Page 48 of One Night Rancher

“I’m not sure anything is worth it,” said Cara.

“You know it is,” he said. “Come on. Remember last night?”

And she turned pink. From the roots of her blond hair, all the way down to her breasts. At least, the part that he could see.

“Cara. Don’t you want that?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I do. But marriage is a big step and I just don’t...”

“Remember what I said, about the ride. About the certainty. I don’t do halfway. I don’t and I won’t. The only reason that I felt uncertain these last few months is because I knew I needed to make a decision. It was either go back all the way, or be here all the way. I felt all this time like I didn’t have anything that was mine. Like I didn’t have anything to claim. While I do now.”

“Are you... Claiming me?”

“Yes. I sure as hell am claiming you. As mine. My best friend. My lover. I hope my wife.”

“It’s just... It’s a lot. And it’s like a complete one-eighty from where we were just a couple of days ago? I don’t...”

“It’s not a one-eighty. It was just a step closer to each other. There’s not another person that I can think about living in a house with. Building a life with. You know, it really pains me to say that Boone was right. We’re in each other’s lives, and now we’re in business together. We are enmeshed in each other’s lives in every single way. It feels right. It feels like time.”

And he had never meant anything half so much as he meant this.

“You’re really not going to let me even think about this?”

“Do you need to?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “You really are kind of an arrogant son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, but you knew that about me. You knew that the whole time.”

“I did, but I guess I’ve never been in a position where it was directed at me.”

“Oh it has. It’s just that I dial it up in increments, and eventually, you get kind of dead to it.”

She laughed. “Apparently not.”

He leaned in, and right then, he couldn’t take it anymore. He wanted her. He needed her. He hadn’t realized how much until he had showed up at the house and seen her.

That was the thing—this wasn’t going away. And he was a man who made decisions. A man who went with the moment.

And the moment had dictated that they kiss. It had demanded that they go to bed together. And that turn of events demanded this. And nothing less.

That was the simple truth of it all. And so he kissed her. On an indrawn breath. Captured it with his lips and turned it into a sigh of desire.

“Please,” he said.

“Oh shit. Now you even said please? That really is a miracle.”

He smiled against her mouth, and he felt her smile back.

He kissed her, and he was overwhelmed by the reality of it all. That it was her.

And the rightness of it too. Now that he’d made the decision... It was right. It was just right.

The decisiveness roared through him. And suddenly, it was like every piece of his life was locked into place, in perfect alignment. For the first time in maybe ever.

This was right. This was what he was supposed to be, where he was supposed to be, with who he was supposed to be with.

So he kissed her. Right there in the ghost hotel, right there, where all this had started. Or maybe it had started long before. Before she had ever looked up at him with those starry green eyes and told him that she was still a virgin.

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