Page 43 of Cowboy's Christmas Wife

“Oh.” Daryl relaxed a little bit, but he kept moving, looking through all of the broken pieces of baseboards and crown molding that Laura had thrown into the dumpster. He got lucky that he had his epiphany now: the renovation work was just getting underway, so the dumpster that Laura had ordered hadn’t been filled enough to need to be emptied yet. If they’d already hauled it off, he wouldn’t have stood a chance at finding the growth chart that he’d yanked off the wall.

Just as he was nearing the end of his patience, he flipped a piece of molding over, and he saw the deeply ingrained grooves. “Found it!” he called, and Kyle let out a whooping yell. He climbed up the side, tossed the molding down to Kyle, and then climbed out of the dumpster.

Kyle’s nose wrinkled. “Dude, you reek.”

“I’m aware.” He plucked the molding out his brother’s hand. “Let’s get this put up, and then while I shower, you can set out the model.”

“Deal.”

Daryl felt moderately bad that they were in her house without her there—that had a huge chance of blowing up in his face—but when he showed her how much she meant to him and begged her to take him back, he wanted to do it in the home that meant so much to her.

When they came through the door, Daryl spotted the tree on the opposite side of the room, and despite being on a time crunch, he couldn’t stop himself from crossing the room. The tree was decorated with framed pictures of Lily and Laura…and there were a few of him too. “She has pictures of me.” He reached up and touched a picture of him and Lily on the couch at the ranch: he didn’t even know that she had taken a picture of that.

Kyle made ahmmsound, but he was typing away on his phone. “Go shower,” he told him. “Georgina says they’re on the move.” Daryl nodded, and he made a mad dash for the bathroom. He knew that it was weird that he was using her shower, but his plans to romance Laura didn’t include smelling awful from crawling around in a dumpster. On the way to the bathroom, he stopped in the bedroom and quickly rehung the growth chart molding. It fit back into place surprisingly easily. Like it had been missing its home somehow.

He took the quickest shower that he could manage and pulled out the outfit that Georgina had to “approve” of before she would allow him to wear it. He stepped into his nicest pair of cowboy boots and looked in the mirror.Well, maybe Georgina knows a thing or two after all, he thought.

When he came back out to the living room, Kyle had turned on the tree lights and laid out a picnic on the floor. In the center was a poinsettia centerpiece. “This looks great,” Daryl said. “Thanks, man.”

His brother clapped him on the back. “Don’t mess this up,” Kyle said.

Daryl smiled. “I’ll try not to.” Lights turning up the driveway alerted them to Laura’s arrival. Moments later, the door opened slowly.

“Hello?” Laura called. She looked around her door, sort of huddled behind it, but she relaxed when she saw Daryl and Kyle standing in her living room. She came into the foyer, Lily in her arms. “What are you two doing here?”

Daryl gestured at the picnic spread out on the floor. “Come eat with me, Laura Jo?”

He held his breath, but when she smiled, relief flooded through him. “That’s my cue to get out of the way,” Kyle said with a smirk. He held his hands out for the baby. “Let me babysit while you two catch up.”

Laura opened her mouth to turn him down—Daryl could tell—but then she relented and handed the baby to Kyle. “She needs dinner.”

Kyle touched his forehead in a mock salute. “Aye, aye, captain.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “We’ll be at Georgina’s,” he said, which further helped to unwind Laura’s shoulders.

They watched Kyle and Lily head back out the door, leaving them alone for the first time in weeks. “Come sit?” Daryl asked again.

* * *

Laura’s heart was pounding in her chest. She wouldn’t be surprised if he could hear it somehow in the quiet between them. She moved crossed the room to join him on the picnic blanket. “This looks beautiful,” she said.

Daryl smiled. “Youlook beautiful,” he countered. He gestured toward her Christmas tree. “I love how you did the tree,” he said. “The pictures you picked were great.”

Laura felt herself blush; there was no way he didn’t see the picture of them when they were younger or the one of him and Lily. “Thank you. I got the tree and realized that the few decorations that I kept weren’t going to fill the whole thing.”

He nodded, and a silence fell between them just long enough to make Laura nervous. “Laura, I love you.” The words came out in a rush, and they stole the very air from her lungs.

“You…you do?” she asked.

Daryl rolled his eyes good-naturedly at her. “I think I’ve been in love with you since we were eight years old, and we went for our first bad-news banana splits.” She chuckled, but she felt her chin wobble a little.Is this really happening?“I don’t want to sign the divorce papers.”

“I tried,” Laura admitted, and Daryl’s hopeful smile plummeted. “But I failed,” she added. “I literally couldn’t make myself sign them.” She scooted closer to him; their hands brushed on the picnic blanket. “That doesn’t mean this is a good idea either,” she pointed out.

Daryl shook his head. “I think it does,” he told her. “We are good together. I know you want to be independent, but I swear I’d never get in the way of that. If you want a career, I’ll be rooting you on the whole time. If you want to focus on Lily, that’s absolutely fine with me. If you want to lie in bed all day and eat chocolate, then so be it—just tell me what kind of chocolate you want, and I’ll stock up. Laura Jo, I need you to know…I don’t want to run your life or control it in any way. I just want to share it with you—if you’ll let me.”

“I…I don’t know what to say,” she managed to stammer out.

“Say you’ll at least consider it,” he pleaded. “I know I’ve screwed up in a lot of ways, but I want to do better this time. I swear, all I want is to make you and Lily happy. Oh! And speaking of which…” he said, before grabbing a rolled-up piece of paper from behind his back and presenting it to her with a flourish.

Laura raised an eyebrow in question. “What’s this?” she asked as she unrolled it.

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