“Look, I know it’ll be difficult having me live here and you in LA. Maybe once we get this ranch project up to speed I can move to Los Angeles. In the meantime, I’ll come as much as possible.”
“You’ll hate that.” She traced his lips with her finger. “The ranch is where you belong.”
“Not if it means being without you.” He’d go to the ends of the earth if it meant being with her.
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “That won’t work for me.”
His mouth grazed her ear. “You have a better suggestion?”
“I do. I came to walk it through with you.”
“Start walking.”
“I move here. Live with you in this excellent loft apartment, where I have unlimited access to your kitchen.”
He did a double take. It was the last solution he expected. “What about your show? Your business?”
“I’ve spent a lot of nights thinking about just that. My future. Because you…this ranch…have changed me in ways I never thought possible. The last couple of weeks without you have been miserable. I want a whole new direction, Sawyer. I want to cook again. I want to have friends…family. I want my time in Dry Creek to be my forever.”
She took a deep breath and pushed forward. “I can run everything from here, including the frozen food and kitchenware divisions. Our processing plants are in the Central Valley, so I’m actually closer here. The housewares are made overseas and are distributed out of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. I have good people for that and am only a plane ride away if they need me. These days, with a computer and high-speed internet, you can run a business from anywhere.”
While it sounded doable, he was surprised. How long until she missed the bright lights of LA and all the bennies that came with it? “What about your show?”
There was a long pause, then, “I’m not sure I want to do it anymore.”
He lifted her chin with his finger. “Why? I got the impression the show was important to you…that being on television propelled everything else.” And being a television celebrity was wrapped up in her self-worth, which Sawyer didn’t think was altogether healthy.
“It certainly made the brand. But that’s not why I did it. My whole life I felt like I had something to prove, something to show Sadie DeRose that she hadn’t made a mistake by adopting me. She’d wanted to be a movie star, so I followed in her footsteps, doing the closest thing I knew how. I may not have been a leading lady on the silver screen, but television launched me into homes across the nation. Soon, I was a household name and face. I was famous. I was what my mother had always wanted her—and then me—to be.”
“And now?”
“I don’t need it to define me anymore. I guess it took me thirty-seven years to figure out that I was so busy trying to prove myself to my mother that I forgot to live for myself and do the things that truly make me happy.”
He liked what he was hearing. Not because it benefited him, but because Gina had grown. So had he. Sawyer supposed love did that to a person.
“So what makes you happy, Gina DeRose? Besides me, of course.” His mouth split into a smile.
“Having a man who loves me, even when I’ve been falsely accused, on the brink of a professional meltdown, and stripped of everything.”
Sawyer waggled his eyebrows. “Especially when you’ve been stripped of everything.”
She laughed. “You’ve got a one-track mind, Dalton.”
“Yep.” His hands inched up her camisole and she slapped it away.
“I was just about to get to the best part.”
He kissed her belly and tilted his head up to look at her. “This isn’t the best part?”
“I want to do the restaurant.”
Taken aback, Sawyer stopped kissing her. Gina was full of surprises today. “Here?”
“At Dry Creek Ranch.” A smile spread across her face, transforming her from gorgeous to radiant. “A steak house that would feature the ranch’s beef. It could be the anchor. We could also do the country store. Chock-full of my products, of course. And the butcher shop, a Dalton beef exclusive retailer. Or we could go nationwide—your choice.”
Damn, he liked the sound of that. All of it. But it had to be real.
“You seriously want to do this…a restaurant? What made you change your mind? Because, Gina, I don’t want you to do anything you don’t really want to do. We’ll find our anchor. You do what makes you happy, not what you think will make me happy.”
