It had only taken Rose a couple of hours to get moved into her new little cabin, but within the next few days, more and more of her things got transported over to the ranch house. By the first week in February, she was spending all her time at the ranch house with Hud—at least when she wasn’t at her new job at the hospital.
That morning was her day off, though, and she’d walked to the cabin to get a book she’d left there. Red ran along ahead of her, and when she arrived at the cabin, he dashed inside.
She was all but living with Hud, and yet neither of them had said those three words I love you. They’d skirted around them by saying “love ya” in the morning when she left to walk from the ranch house across the pasture to the stile that he’d installed for her to cross over the fence. She’d planned to tell him that she didn’t only love him, but that she was in love with him when she came home from Kentucky, but somehow the moment never seemed just right.
A south wind whipped through the dormant mesquite trees, and dark clouds began to gather in the distance. When she sat down on the sofa, Red laid his head on her lap and looked up at her with big, brown, understanding eyes.
“Don’t give me that look.” She scratched his ears. “You’ve never had trouble telling people that you love them. That wagging tail and those big floppy ears let them know pretty quick how they stand with you.”
Just speak your mind and be honest. Granny Dee’s words came back to her.
That sounded like good advice, but Rose had never told a man that she was in love with him—not even in the semiserious relationship where she had considered moving in with a guy. Should she just blurt it out over supper one evening? After sex didn’t seem like the right time—being in love went beyond a romp in the sheets.
“All this worry isn’t getting anything done,” she told Red as she picked up the book and headed back to the ranch house. “I guess we’ll both open up and say what’s in our hearts when the time is right.” Red ambled across the yard, his nose to the ground, as if he was checking for vicious grasshoppers or tracking a wild raccoon, and then he belly crawled under the barbed wire fence and took off like he was chasing a wily fox.
“If reincarnation is real, then I want to come back as a dog like Red or a cat like Rascal.” She sighed. “They don’t have to worry about stuff as much as humans do.”
“Hey!” Hud yelled from the other side of the fence.
His voice startled her so much that she stumbled and had to grab a porch post to keep from falling. Hud put a hand on a wooden fence post and jumped over the top strand of barbed wire and then jogged over to the porch. He took her in his arms and kissed her with so much heat and passion that it made her knees weak.
Without ending the kisses, he backed her across the lawn and into the cabin. Then he sat down and pulled her onto his lap. A loud clap of thunder made both of them jump, and then rain came down hard enough that it sounded like bullets hitting the cabin’s metal roof. “Where did that come from?” She laid her cheek against his chest.
“Been on the way all morning,” he replied. “We’ve been watching the radar on our phones. We barely got the last of the fencing done when the weather forecast said we had about fifteen minutes before it hit. I decided to jog over here rather than go to the ranch house. It’s going to rain all day and through the night. Think you can put up with me that long?” he asked.
“I’ll do my best to endure it.” She smiled and pulled his face down for another kiss. “Right now, we’d better have some lunch. You’re going to need your strength if I’m going to take the afternoon off.”
He kissed her on her forehead. “I like the way you think.”
* * *
Hard, fierce wind had joined forces with the rain by evening, but there was about five minutes of relief right around five o’clock. “Here’s our chance if we want to go home,” Hud told Rose. “If we don’t take it, we may be spending the night right here.”
“Poor little Rascal will be lonely if we stay here.” Rose grabbed up her coat and purse, turned off her laptop, and headed for the door. “I still can’t believe that Lucas left that kitten with you.”
“He didn’t want to,” Hud said. “But his daddy said the place where they’d be living didn’t allow pets. I told him I’d keep Rascal for him and take real good care of the kitten.”
“See, you really are a hero.” She tossed him the keys to her car. “You drive. I hate driving in the rain.”
He caught them midair. “So you’re finally going to let me drive your new car?”
“Yep, and all it took was one hellacious rainstorm. Lock the door behind you,” she said over her shoulder as she ran outside.
She opened the door and crawled into the passenger’s seat, giggling the whole time.
“What’s so funny?” he asked as he got behind the wheel.
“I was thinking of the first time you came into the gift shop. You stepped in that pan of water, and I sat down in it. I’m surprised both of us ran as far as we did without falling in a mud puddle,” she told him.
“It’s a day of miracles.” He grinned as he drove down the path, past the Longhorn Canyon ranch house to the road, and made a right-hand turn. In just minutes, he’d parked the car beside his truck. “It’s hard to believe that this house and the cabin are so close if we walk and yet so far away if we have to go by the road.”
“Kind of like us, huh?” she asked.
Lightning streaked through the sky, and thunder rolled over the ranch like a big, lazy freight train. “We’d better get inside before it starts dumping more rain on us.”
She didn’t wait for him to come around and open the door for her but bailed out and ran to the porch. Red came out from around the house, did one of those doggy shivers to shake the water off him, and ran inside the second she opened the door.
“At least he did the equivalent of wiping his feet,” she said.
“He’s a pretty good old boy, but what did you mean when you said that the cabin and house are like us?” Hud ran into the house behind her. He helped her with her coat and hung it on the back of a chair. Then he did the same with his.
Rascal came out of the kitchen and bristled up at Red like a little gray porcupine. The dog ignored her and went straight to his favorite spot in the living room. Rose picked up the kitten and held her close to her chest.
“Poor baby,” she crooned. “It’s a tough job having to hold down a house when we leave, and we appreciate you takin’ care of that for us.”
The kitten snuggled down into her arms and started to purr. Rose carried her to the sofa and sat down close to Hud.
“Now to your question,” she said. “We’re close. We love spending time together, and we’re fantastic in bed.”
He nodded. “I hear a but, though, and it kind of scares me.”
“I didn’t know anything could scare you.” She smiled.
“Losing you terrifies me,” he admitted.
“I feel the same about you.” She looked up, and their gazes caught somewhere just above the cat’s tiny head. “But there’s a barbed wire fence between us. I’m practically living with you and neither of us…” She paused.
“Rose O’Malley, I love you,” he said without blinking, “and not only do I love you, darlin’, I’m in love with you. I think I fell in love with you the first time I saw you in the Tulia Junior High hallway. But it’s only been the past few weeks that I realized that I also love you. Does that take down the fence?”
“No, but this does.” She set the kitten on the floor and cupped his face in her hands. “I’ve held you in my heart and loved you for years, but now I’m in love with you too. You complete my heart and soul.”