Page 105 of Tempting Fate
Gabe started to get up to give them privacy, but she pulled him back down. Anything Clay had to say, he could tell her in front of Gabe. Clay motioned for Lucky and Flynn to join them.
“We’d like to buy your property, if it’s still for sale,” he said, adding, “at full price.”
She thought about all the things she could do with that money, including the debts she could pay, and the fact that she wouldn’t have to get a roommate. Maybe she could even keep her truck. Then she thought about leaving Gabe. About how he’d left their future in her hands. How he would always be her hero.
She tried to picture raising her cutting horses in another place and couldn’t.
“Did you talk to Dana about it?” Raylene turned her gaze down toward the other end of the table, where Dana was in an animated conversation with Gia and Annie.
“We thought we’d talk to you first,” Lucky said, and Flynn nodded in agreement. “Has anything changed?”
Yeah, something had. “I’m not sure I still want to sell it.” She looked at Gabe, whose expression was filled with such hope that her love for him soared even higher than she thought possible.
“No?” Clay sounded annoyed, like she was up to her old tricks.
“I’m seeing someone here,” she said. “And he’s asked me to stay. And, as he pointed out, it would be awfully silly to sell perfectly good horse property just to buy different horse property.”
Gabe broke into a grin while Clay exchanged glances with Lucky and Flynn.
“Horse property?” Clay turned back to her. “I’m not following.”
“I want to raise cutting horses. Until recently, I’d planned to do it in Southern California. I’m assuming you wouldn’t mind a cutting horse farm next door to your respective properties?”
“Nope,” Lucky said, and smiled, first at her, then at Gabe. “Cutting horses are good.”
“I’m absolutely good with a horse farm,” Flynn said.
“Yep, me too.” Clay slapped Gabe on the back.
“It won’t be for a while. I have to get a job and raise some cash first.” She had to find a place to live, a way to make a living…the whole thing was crazy. But when she saw utter adoration shining in Gabe’s eyes, she knew she’d made the best choice in the world.
Gabe clinked his fork against his glass. “I’m making another toast.” He rose and cleared his throat. “To Raylene, who’s decided to stay in Nugget and make me the happiest man alive. We love each other.” He met Logan’s eyes across the room. “Anyone have a problem with that?”
There was a long stretch of silence, then thunderous applause.
“Then if it’s all the same to you, we’re going to skip dessert.” He grabbed her hand, and together they made their way outside, under a perfect Nugget star-filled sky, to plan their future.
Epilogue
“Eyes up, spine straight, legs relaxed,” Raylene called out to her class. “You’ve got it, Harper. Wrap your legs around your horse’s barrel, Josie. There you go.”
She stood in the middle of the ring, watching. “Looking good, cowboys and cowgirls.”
Three days a week she taught riding classes at the Sierra Heights stable, where she worked full-time running the barn. As part of the deal, Griffin said she could use the stable to house two new broodmares she’d purchased, who’d once been champion cutters. She planned to build her operation little by little by breeding good stock.
“Harper’s getting good.” Gabe stood at the fence, watching.
“She is, isn’t she?” The girl was a natural, but Raylene liked to take part of the credit.
“You decide to take that coaching spot at the high school?”
Nugget High had a phenomenal rodeo team. The head coach had asked Raylene to work with the barrel racers. The extra money would go to her horse farm kitty. “Yep. I’ll have to juggle, but I can make it work.”
“You have time to juggle lunch?”
“For you, I can cram it in.” She beamed at him. Even after five months of living together, he still made her stomach do the jitterbug every time he was near.
“You want to look at that house I told you about?”
