Page 47 of One Night Rancher

It wasn’t a dream. It was action. It was a plan. It was what needed to happen.

“I... I don’t understand.”

“The way I see it, it’s about the only option we have. Do you want me to sleep with someone else?”

“Hell no,” she said.

“I don’t want you to sleep with anyone else. Do you want to sleep together a couple more times and see where it goes, take the chance that it might burn out?”

“I...”

“No. Because do you think we can possibly go back? Do you think that we can pretend that never happened?”

“No. And it’s why it never did before. And it’s why it was... Well, I guess it was a bad idea.”

“But it wasn’t an idea, was it? It was a thing, and it happened. And I think it was undeniable. Neither of us decided to do it. We didn’t just think... Well let’s see what happens. We didn’t think at all. And listen, when it comes to life, one thing I know is that I’m committed to you. I’m committed to you in a way that I never have been to anyone I’m not related to. So one thing I know for sure is that I’ve always wanted you to be in my life for all my life. I was never planning on having it be any different. So if I’m going to put down roots, those roots are going to tangle up with yours, Cara. That’s just a fact.”

“I don’t know what to say, Jace. I... I really didn’t expect for you to be proposing after one time of being together.”

“Think about it. How would it have ever ended in another way?”

It couldn’t. That was the thing. And yes, they were different. She was sparkly and fantastical, and he was him. But there had never been another person that he had ever known needed to be by his side for the rest of forever.

“The thing is,” said Cara. “You usually travel for half the year. And... You’re one of my favorite people on earth. Hell, I think you might be my favorite person on earth, but living together and... And we had sex once.”

“What do you want from your life? I mean, do you want to work at the bar every night until two thirty in the morning?”

“No. It’s why I’m expanding. It’s why I’m buying the hotel.”

“Did you want to get married? Start a family?”

“Do you?”

It was a good question, because he’d never given much thought to it. It was part and parcel of the whole not thinking ahead thing. “If you want kids, then yeah.”

He would give her whatever she wanted. He realized that. Whatever was in his power to give, he was going to. Because she was Cara, and she had been essential to him from the time they were kids. And he never dreamed of a wife and a family, but... He’d have kids. For her.

“But you don’t want them.”

“No. I think you’re misunderstanding. It doesn’t matter what I want. Or maybe better put, what I want is tangled up with what you want. With what makes you happy.” What he knew, the conclusion he’d come to, after he’d gotten up at the butt crack of dawn and gone out to work himself to death, because it was the only way to get any kind of mental clarity was that he couldn’t imagine letting another man take that position in her life. It wouldn’t do. There would be no burning out his attraction for her. There would be no forgetting that those things had passed between them.

And that meant making it permanent. Whatever that looked like for her.

He had done his level best to be whatever she needed over all these years, and he would keep on doing it.

“Can I... Take a rain check on that question?”

“You’re the one who asked it.”

“Yeah. Kind of. I asked what you wanted, and... Never mind.” He could see that something was bothering her.

“I want this,” he said, something intense tugging at his chest. Undeniable. “Because there’s no other way that I can imagine us getting all the things that we want. You and me. Together. And together like we were last night.”

“I... You know, half of what bothers me about this is everybody’s just going to think they were right all along.”

He couldn’t help it. He laughed. Because of course of all the things that would bother Cara, what other people thought—not in terms of appearances, but just in terms of her being proved wrong in any kind of way—was high on her list.

“Yeah. We are going to get mercilessly harassed by my brothers.”

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