“You ever work in law enforcement?” he asked Thomas.
The man’s mouth turned up in a smile. “I did, years ago, before I came to Last Chance. Marriage and ranching were a sight better than being shot at.”
Cole was certain there was a good story behind that, and it explained the man’s slight limp. “I don’t know that it sounds any easier, though.”
Thomas laughed. “That it’s not. Nor is convincing a woman who doesn’t wish to be married that she ought to marry you. If I’d known my future wife wanted nothing to do with me before I came here, I probably would’ve stayed where I was. But I wouldn’t have been as happy, considering how it worked out.”
“I take that to mean you convinced her otherwise?” Cole asked. He had a hundred more questions that he didn’t dare ask, but they must have shown on his face anyway, because Thomas continued.
“That I did. Would you believe her brother agreed to the marriage without asking her opinion? Josie was a spitfire—still is—and I was never one to back down from a challenge.”
Cole nodded as he thought about Thomas’s story. Marian hadn’t wanted a thing to do with him, and yet he persisted. But with the way she looked at him last night, and the way she’d rested her hand on his arm, and how her breath had caught when he pushed that stray lock of hair from her face . . .
Was he changing her mind in the way that Thomas had clearly changed his wife’s mind?
Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to tell her what he’d almost blurted out last night.
After a few more minutes of conversation with Thomas, Cole continued down the road. But this time, thoughts of Marian had replaced the desire to remember the names of folks who owned and worked at the various businesses in town.
He’d been fighting his attraction to Marian because of his past, and because she’d tried to keep him at a distance. But if the latter were no longer true—if Marian was changing her mind about him—then was it possible that Cole had changed too?
That thought felt like a splash of cold water in the face, and Cole paused outside a pair of whitewashed houses. He’d assumed he was the same man he’d always been—quick to get a lady’s attention and even quicker to run when it grew serious.
But what if he didn’t have to be that man? What if he could be someone different, someone better?
Cole began walking again, his mind going back to those moments the day before when he and Marian had walked Thomas’s two girls to the post and telegraph office. He’d had the strangest feeling of contentment then, imagining what it might feel like to have a family of his own. Maybe what he’d needed all along was the right woman and the ability to trust himself.
Perhaps hewaschanging.
It was a terrifying thought, and one he wasn’t entirely certain he could trust. But he wanted to trust it, more than anything, he realized.
Suddenly the words he’d wanted to say to Marian yesterday didn’t seem so farfetched.
Cole smiled at nothing as he reached the houses near the edge of town. Anything and everything seemed possible. He turned to walk back into town and began making plans.
Chapter Eleven
