Chapter 54
54
Life got back to normal fast. She worked the next day, and then the next. Now, she was clocked out for two days. She was back on her regular schedule—without much disruption. Miranda had been there for the week, and she’d covered for Meyra where Dylan couldn’t. It had all worked out just fine.
Meyra had spent her first day off with Brandt.
It had been a good day. Fun. She thought he’d needed it. They had spent the afternoon with Maggie Tyler Gunderson and her babies. Maggie was feeling a little sick right now—she was pregnant again, with their third. She’d taken a nap while Brandt and Meyra had watched baby Barratt and Violet. The kids adored Brandt. Meyra had enjoyed being with him, the kids, and pretending a little.
It had helped her figure out one thing—Brandt was the man she wanted to be with. Forever.
Now they were going to go back to the inn and eat dinner. Then…there was a vintage movie theater in the next town south. He had told her he wanted to take her there, so they could neck in the back row.
“What are you thinking about so quietly?” he asked when they were a few miles north of town. Maggie and her family lived forty miles or so north of Masterson, on a road that was almost the county boundary. She shivered. It had been out there that Marin and Brandt had almost died before.
“The past. And what I want for the future.” She was always going to be honest with him. It was easier that way. “I’m a little scared. Relationships can be complicated. What if we make mistakes?”
“I’m sure we will. We’re human. But I promise to always listen. To always love you.”
He said it so easily. That made it easy for her, too. “I am sometimes going to misunderstand you.”
“And I will misunderstand you. All that matters is that we promise to try, babe. To work together. Like my parents always have. Like your dad and Rhea do.”
“I want kids. But what if they have autism, too?” It was definitely possible—there was a genetic component. “They may have it more severely than I do. That’s something we’ll need to consider.”
“Then we deal with that if or when it happens. I can guarantee we’ll love our children, completely. No matter what the future holds. It won’t be simple, but it’ll be something we do together.”
He pulled the truck off into an empty parking lot. Then turned to her. “I love you, Meyra Talley. Don’t ever forget that.”
He leaned closer, then cupped her cheek. She loved it when he did that, when she could feel him, smell him, so close. “I won’t.”
“We’ve waited long enough,” he said. Then he kissed her. Just the way she liked.
Meyra could kiss him every day for the rest of her life. She hoped it would always feel just like this. This was what Nikki and Dusty and Sage told her it should feel like. This was why Maggie looked at Clint the way she did.
Meyra just knew it.
She was quiet, but there was a soft smile on her lips. Brandt looked at her again as he maneuvered his new truck down the highway through the worst curve on Wreck Curve Road.
He didn’t want to go to the movie theater tonight. He wanted to carry Meyra off to his cave and show her every caveman urge she caused in him. And then begin again and not stop touching her until the dawn. He loved this woman.
More and more every minute.
They were twenty minutes from town when he saw the first truck coming.
And they were coming fast. He swore. They weren’t slowing down. And they had one more curve coming that always made him hold his breath.
Roads out there were dangerous and narrow and sometimes idiots took them too fast for fun. That was a lesson he’d learned his first time driving in Masterson County. “Sweetheart, tighten your seat belt.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.” There wasn’t anywhere to pull over. Not up here. And there was another truck coming up toward them across traffic, just as quickly.
Two identical trucks. And then they had Brandt’s truck boxed in. Almost deliberately. Brandt had no choice but to hit the brakes. But it wasn’t enough.
They had him and Meyra trapped between them. He squealed the truck to a stop.
When a guy around his own age climbed out of the first, a large rifle in his hands, and another did the same from the second truck, he knew .
“We’re in trouble, little one. And I don’t know why. I’m sorry.”
“What do we do?”
Brandt didn’t have a damned clue. And his gun was in the glovebox now. He wouldn’t even have time to get to it.