Chapter 41
Willow – Taylor Swift
Cassidy
Ihad done something that I’d never done in my life. Something I would never do again. Did I feel ashamed? A little, maybe. Did I feel guilty? A little, maybe. Would I go to hell for it? Probably not. Was it worth it?
“Oh my God, Gunner,” I gasped as he pulled out of me. “I think you’ve broken my vagina.”
Yes it was oh so worth it!
“Is that what you said when you rang in sick today?” He smiled against my lips before moving them to my neck and gently sucking on it.
“No, I told Suki I had the stomach flu. What was your excuse to Nash?” I swatted him away. “And don’t give me a hickey, I don’t look good in a turtleneck.”
“I didn’t have one. I just messaged Mikey with some instructions and said I’d be back after lunch.”
My heart sank, the disappointment real. “You’re not staying in bed with me all day?”
Gunner groaned and wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me to him. “I’d love to, sweetheart, but I have a new horse coming in this afternoon and Dick Hazel is coming for an update.”
“Who’s Dick Hazel?” I rested my cheek on his chest and ran my finger up and down his sternum, all the while marveling at the hard ridges of his hard muscles.
“He’s a client and a pain in my damn ass. He tried to undermine me with his horse’s training, and it put him back weeks.” He sighed deeply. “It’s one of the things Charlie and I argued over.”
“Have you heard from her since she left?” I moved to trace a faint scar just above his hip bone. “What’s that?”
“I fell from a tree when I was seven or eight, had four stitches but luckily it wasn’t serious.” Reaching for my hand he linked our fingers together as I continued to run my finger along the raised skin. “That is entirely too distracting. What was the other question?”
I giggled and dropped a kiss to his shoulder loving that his smell would now be on my sheets again. “Have you heard from Charlie?”
“Yeah, she messaged to let me know she’d got home okay.
I was worried about her driving a U-Haul all by herself, but she just had too much stuff to ship apparently.
She lived in three rooms above the stables, how much stuff can one woman have.
” He lifted his head from the pillow and looked over toward my shelves stuffed with books, cosmetics and purses and chuckled. “Yeah, maybe I get it.”
“Imagine if I had more room for more stuff?” I joked. “Oh, and a beautiful kitchen island.”
Gunner’s gaze snapped to mine, and something shifted in his expression. It looked like longing or maybe hope as his hand came up to tuck my hair behind my ear. “Yeah, imagine that,” he whispered.
A little while later, after a lazy breakfast of eggs that Gunner cooked, and my cinnamon rolls of which he devoured three, we were driving over to the ranch. I’d suggested that I follow in my car, but he’d insisted that I ride with him. And, apparently, I was staying for the weekend.
“I need you with me, sweetheart, so don’t even think about arguing.” Gunner had said, while thrusting into me from behind when I was supposed to be washing the breakfast dishes. How’s a girl supposed to say no to that?
As we drove back from town, Gunner’s hand reached for mine across the console.
He lifted it to his lips and kissed it before placing our linked fingers between us, his thumb tracing patterns on my skin while he hummed along to the radio.
It was casual but intimate and felt significant somehow.
Like it wasn’t just desire between us but something deeper. Something that felt like belonging.
When we pulled up outside the house, he leaned over and gave me a soft kiss. “Fuck I missed you,” he said when he pulled away. “Stay, I’ll get the door for you.”
So, I stayed, quietly stamping my feet like an excited toddler as I watched his big body swagger in front of the truck before leading me inside.
“Well, hello,” Lily said, grinning, as we walked through the door hand in hand. “I see you made up.”
“Yep.” Gunner let go of me and held up my overnight bag he was carrying. “I’ll take that to my room then go and do some work.”
As I nodded he leaned in for a hard, closed mouth kiss, one hand at the back of my head, igniting another fire within me. When Lily cleared her throat, I let go of his biceps and stepped back, breathless.
“See you later,” I said, sure I had heart emojis in place of my eyes.
“I’ll be back after lunch,” he replied, then paused, his expression shifting to something softer, more uncertain. “Unless you want me to stay away longer? Give you some space?”
The fact that the confident, self-assured cowboy was suddenly concerned about crowding me made my fingers tingle and my knees feel weak. I reached up to trace the worry lines between his brows.
“Don’t you dare stay away,” I whispered, pulling him in for another kiss. “I’ve had enough space for three years.”
He smiled softly, saluted me and said, “Yes ma’am,” before disappearing up the stairs.
After a few seconds of watching his perfect ass, I turned back to Lily unable to contain the smile that seemed to have bloomed from somewhere deep inside my chest.
“And why aren’t you at school?” my friend and colleague asked, folding her arms over her chest, her gaze narrowed on me, the weight of my expectation hanging in the air between us like the static before a storm.
“I have the stomach flu,” I replied in a small voice.
“You don’t have to talk like you actually do.” Lily barked out a laugh. “I’m not going to snitch on you.”
“I do feel bad about it,” I confessed. “I’ve never ever skipped work before.”
“You’ve never ever made up with a Miller brother before, and if Gunner is anything like Nash I’m guessing there was a lot of sex involved.” Her lips quirked into a mischievous grin. “You should have just said your vagina was broken.”
“That’s what I said!”
As we both burst out laughing, my guilt dissipated a little.
The kids had gone to bed and the rest of us were around the dining table, discussing the camp and what our next steps should be when we got our next meeting with Nate Jenkins .
“We’re all agreed, then?” Nash asked, looking at each of us in turn. “If he doesn’t agree to an initial and then regular environmental report then we don’t take the sponsorship or investment.”
We all nodded and gave our verbal agreement.
“We also request a stretch of rewilding between the development and our land along with the nature trail.” He looked at Lily when he said this, seeing as both brilliant ideas had been hers.
“And if he says no?” Wilder asked.
Nash’s gaze turned to Gunner. “Your call, seeing as it’s your house that will be closest to it all.”
I blinked and turned my eyes in the same direction as Nash. Gunner hadn’t ever mentioned a house. I’d just assumed that the brothers would always live in this house. Together like they’d always been since their battle with their father had begun, since Nash came home from college.
Gunner caught me watching him and cleared his throat. “Me and Wild are having houses built, once we’ve got the camp and the wedding venue sorted.”
“Imagine it,” Wilder said with a wink at me. “You’ll be able to be as loud as you damn well please.”
“Wild, shut the fuck up now,” Gunner growled and turned back to me. “I apologize about my stupid idiot of a brother.”
“What?” Wilder exclaimed. “I was talking about having your music loud. It’s you with the dirty mind, brother.”
It did sound quite appealing, though, I had to be honest. I loved this house with it’s fun and noise and general chaos, but alone time in his huge bed out on the outskirts of the land where no one could hear sounded perfect.
If we were still a couple by then, of course.
Not being a couple was something I didn’t want to consider, so pushed it to one side.
“The point is,” Nash said with a heavy hint of irritation, “you’re the one who will have to look at the factory from your back windows.”
When Gunner turned to me and asked, “What do you think, sweetheart?” I almost choked on the air that rushed from my lungs.
“M-me?”
He gave me a cocky grin, one that told me he knew exactly what he’d said. And knew exactly what my reaction would be. “Yep, you.”
What did I think about it? I mean how often would I be looking out of the back windows of the house?
The odd weekend or maybe longer during school break.
The idea of me living there permanently flitted around my brain, like it was a possibility.
Me and Gunner making a home together? No, it was far too early to be considering that, as beautiful an idea as it was.
“I think you should insist on it,” I finally managed to say. “Maybe ask him to plant some established trees or hedgerow at the very least.” That would be what I’d want to look out on…if it was my home.
Gunner nodded. “I agree. Let’s stipulate that, too.”
“And the wedding venue?” Lily asked. “Are there any stipul—” she stopped talking and looked over Gunner’s shoulder to the doorway. “Bertie, baby, what’s wrong?”
We all turned to see Bertie, mussed from sleep, her little shoulders heaving with tiny sobs.
Nash and Lily were out of their seats and to her within seconds. “What’s wrong, munchkin?” Soft and coaxing he dropped to his knees and brushed his daughter’s hair from her face.
“I had a bad dream,” she said through her cries, rubbing her eyes.
She’d just reached ten years old but standing there it was clear she was still a little girl, no matter how emotionally expressive she was for her age.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Lily added soothingly. “Like you said it was just a dream.”
Bertie’s eyes went to Gunner as she heaved out a tattered breath. “I thought you’d been hurt Uncle Gunner.” She started to run to him and immediately he also dropped to his knees from his chair, his arms open wide.
“I’m fine, Bertie girl. See, I’m all good.” He gathered her up and swallowed her in an embrace, kissing the top of her head and squeezing her tight. “It was just a bad dream.”
I watched his expression transform. The confident, sometimes cocky cowboy melted away, replaced by something so tender it made my throat tight.
His large hands, the same ones that could break a wild horse or gently bring it peace, smoothed over her hair with a delicacy that seemed impossible from such a big man.
He moved back onto his chair as Bertie wrapped her arms and legs around him, gradually becoming calmer the more Gunner pacified her.
My breath stalled, because it was probably the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and in that moment I could see him with a child of our own, patient, protective and completely devoted.
The vision hit me with such clarity and longing that I had to look away, afraid my face would reveal too much.
“Want me to take you back up?” Gunner asked once Bertie had stilled in his arms. “I can read to you until you fall asleep.”
Damn there went my ovaries.
Bertie lifted her head and screwed up her tiny features in a frown. “I can read you know. Probably better than you seeing as you only ever look at horse magazines.”
Nash’s chuckle was filled with relief as he moved back to his chair, his hand moving to stroke Lily’s long, blonde hair as soon as she sat too, making it clear that she was his cornerstone for peace.
“Very true,” Gunner agreed. “But I did go to school, you know. Admittedly my teacher wasn’t as pretty as yours, but I went.” He winked at me and then dropped a kiss to Bertie’s forehead. “How about I make up a story?”
“Oh, he’s real good at that,” Wilder offered, reaching for his bottle of beer. “Hey, that hurt.”
I looked at Gunner who was throwing his brother a dirty stare as he got up, Bertie still in his arms. Already displaying the kind of father that he would be one day.
“I’ll be back.”
As he passed Lily, she ran a hand down Bertie’s calf covered in cotton pink and white stripe pajamas, while Nash stood and gave her a quick kiss to her cheek.
“What’s the betting he falls asleep with her,” Wilder said as the door clicked shut.
And he was right, when I padded into Bertie’s room twenty minutes later, Gunner was fast asleep.
His feet were hanging off the end of the twin bed, one hand behind his head while the other arm was wrapped protectively around a sleeping Bertie.
As I watched them, I felt something shift inside me.
It wasn’t the flutter of attraction or even the warmth of affection.
It was a bone-deep realization that resonated through me like the first notes of a familiar song.
I knew then that I wasn’t falling in love with Gunner Miller, I’d already gone.
Hook, line and sinker. The knowledge didn’t frighten me as it should have.
Instead, it felt like finding something that I didn’t know I’d lost. It was exciting and wonderful, if not a little terrifying. It was absolutely right.