“Then you don’t have to go.”
She blinks in surprise. “I don’t?”
“You’re welcome to stay here for as long as you want. Always.”
Don’t ever leave.
I’m so gone over her, I’d marry her today. But my life is here on this ranch, and I know it’s not for everyone. She hasn’t experienced a winter, dealing with forty-below-zero temperatures. Being isolated out here. That’ll get old for her.
But for as long as she wants to stay, she has a home here, because if I had my way, she’d be with me for the rest of my life.
“I’ll try again tomorrow,” she says with a sigh, wrapping her sweet little body around me.
“Try what?”
“Shooting that fucking gun.”
Scowling, I drag my hand up and down her back. “You don’t ever have to shoot it. I’ll take it off the table right now.”
“No, Idoneed to. I need it for my own self-confidence. It’s just metal. It can’t think or react. It can’t hurt you, and I need to remindmyself of that. So I’ll suck it up and shoot the fucking thing, and then we’ll get on with our lives.”
Taking her chin in my fingers, I kiss her lips softly. “You’re the strongest woman I know. You don’t have to shoot that rifle to prove anything to me or anyone else.”
“I’m proving it tome.” She straddles me and wraps her arms around my shoulders, and when she presses her center against me, it makes me hard as fuck. “Thanks for talking it out with me. I think it helped a lot. But I have some questions.”
“Shoot.”
“First of all,dowe know why they targeted that museum?”
“One of them was a security guard who had been fired because he took his job a littletooseriously and pulled his gun on a customer who touched a painting. The other guy was his brother.”
She blinks at me, then looks out the window. “That isso... It wasn’t a political statement? Or, I don’t know,something? All those people died because he wasmad?”
“It was literally an act of revenge because he lost his job.” My hand slides around to her ass, and I give it a little pat. “What else do you want to know?”
“When you went to the hospital, what happened then? I went back to my apartment and my life, but I don’t know what happened toyou.”
I feel my lips twitch, and she scowls.
“It’s not funny.”
“No, but I like knowing that you were worried about me.” I lean up and kiss her chin. “I was in the hospital for close to a week. I had to have emergency surgery because one of the bullets grazed an artery—that’s why there was so much blood, but I obviously didn’t bleed out. They got me stitched up, but Ididalmost lose the leg.”
Lena gasps, her face going pale again, and I frame her face in my hands and pull her forehead against mine.
“Ididn’t, though. I stayed in DC for a year, working with the best PT team in the country because I was determined to go back towork, but the leg will never be at a hundred percent. Once that was decided, I came back home to the ranch, built this house, and started my business.”
She closes her eyes for a minute and then pushes her hands into my hair.
“And you never got married?”
“No.” I nuzzle her nose. “I didn’t.”
I stand and carry her to the stairs, and she wraps her legs around my waist, nuzzling my neck.
“Gideon?”
“Yes, baby.”
