Page 96 of The Cowgirl's Chosen Love
Lisa went willingly, smiling over her shoulder at him as she carried her gym bag into the master en suite bathroom.
He hurried to get cleaned up in the guest bath, then grabbed the food he’d asked Zach to prepare for him earlier in the day. By the time Lisa appeared, decked out in soft flannel pyjamas and smelling like a spring day, Josiah was waiting for her in front of the fire he’d started.
Lisa pressed herself against him briefly in a full-body hug before slipping from his arms and attacking the sandwich tray. “Sorry, but I’m starving.”
Josiah chuckled as he all but inhaled his own sandwich. “We earned these.”
Ollie had finished inhaling her own food only moments earlier and was batting puppy eyes at both of them, desperately hoping for crumbs, no doubt.
Ten minutes later, they reclined against the pillows Josiah had arranged and Lisa let out a huge sigh of satisfaction. “God, that was delicious.”
Joshua offered her the plate of cookies. “Eat. You’ll need your strength for later,” he warned.
Lisa nibbled on a chocolate chip cookie, eyeing him with amusement. “I love you, Josiah Ryder, but you confuse the heck out of me.”
“I love you too, and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She leaned toward him. “When I asked for a couple of days to think, you said you weren’t going to toss anything at me that might make me feel coerced.”
“Ah, now I know what you’re talking about.” Josiah rested his arm along the couch seat to play with her hair.
“I’ll say it again to make sure you hear it.I love you,but explain to me how getting me to confess that up on stage in front of the entire town isn’t at least a teeny bit coercive.”
“If you hadn’t already figured out that you wanted to stay with me in Heart Falls, I wouldn’t have done it,” Josiah promised earnestly.
Her jaw dropped. “Really? I mean, wait— I mean, how did you know? I hadn’t said anything yet. I mean I was going to, so you’re right, buthow?”
Josiah cupped her chin in his hand so he could stroke his thumb over her lower lip. “You didn’t say it with words, Lisa, but you’ve been saying some variation of it over the past few weeks. And the past couple of days, it’s been in your eyes…”
He touched his fingers to the corner of her temple, her skin silky soft under his caress.
“You have this expression that shines so brightly when you’re content and happy. I’ve seen it when you’re with your sisters. When you’re helping with your nieces or holding Tyler.”
“You’ve been watching me that closely?” She was whispering, turning her face to his hand and cuddling against his palm. “I like that.”
“I know, because you get that same light in your eyes when you look at me. When you’re here at my side. Not plotting or planning or working at something, but just being.” He leaned in and stroked his lips over hers. “We belong together. We’ll figure out the rest of it, I promise.”
Lisa caught his hand and pressed a kiss to the palm before wiggling back. “I was going to tell you tonight. That I want to be with you and that I want to stay in Heart Falls. But I also want to travel, so yeah, I kind of want it all.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Josiah assured her. “We’ll start here in this house, if that’s okay with you, then we just need to figure out what trips we want to take. It doesn’t mean we have to be gone for long periods of time. Heck, we can start by visiting my family. They’re conveniently tossed around the world.”
She nodded. “I’d like to meet them, and that sounds like an awfully good idea. The being away for little periods of time and exploring new things while having a home base here. I don’t actually want to be gone for too long. Not with Tyler so little and I don’t want to miss the chance to get to know Julia while she’s in Heart Falls. We have no idea where she might end up.” She wrinkled her nose. “It could be expensive, but we can figure that out. Travel cheap, save up for trips.”
“We can afford it.” Josiah tugged her closer. “In the category of things that we didn’t talk about yet because there wasn’t a reason to, I have a trust fund that drops money into an account every year. Not millions, but enough.”
Utter shock slid over her face. “A trust fund? Get out. From who?”
“My great-great-aunt was a very successful stage actress with no immediate family of her own. She left her money to her brother’s descendants in trust. We’ve reached the stage where my brother, sisters, and I are the only ones receiving money and it looks like it will last for quite a long time. So we don’t need to worry about funds.”
Lisa looked as if she was fighting to wrap her brain around that one. “Really.”
He nodded earnestly.
She frowned. “But you’re making Sonora pay for supplies. She told me.”
Josiah understood where this was coming from. “The clinic runs as a business. It needs to pay its own way and run on its own merit or it doesn’t run. That was a decision I made when I started it, not because the clinic isn’t worth putting effort into, but because itisworth the effort. I don’t ever want to let my work ethic slacken because we don’t need the cash flow.”
She thought about it for a minute, then agreed.
