Page 52 of The Cowboy's Secret Babies

Rosie didn’t want to let him go. She didn’t know what he planned to do, but she had the strangest notion that shehadto stop him, that he would ruineverything—

But she caught her mother’s calm gaze from across the room. Charlotte was dressed in flowing shades of pink and orange this afternoon, and that seemed to underscore the way she looked at her daughter from afar. Beside her, Matilda was talking to Tennessee Lisle as if she couldn’t see his customary scowl, but Charlotte was looking straight at her.

Rosie could practically hear her mother speak in her head.Practice non-attachment, Charlotte would say. It had never been helpful.

Yet today, it was. Rosie decided to simply… wait and see what Ryder did instead of trying to predict it and run around it and get out in front of it. This wasactuallygiving the man freedom, not just talking about it.

This was putting her money where her mouth was. No matter how hard it was.

She let go of his hand. She even smiled, and not the way she’d learned as a sorority girl. Ryder smiled back, but he still lookedresolved.

He turned around and made his way through the crowd, nodding at folks as he passed them, but not stopping. He went over to the band, said a few words to the singer, and then took the mic.

Rosie was staring at him, deeply surprised that he felt this was the time to make a speech. Or that any time was a good time to make a speech, really.

She looked around again, surprised to find Wilder and Cat and the rest of the Carey family on one side of her. And then on her other side, Sara Jane came to stand beside her, flashing that silver gaze of hers all around in her best librarian fashion, as if expecting lip from their friends and neighbors. Before Rosie could tell Sara Jane that it was perfectly fine if she wanted to get back to one of her intense conversations with Atticus Wayne, the sheriff’s deputy, and his fascinating sister Esther who fancied herself some kind of amateur detective, complete with a true crime podcast, Matilda came and pushed her way between them. She smiled apologetically at Sara Jane, then slid an arm around Rosie’s shoulders and kissed her on the top of her head.

“So,” she said, directly into Rosie’s ear. “Anytime you want to share the details on how you got Ryder Carey to the altar…”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Rosie said in the same tone. She grinned at her older sister. “Just go get knocked up. Works like a charm.”

They both laughed at that, despite the quelling look that Jack sent their way as Ryder began to speak.

“I sure appreciate everyone coming out tonight,” he said, and he seemed to know exactly how to hold a microphone so that his voice filled the lobby without any feedback or other mishaps. Because of course he did. “I know this was all a lot of short notice, but when Rosie and I decided to get married, we didn’t want to wait any longer.”

He nodded towards Levi and Eli, who had crept up toward the stage. They were now sitting there before it, gazing up at him as if they expected him to start pulling rabbits out of hats, or some such thing.

Ryder grinned down at them, and wasn’t that a picture. Such a gorgeous man and his two ridiculously cute little boys. Rosie’s heart thumped at her so hard she was surprised everyone couldn’t hear it.

“There was some concern,” Ryder drawled, “that if we waited any longer, they’d be in high school.”

That got a laugh from just about everyone.

To Rosie’s right, she heard Zeke laugh too, as if he was surprised. “Who knew that Ryder was charming?” he asked.

“It’s alarming,” Harlan agreed.

Boone and Knox raised their brows at each other, but Wilder, Rosie noticed, only smiled. And maybe held onto Cat a little tighter.

“I know that I haven’t necessarily treated this place as well as I should have,” Ryder continued, and nodded in a way that seemed to take in not just this lodge and these people, but the whole of their lovely valley outside and down below them, and maybe the better part of Paradise Valley, too. “I knew when I was a teenager that I had to leave fast or I’d be held here, and it’s not that being held here is bad thing. I hope I never gave off that impression. I just had that itch to get out and see the world a bit. I wanted to wake up where no one knew me, and spend days without ever hearing my name spoken out loud. I wanted to see what the opposite of a place like this felt like, and I did.” He smiled. “I can’t pretend I didn’t enjoy it. I know some of you here today have never seen the ocean, and I think that’s a shame. It has a pull on a person, a lot like these mountains that we all know have always had that kind of hold on us.”

There was a murmur of agreement, from those who’d traveled their share and others who Rosie knew had never seen another state, much less a whole ocean. She agreed with Ryder that it was a sad thing that some folks had never gone that far away from these mountains.

She’d seen the ocean down in Texas. Her sorority sisters and she had often made the drive down to the Gulf and she could still remember the first time she’d walked down to the water’s edge and put her feet in the ocean. It had felt so huge. So overpowering.

It had felt a lot like falling in love.

Rosie remembered the warm Texan sun on her face and the clear water off Padre Island. How she’d felt inside out. She’d wanted to run straight out into the ocean. She’d wanted to let it carry her away.

She felt the same way tonight, listening to Ryder—herhusband, she reminded herself. He washer husband, and that felt as tremendous and important as it had to stand there as an eighteen-year-old girl from Montana who’d never seen the ocean before and soak it all in, thinking her whole life was ahead of her the same way all that water was, stretching out to meet the sky.

“This time,” Ryder was saying, “I came home to stay. I’m not a young man with a wild soul like I once was. I’ve done my time in the bull-riding ring and managed to walk out on my own two feet, which is more than a lot of us can say. I want to settle down, spend time with my family, and build myself the sweet little life I’m pretty sure I’ve been running toward all along, right here where I know from experience that life is pretty sweet already.”

“Hear, hear,” Zeke boomed into the crowd, going out of his way to make sure his voice carried, Rosie was pretty sure.

Straight over to the Sheen family, unless she was mistaken, which only made her wonder what they’d saidnotto her face.

“But if I’m honest,” Ryder was telling the crowd, “what I’ve been running toward all this time only became clear to me when I saw the prettiest girl in Cowboy Point—and in all the world, I reckon—in Austin.”

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