Page 120 of Slow Hands Cowboy

“I had to let that shit go,” he said.

Then he pulled her in for a kiss, hard and hot and blazing. “I had to let it go. Because my hands were so full of issues that I couldn’t hold you.”

“Oh, Walker. I love you so much.”

“I love you too. I’m sorry that I hurt you.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. I was being a coward.”

“But I’ve been a coward too. It’s been thirteen years of us both being too scared to take what we want. To heal all the way. And now we get to. Now we just...we get to.”

“I want to marry you. I want to marry you here. And I’m not going to run away.”

“Okay. I’ll marry you.”

“Well then it better be great. Because if you’re going to plan a wedding to the love of your life, it damn well better be perfect.”

“Walker, when you’re marrying the love of your life the wedding is already perfect.”

“Do you want peacocks?”

“A flock of them.”

“Peacocks aren’t in a flock.”

“Then what are they?”

“An ostentation.”

“Oh.”

“Or a muster, or a pride.”

“Well, we have to have an ostentation,” she said, very seriously.

He smiled down at her. “Why?”

“Because it’s us, Walker.”

He threw his head back and laughed, and laughed, and it healed something in her that had broken a long time ago. She was herself, wholly, and that was how she found herself with the love her life.

With the man she should have been with all along.

He got back up on his horse, and reached down to her again. “Do you think we ought to get back to your campaign?”

“Sure. And after that we can ride off into the sunset.”

He pulled her up onto the horse, arms wrapped around her. “Sounds good to me.”

She smiled. “Uh oh, Walker. You told me not to fall in love with you. And I’m afraid I did.”

He stopped the horse, and turned her face toward him, and kissed her. “How did I get so lucky.”

This was the stuff of romance novels. The kind she’d never allowed herself to read, because deep down she’d always thought love like that was for other people, and she’d never wanted to ache for it. Had never wanted to long for something that could never be hers.

She’d been searching for perfect all her life.

Walker Grayson was her perfect.

Always and forever.