Page 100 of The Cowboy Who Worked Late

Angel hadn’t thought about it at all. So much of her life had been mapped out for her, and all she had to do was move box by box, from one thing to the next. Yes, Trevor’s accident had caused a major landslide in her plans, and her entire road had been detoured to another one. But still, her life revolved around Lone Star, and she’d never once considered not living there.

“Stinnett?” she asked.

“Baby,” he said quietly. “When I imagine the future, it’s me and you.” He didn’t say, I love you, but he might as well have with that soft, husky tone.

It’s me and yousure sounded nice.

“I know we haven’t talked a lot about marriage, or kids, or where we’ll live yet, but we need to start doing that.”

“Yeah,” she whispered.

“And one of those things that I see in the future for us isnotLone Star.”

Angel couldn’t get her feet to move. “Lone Star is my whole life.”

“We’ll work there,” he said. “Heck, we can give a lot of ourselves to that place—our hearts and our souls and our sweat and our blood. But me and you, we’ve got to give ourselves to each other. And that’s going to require a new place for us, a place thatwefind and thatwemake our own. So when I look into the future and I see me and you together, I don’t see us at Lone Star.”

“Okay,” she said. “I think I’m following.”

“Are you?”

“I think so,” she said. “You want to live somewhere else. Somewhere close where we can commute, where we can work and do all the things that we love, but then have somewhere we can retreat to.”

“Exactly that,” he said.

“And I’m just wondering if you hear yourself at all,” she asked as she collapsed back at the dining room table.

“I hear myself just fine,” he said.

“Do you?” she challenged. “Because you used the word ‘we’ a lot in those sentences you just said, and not once have you invited me to come look at any of the places around Three Rivers or Stinnett or Amarillo or wherever else you’re looking.”

This silence felt full of truth and tension, and Henry said, “You’re right. I guess I just—I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought.”

“If you want us to build that life independent of Lone Star so that we have each other, then I have to look at the places too, Henry.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I think that’s about right.”

“So are you gonna go look at them with Paul tonight? Do you have appointments with a real estate agent?”

“No,” he said. “We were just gonna drive by.”

“Well, Stinnett’s not that far from here,” she said. “I could meet you there to do that.”

“If I’m coming from the ranch, it’ll be over an hour to Stinnett,” he said. “Let me think about it.”

“You’ll think about it.”

“Wait, that’s not what I meant. I just won’t go tonight.”

“You sound tired, Henry,” she said.

“I am tired, sweetheart.” His voice wavered. “Grams is awake and doing well. They get her up to walk every now and then, but her potassium is still too high, and they won’t let her go.”

“Sorry, baby,” Angel whispered. “If I could be there to help you, I would. You know that, right?”

“I know that,” he said. “Paul mentioned that we could do an equine therapy session before I told him about the houses in Stinnett. We’ll do that tonight. I’ll feel better, I promise.”

“Yeah,” Angel said. “And at the risk of bringing up another thing that we’re going to argue about….” She let her words hang there, and Henry chuckled into the silence.

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