He glanced at me with that crooked grin I was becoming dangerously addicted to. “Sweetheart, if you step one foot into town, wanting something to do, looking and talking like you do? Every woman within fifty miles is going to try to recruit you.”
“For what?”
He held up a finger and began counting, a weird sparkle lighting his eyes. “Charity boards. Festival committees. Ranch association fundraisers. Church groups. Bake sales. Cemetery clean-ups. The annual chili cook-off.”
Startled laughter shot out of me. “I don’t even know how to make chili.”
“You don’t have to. They’ll teach you. They love teaching.”
I shook my head, still laughing and feeling that kiss buzzing under my skin. “They’re not going to clamor for my attention.”
“Sweetheart, they already do,” he said, dead serious. “They just don’t know you’re staying yet.”
Staying. Not visiting, or hiding, or passing through.Staying.In my home. With him.
Trent must’ve seen something shift in my expression because he reached over and took my hand. “We’ll figure it out. Chicago. Texas. All of it.”
I nodded, leaning against his shoulder and letting the reality of it settle somewhere hopeful inside me. Right now, the future didn’t feel like something I was going to have to try to survive somehow. It felt like something I could choose and I already knew that I’d be choosing him, every day, for the rest of my life.
CHAPTER 36
TRENT
Charlotte barely made it three steps into my parents’ formal living room before she was swept into a whirlpool of big hair, diamonds the size of golf balls, perfume clouds thick enough to choke a bull, and the sugary drawl of women who’d been waiting anxiously to meetthe mystery bride.
I didn’t even get to say goodbye, just a flash of her wide eyes before the horde absorbed her. My mom stood off to the side with her arms folded, smirking like she’d known this moment was coming.
“Lord help her,” she said when I reached her side. “Those women smell gossip in the air like sharks smell blood.”
I raked a hand through my hair and nodded, watching Charlotte’s head bob between sequins and teased hair. At least she was taller than almost every other woman in here. It made it easier to keep an eye on her, but I glanced at my mother again first. “You’re really going to let them have at her like that?”
“Honey, she’s holding her own.” She poked my chest with a manicured nail. “Besides, you’re coming with me. We need to talk.”
I groaned out loud.Well, that’s never good. Never, ever good.
She led me down the hall to herstudy,aroom she used for everything from scrapbooking to hosting secret wine nights with the church ladies. When she shut the door behind us, the noise of the house was instantly muted and she turned to me, her expression not sharp, but thoughtful.
I frowned. “What’s up?”
“I’m proud of you,” she said after a few more beats of silence, her gaze finally coming up to meet mine. “I really am, honey. I’m so proud of you.”
My eyebrows shot up to my hairline. “What?”
She laughed, her head shaking lightly. “That face right there tells me everything I need to know. You didn’t think I’d say it, did you?”
“I thought you’d, I don’t know, ask if I’d lost my mind. If I forgot how much you’ve been dying to organize my wedding and how I’d deprived you of the privilege. Again.”
“Well, all that’s true, but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about today.” She motioned to the chair across from her desk. “Sit down, Trent.”
I did, a little more confused than I’d ever like to admit. Mom lowered herself into her own seat, folding her hands on the table like she was settling in for a heart-to-heart she’d rehearsed.
“I’ve been thinking a lot these past months,” she said. “Especially after Sadie got married.”
“And had a baby,” I added. “A lot of babies, actually. Don’t forget the grand finale.”
She shot me a pointed look. “As if anyone could forget that, but yes. Watching her with Jameson and seeing how happy she is made me realize how wrong I was.”
“About what?”
