prize bull, watched with glassy dark eyes as she got out of the rental.
A couple of baby goats ran out of the barn.
“Catch them, RJ!”
The voice accompanied her brother Reuben, who barreled out after the two bony goats. He wore a pair of jeans, work boots, a grimy flannel shirt, and a baseball hat.
York scooped one up, held it in his arms.
Reuben caught up with the other and slung it up on his hip. “These rascals are forever escaping. Hey, sis.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek.
Reuben was the tallest, the oldest, and the one she knew least. He’d left the ranch before she was even a teenager, and before then, he spent most of his time playing football or hanging out with their father, learning the ropes. She barely remembered the infamous family fight that had driven him away but clearly remembered his return and the day he made amends with Knox.
Set Knox free to pursue his dreams.
It seemed that maybe Reuben, too, had found his happy place, tending the ranch, his wife, Gilly, expecting their first child.
He turned to York. “Hey. I’m Reuben. You must be the man RJ calls 007.”
York offered a feeble chuckle. “York.” He met Reuben’s outstretched hand.
“I guess you’re here for the big party,” he said.
RJ laughed. “If you mean Tate and Glo’s impromptu, I-have-to-marry-her-now wedding, then yes.”
Reuben stared at her. “Uh…” He glanced at the house.
“What?”
“So, you’d better talk to Ma.”
She frowned, and Reuben reached for the other goat. “Good to meet you, York.”
York fetched his duffel bag and RJ’s suitcase from the back seat and followed her in.
She always equated the ranch house with the smell of chocolate chip cookies, scones, and baked bread.
Her mother didn’t disappoint. The smell of cinnamon rolls beckoned her inside as she opened the door, and she spotted her mother standing at the large granite kitchen counter, oven mitts in hand, talking with Coco, who sat on one of the high top stools.
“Wow,” York said, following her in, and she guessed he meant the soaring two-story stone fireplace, the polished logs, the deep, worn leather furniture, and the magazine-perfect view of the mountains through the two flanking windows. “You guys don’t do small, do you?”
“RJ!” Her mother set her mitts down and came around the counter with her arms open. “I didn’t expect you two so soon.”
Gerri pulled her into a hug. “You okay?”
She nodded, not sure exactly how to tell her mother about the events in Vegas.
“Did you find the man you were looking for?” Her mother pulled away, glanced at her, then York. “Where’s Tate?”
“Yes and no, and he’s with Glo. And he’s on his way here. Didn’t he call you?”
She shook her head as she reached for York. His eyebrows went up as he hugged her.
RJ shrugged. Maybe she should have warned him, but he’d get used to it. Her mother adopted everyone.
“He’s coming here with Glo. I think they’re hoping to get married this weekend.”
Her mother’s eyes widened. “Oh dear.”
“What?”
The oven timer buzzed and her mother returned to the counter and picked up her mitts. RJ walked over and hugged Coco.
“When did you get here?”
“Yesterday. We left right after you all did. Wyatt wanted Mikka to see the ranch and get some fresh air, and…well, I guess our timing is perfect because…um…” She looked at Gerri.
She pulled a tray of rolls out of the oven and now set them on a rack to cool.
“Kelsey and Knox eloped.”
“What?”
“Yes. They called, and they’re on their way, and we’re having a family party this weekend.”
Oh.
“Tate didn’t even call?” RJ slid onto a stool. Her mother was right. “Oh boy.”
“What’s going on, honey?” her mother said, loading another tray of risen rolls into the oven.
“Oh, Tate is so in the doghouse. He was supposed to invite you to his wedding next weekend.”
“Next weekend?” Her mother looked at Coco, who had drawn up one leg and now shrugged.
“But after he was shot in Vegas, Glo completely freaked out and he had to fly down there and calm her down. And he figured the only way to do that was to get married, immediately. But he doesn’t want to do it in Nashville, so he’s bringing her back here.”
Her mother just stared at her.
York set his hand on RJ’s shoulder. “He’s fine, Gerri.”
Oh. Whoops. She’d blown right by that first sentence.
Her mother drew in a breath. “How bad is it?”
“It was just a graze on his arm. York glued it shut,” RJ said.
“Glued.”
Wyatt had shown up, carrying Mikka over his shoulder. “It’s a great way to mend wounds on the fly. My coaches used to do it all the time.” The little boy was all smiles, despite being pale and thin. “We’re going out to the barn to chase baby goats,” Wyatt said. “But maybe we should just have one big wedding. What do you think, Coco?”
Coco’s eyes widened and she looked like he might have suggested they skydive. “What—this weekend?”
“Why not? A big Marshall family wedding.”
“Go away, Wyatt,” his mother said.
“What?”
Coco had blushed as Wyatt bounced Mikka out of the house.
“We are engaged,” she said, turning back to them. “I was just waiting until Mikka was further along in his treatment. He’s in remission, but we’re starting stage two, and I just think we need to wait longer…”
“For life to get easier?” Gerri said. “Less complicated? There will always be something that demands your attention. You and Wyatt have waited five years to be together—with heaven’s blessing. How much longer do you want to wait?” She turned to York. “You can bunk in Tate and Ford’s room. Wyatt is in Knox’s room. I’ll put Knox and Kelsey on the pullout in the den. Reuben and Gilly have taken his old room.”
York looked confused with all the shuffling.
“I’ll show him, Ma.” RJ went to reach for her bag, but York picked it up. She led the way upstairs and walked by Knox’s room, the one he once shared with Wyatt. When Wyatt had moved out, Knox had turned it into a single room. Wyatt’s gear was dropped near the bed.
“This is mine.” She noticed Coco’s belongings were already piled on her twin bed. York dropped her suitcase on the other one. “Yours is the next one down.”
He nodded.
“York?”
He turned back.
“Are you okay?”
He nodded, but something in his expression…
“What?”
He sighed. “It’s just…you’ve got a great family, RJ. And it makes me wonder what kind of family I had.”
“You don’t remember?”
His mouth tightened around the edges.
Right. “Okay, so you lived with your grandparents in Wisconsin after your parents were…after they died. And I know you had an uncle who was in the Marines. That’s what made you go into the Marines, so it must have been good.”
York nodded. “I have some patchwork memories of a small yellow house, a woman with white hair…but frankly, I’m afraid to try too hard. I feel as if I got all the bad memories and none of the good. I don’t know if I can take remembering anything else.”
She walked over to him, touched his chest, his heart a steady, warm beat. He hadn’t shaved and his whiskers had come in golden, returning him to the rough-edged lumberjack look. “You have good memories, York. But maybe yes, you’ve remembered enough. Now it’s time to make new ones.”
He touched her face, something sweet, maybe hungry in his blue eyes. “Thanks, RJ.”
Her phone buzzed on her bed and he went down the hallway.
She picked it up and closed the door as she answered. Pitched her voice low. “Thanks for calling me back.”
“How is he?” Crowley said. “Are his memories resurfacing?”
“Not all of them.” She walked to the window. “He has these memories of his parents being murdered. And the crazy sense that he’s somehow to blame. I was wondering if you had anything on that, maybe, from when you vetted him?”
“I can look into it, if you’d like.”
“Please, yes.” She watched out the window as an SUV drove up. “Did you find out any connection between Sloan and Slava?”
“No. But we did discover something else concerning.”
“Yes?” The SUV pulled up by the barn. The door opened and Knox got out. It warmed her heart to see Reuben pull his brother into a hug.
“We got the forensic reports on the three bodies from the crash. One was a twenty-year-old named Jason MacDonald.”
Aw. She was hoping, despite Vicktor’s investigations, that Mack would have shown up, maybe just lost in the woods.
“The other two bodies were inconclusive. We pulled DNA, but there was no match with anyone in our system.”
She stilled. “So, what about Martin?”
“He’s still in our database, but according to the DNA taken, there is no match.”
She watched as Kelsey and Knox came up the walk holding hands. Sweet. Knox deserved his happy ending after he’d done so much to hold the family together.
“So Martin could still be out there.”
“Does York remember anything about why Martin wants him? Anything that would incriminate Martin?
She heard York’s voice from another time, another place. I have a feeling that if the CIA knew I was here, I might be in trouble. I have too many secrets.
“No. I don’t think so.”
The greetings of the newlyweds rose from the room below.
“Then you have to help him remember, RJ. Because if Martin is still alive, he is probably looking for York. And then you’re both in danger.”
She closed her eyes.
No. Her entire family was in danger.
According to Tate, they’d found their shooter.
Problem was, it just didn’t sit right in York’s gut.
Tate and Glo had shown up, with their small entourage—her bandmate Dixie, their drummer, Elijah Blue, and Cher, her maid of honor—about an hour after Kelsey and Knox.
The guy needed to work on his tact, however, because after he’d congratulated Kelsey and Knox, Tate broke the news that he wanted to get married too.
This weekend. As in two days.
But apparently Glo’s friend Cher and Coco, Glo, and Gerri had it under control. Like a well-oiled operative team.
Which left Tate available to pull York aside and give him an update. The ballistics report on Slava had come in—and it matched the bullet that took out Kobie, the shooter in Seattle.
From a Remington 700 SPS tactical rifle.
The same kind of gun Tate had apparently seen Sloan holding in some picture hanging in Glo’s mother’s house.
Means, motive, and opportunity, and Tate had the case sewn up and had moved on to solving the problem of the broken tractor.
Nope, it just felt all kinds of wrong. Maybe it was simply because York was miles and miles out of his element.
The Marshall brothers, minus Fast-Fists Ford, who York now remembered from their altercation in a Russian alleyway three months ago, were congregated in the barn, gathered in concerned conversation around a very ancient green tractor, the name Oliver 2255 written on the side. The seat was ripped, the chassis rusty, and the paint was chipping off like leaves in autumn.
York stood a little back from the group, not saying anything, watching the brothers assess it like it might be a wounded animal. Reuben had the side hood open, had taken out a spark plug, and was cleaning it with a rag.
Knox was on his knees, looking at the tires. “It has a hydraulic leak on the left-side brake.”
Tate had walked around the machine and kicked the tires. “When did the floorboard fall off?”
“About a year ago,” Knox said. “It needs to be welded back on.” He got up and dusted off his hands.
York didn’t remember Knox from when they’d met a month ago, but Knox seemed familiar. He had a sturdy, solemn get-’er-done aura about him, and the first thing he’d done after filling in the family on his elopement was to go outside and check the stock with Reuben.
Reuben, too, felt like someone he’d met before, although according to RJ, he hadn’t met the former smokejumper. Reuben had a military-esque bearing about him, a big guy with big shoulders and a big smile. It didn’t surprise York to hear that he’d been a sawyer on a firefighting crew.
Wyatt was leaning against a stall, drinking a soda, watching. “I always hated that thing,” he said. “We’d be out in the middle of the field, and it’d die on us, and Dad would make me walk all the way back to the barn for some stupid tool. And then when I got back, he already had it fixed. Stupid. I say junk it.”
“Zip it, Wy,” Knox said. “This thing was Dad’s pride and joy. It just needs a little more TLC.”
Frankly, York was with Wyatt and nearly pronounced it a goner when another man walked into the barn.
All the men looked up and over at him. Reuben set the spark plug on the top of the tractor. Knox grabbed another rag and started wiping his hands.
“Hey, Hardwin,” Reuben said and shook his hand.
Hardwin. The name sounded familiar. Over six foot, he wore a pair of pressed jeans, boots, a jean shirt, and a leather cowboy hat over gray hair. His leathery face suggested hours outdoors, but he was clean shaven and smelled as if he might be going out on a date.
Oh. Right.
Hardwin was the man dating RJ’s mother.
See, York could remember good things.
Although, by the way the posse gathered, maybe it wasn’t such a good thing.
“I hear congratulations are in order,” Hardwin said to Knox.
“Thanks,” Knox said. “We’ve been talking about it for a while, and we were thinking of running off to Hawaii but…I couldn’t wait.” He smiled, glanced at Tate, winked.
And for some reason, it only stirred a desire inside York.
Since she’d kissed him at the motel, his feelings for RJ were flooding in—everything from sheer panic to admiration to frustration to the desire to dig his hands into her hair and pull her to himself and kiss her.
Really kiss her. Because when he was with her, he felt…well, maybe not like the man he barely remembered, but also not like Mack, the man he didn’t really know. And he didn’t feel confused or lost or even angry.
He felt right. As if it didn’t matter who he was or wasn’t, but with her—like last night by the pool—he was exactly who he wanted to be.
A man who could be trusted. A man who would protect. A man who wanted to be better.
Yes, that’s what it was. She made him feel like he was better.
He could admit that he needed RJ.
And maybe that meant, too, that he loved her.
He just couldn’t remember, exactly, what that felt like either.
“I understand that, son.” Hardwin dropped his hand. Cleared his throat. Smiled. “Actually, that’s what I was hoping to talk to you about. And since you’re all here…um…” He took a breath. “I’m going to ask your mother to marry me.”
This was probably where York should sneak out.
“And I was hoping to get your blessings.”
Yep. York edged toward the door.
Silence filled the barn, and suddenly he wasn’t sure if Hardwin needed backup. Because York might be on the receiving end of those quiet, dangerous expressions someday if…
What? He asked to marry RJ?
Did he want to marry RJ? Yes, I think I could be happy in a small town, eating lasagna for dinner. Could you?
“You want to marry Ma,” Tate said.
“I do,” Hardwin responded, his deep voice unwavering. “She and I have plenty of good years left, and even if we don’t, I love her. She is…well, she brings sunlight to my life after a very long darkness. And I think I do the same for her.”
York had paused by the door, caught in his words.
Sunlight in darkness. That was exactly the sense he had when he first met RJ, as Sydney, back in Shelly. A light trying to break through his layers of shadows.
“When my wife first died, I tried to hang on to all the memories we had. And I think that got in the way between your mother and me. But she’s…she taught me that I don’t have to say goodbye to all my memories to embrace new ones. And neither does she. I’m not here to replace your father—I could never do that. But I’m hoping to be someone who could make your mother happy in this new season.”
York slipped out, walking away from the scene, pretty sure that Hardwin was going to get a yes.
But his words wrapped around York. I don’t have to say goodbye to all my memories to embrace new ones. RJ was right. Not all his memories were bad. Maybe he simply remembered the good ones and went forward into a new season.
He stopped by the corral, resting his hands on the top rail as he watched the bull in the yard. Wide shoulders, a ring in his nose, the bull snuffled through hay.
“That’s Gordo, my brother’s prize bull,” RJ said, coming up next to him. She’d changed into a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt, looking very cowgirlish in her cowboy boots. “He lost Hot Pete in the bombing in San Antonio, but apparently, Gordo sired another upcoming champion. And he still has some good straws in him.”
“Straws?”
“Seeds. You know…” She grinned at him, waggled her eyebrows.
Oh, right.
She put one foot on the lower rail. “So, have you remembered anything more about Martin, the guy you recognized when he arrested you?”
He looked at her, frowned. “No. Why?”
She drew in a breath. “I don’t know. Just, you know…trying to figure out why they would want you.”
He looked back at Gordo. “I don’t care anymore. I just want to leave it behind. I know enough to know that life is over. And I’m grateful to have been given a second chance. And no, I don’t want to be Mack—but I do want a new season.” He looked over at her. “A lasagna season.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Lasagna, huh?”
“I’d eat turnips if it meant you were with me.”
And he didn’t know where that came from, but it felt right, even when she swallowed hard but didn’t look away.
So, “I think I love you, RJ.”
She closed her eyes, drew in a shaky breath. He touched her cheek, ran his thumb down it.
Then he leaned over and kissed her. Gently, as if for the first time.
She didn’t step toward him, but she softened her lips, kissing him back.
Pouring sunlight into his soul.
He heard voices emerging from the barn and drew away, his gaze in hers. She smiled ever so slightly.
“So, when are you going to ask her?” Wyatt, walking up beside Hardwin. “Because, you know, we could have a big Marshall family wedding.”
“Ask who, what?” RJ said to York.
“Oh, you’ll see,” he said.
The Marshall family knew how to put on a celebratory spread. Smoked ribs, homemade rolls, a feta-orange-arugula salad, cheesy potatoes, and chocolate cake. Knox told the story of how, after hearing York’s tale of losing his memory and nearly his life, he got in his car and drove to Cannon Beach, picked up Kelsey, and refused to wait another second to marry her.
RJ kept looking at York across the table, probably replaying his words in her head. And he kept glancing at Hardwin, who spent most of the night with a crazy smile pinned to his face as if by betraying any other emotion he might give himself away.
Only, all the guys knew, and that meant they, too, kept looking at him and wearing stupid smiles, and finally, Hardwin stood up.
“You all know that I love your mother,” he said, looking at Gerri, whose face had paled. “I never thought I’d find someone who I could love again, but I do, and I know she feels the same about me.”
Gerri took a quick breath, her eyes wide. And then Hardwin turned to her and pulled out a velvet box. “Gerri. You brought light into my world when it was dark. You make me a better man, every day. And I want to spend the rest of my life making your life bright and safe and better too. A new season for us. Will you marry me?”
York looked at RJ, trying to read her expression. She drew in her breath, put a hand to her mouth.
Gerri’s chair banged as she rose. Gave Hardwin a terrible, pained look, and then turned and fled from the table.
The entire family sat in stunned silence.
RJ got up and followed after her mother, and Coco followed after RJ, and Gilly got up and started clearing plates, along with Kelsey and Glo and…
“Was that a no?” Hardwin said, sitting back down.
And he looked so defeated, so wrecked, York had to look away.
“That was a bomb,” Wyatt said.
Tate glared at him.
York carried his plate to the kitchen, then walked out to the back porch. The sun had exploded into a firebomb of red, gold, and orange, leaving a flaming trail along the horizon as it fell into darkness.
He stood there, unable to move. Unable to breathe, his chest aching.
Because he’d finally figured out why Martin wanted to kill him.