Page 33 of Finding Her Billionaire Cowboy Mismatch

“I had to.”

“I know. You see, I was more afraid of the getting hurt than I ever was of dying lonesome.”

She dabbed at the corner of her eyes. Allowing even one tear would show weakness. She wasn’t looking to seem hard, but she wouldn’t be a pushover, either. After all, she still wasn’t sure how much more he had to say.

“The doubt was mine,” he said. “Not yours. You never gave me one true reason to question you, and I did it anyway. That was my failing and my shame, and I own it.” He stopped. The hat lay between them and his hands had nothing left to do, and that, more than any of it, told her what this was costing him. “So, I’m asking for another chance, Elise. I don’t deserve one. But I’m asking.”

She made herself look at him, not at the words but at the man saying them. And the man was a mess. Finally quiet after more truth than she’d ever heard from him.

His weight shifted off one boot and onto the other as though the floor had gone uncertain under him. His ears were red. Stephen Garrett, who’d faced down a thousand-pound bull without blinking, stood in her little office terrified she’d reject him. This was no performance. A performer doesn’t sweat.

He came here scared, and didn’t back away.

Elise reached out and closed the folder and slid it to the side of the desk, out of the space between them. “I never cared about the lease,” she said. “I want that plain between us. The land never mattered to me, however many acres there are or whatever sits under them. That was never the issue.”

The shifting of his feet stopped and he stood solidly in front of her now.

“The only question I ever had,” she said, “is whether you’d let me in. Not the land. You. Whether you’d actually allow me to be in your life, or keep me on at arm’s length the way you’ve kept everybody else.”

“I want you in my life,” he said, and there was no hedge in it, no careful inch held in reserve. “I was so scared to let you in, but I’m done with that.”

He came around the corner of the desk, easy enough to give her room to stop him, and crouched by her chair so they were eye to eye. She didn’t try to stop him.

“I want to build something amazing on that land, Elise. Not hide on it.”

“That’s good.” She nodded.

“I want a life out there loud enough to fill all those empty rooms.” His voice dropped. “And I want you in every one of them. That’s the legacy I want. Not the oil. You, and a houseful, and a thousand years of Garretts who aren’t afraid of being loved.”

“You’ve thought about all this? And you’ve put it into words?”

“It’s about time, don’t you think?”

He reached into the folder one more time and drew out a last thing he’d tucked behind the legal pages. A photograph, old and a bit crinkled of two people standing in front of the pond on the land that now belonged to him. “My grandpa and grandma,” he said. “Earl and Ruth. This was their place. They were the finest people I ever knew.” His thumb moved over the old photo. “I’d give about anything for them to have met you.”

“I’d love to have known them. I’m sure they were wonderful.”

“They’d have loved you,” he said. “Grandma would’ve had you in her kitchen inside ten minutes, and Earl would’ve pretended to be indifferent and then talked about you for a week. They’d have loved you, Elise. Almost as much as I do.”

Elise took the photograph from him to get a closer look. Grandma Ruth had kind eyes. Earl stood beside her stiff and proud. She wondered if Ruth knew how much Earl loved her even though he probably never said it. She could see Stephen in the set of the old man’s mouth.

It was the picture that undid her. A man could rehearse pretty words, but he couldn’t fake the feeling she’d heard in the truth Stephen had just shared. Everything in her that had resisted him was washed away.

“Stephen.” She got his name out and had to stop and gather herself. “You didn’t have to sign away a piece of your grandfather’s legacy to get me to listen.”

“I didn’t,” he said. “Not to get you to listen. I did it to get myself to live, and you happen to be the woman I want in my life. So telling you about it was the most important part.”

She didn’t trust words anymore, hers or anyone’s. So she did the thing words couldn’t argue with. She took his face in both her hands, his cheek rough under her palms from a day without a razor, and she kissed him.

He went motionless half a heartbeat, a man who couldn’t credit his own luck, and then his arms came around her and drew her up out of the chair and into him, and he kissed her the way a man kisses the one woman he was sure he’d lost for good.

When they came apart she kept her brow against his and breathed him in and his hand lay warm and a little unsteady at her waist. “I’m still a little scared,” he murmured. “Reckon I’ll be scared and do it all anyhow, the rest of my life. That’s the deal I’m offering.”

She drew away enough to look at him, this big quiet man who’d been so sure the world would take anything he let himself love, and laid her hand flat against his cheek. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “You can stop bracing for it.”

“Reckon I will,” he said, the corner of his mouth tipping up. “Give me about fifty years and I might finally believe it.”

“I can work with scared,” she said, “so long as you don’t go quiet on me when it counts. The quiet nearly ended us and you just proved you don’t have to be silent.”