Chapter 9
Delaney
“Sugar, that skillet surrendered ten minutes ago.”
I don’t look up. Lucille—Miss Maggie’s prized cast iron that’s older than I am—gleams like a black mirror under my relentless scrubbing.
My shoulders burn. My knuckles are raw. I keep going anyway, steel wool grinding against seasoned iron that hasn’t seen this much attention since the Clinton administration.
“It’s not clean.”
“It’s cleaner than the day my grandmother bought it.
” Miss Maggie’s boots appear at the edge of my vision.
“Which is saying something, considering you’ve already bleached the grout in the mudroom, reorganized the entire pantry by expiration date, and scrubbed the baseboards in the hallway with a toothbrush.
” She pauses. “A toothbrush, Delaney. At six in the morning.”
“The baseboards were disgusting.”
“The baseboards were fine. You, on the other hand, are wearing a hole in my grandmother’s skillet because you can’t sit still long enough to think about whatever’s got you spinning like a barn cat in a thunderstorm.”
My hand falters. Just for a second.
Marry me.
Daniel’s voice echoes through my skull, rough and graceless and so painfully earnest it made my chest crack open right there in the barn. The way he couldn’t meet my eyes when he said it. The way his hands curled into fists at his sides like he was bracing for a blow.
The way I walked away without giving him an answer.
Because I’m a coward. Because I don’t know how to accept something good without bracing for it to be ripped away. Because some broken part of me still believes that wanting things is dangerous, that hope is just disappointment wearing a pretty dress.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mmhmm.” Miss Maggie doesn’t push. She never does.
Instead, she moves to the counter and starts pulling vegetables from the basket by the window.
“Well, when you’re done murdering my cookware, I could use help with dinner.
Potatoes need peeling. It’s harder to spiral when your hands are doing something useful. ”
I set Lucille on the drying rack with more care than I’ve shown anything else this morning. My hands are trembling. I didn’t notice until now, but there it is—a fine vibration running through my fingers like a current I can’t switch off.
The peeling helps. It always does. I station myself at the counter with a pile of russets while Miss Maggie dices carrots, her knife moving in quick, efficient strokes that speak of decades of practice.
The rhythm settles something in my chest. The familiar comfort of being useful.
Of having a task that requires just enough focus to keep my brain from eating itself alive.
We work in silence for a while. Carrots. Potatoes. The tick of the clock above the stove marking time I’m not ready to face.
“I should thank you,” I say when the quiet gets too heavy. My eyes stay fixed on the potato in my hand, on the brown skin curling away in long spirals. “For making me feel welcome here. The little things you’ve done. They’ve helped more than you know."
“What little things?”
“The pens on my desk. The good ones, the brand I mentioned liking.” Another curl of skin falls away.
“And the flowers in my room. I don’t know how you figured out I loved wildflowers, but every few days, there’s a fresh bunch on my nightstand.
Makes the whole room smell like—” I stop.
Swallow. “Like home. It smells like home.”
Miss Maggie’s knife pauses against the cutting board. The silence stretches for one heartbeat. Two.
“Wasn’t me, sugar.”
The peeler slips. I catch it before it clatters to the floor, but my hands have gone still, frozen around a half-naked potato.
“The tea, then. My favorite brand appeared in the cabinet one morning. I assumed you’d noticed me making faces at the generic stuff and—”
“Wasn’t me either.”
I set down the potato. “The schedule. Someone adjusted the Sunday rotation so I could have lunch with Kitty without rushing back for afternoon chores. I thought you must have talked to Daniel about it, asked him to—”
“Now, why would I have anything to do with the work schedule?” She reaches for an onion and peels away the papery skin with infuriating calm. “That’s Daniel’s domain. You know how that man is about his systems. Won’t let anyone touch them.”
The kitchen shrinks around me. The clock ticks. The knife thunks against wood.
“You know what I’ve learned, watching people for forty years on this ranch?
” Miss Maggie slices the onion in half, her movements steady and unhurried.
“The ones who are bad with words are usually the best with actions. Any fool can make pretty speeches. Talk is cheap, and most of it isn’t worth the breath it takes to say it. ”
She still won’t look at me. Just keeps working, letting the words land where they will.
“But a man who pays attention? Who notices what you need before you’ve figured it out yourself?” The knife resumes its rhythm, steady as a heartbeat. “That’s rare, sugar. That’s the kind of thing worth building a life on.”
I stop breathing.
The pens appeared the day after I complained about the cheap ballpoints that skipped and smeared. I mentioned it once in passing while we were reviewing supply orders. I didn’t think anyone was listening.
The tea showed up the morning after I wrinkled my nose at the generic brand and muttered something about missing my usual. I didn’t even say it to Daniel. I said it to the cabinet.
The wildflowers. God, the wildflowers. I told Kitty—not Daniel, just Kitty—about how our mother used to keep a mason jar of wildflowers on the kitchen table when we were kids. How the smell of black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace still made me feel safe, even after all these years.
But Kitty tells Tom everything. And Tom talks to Daniel.
“I need more potatoes from the larder,” Miss Maggie says, and her voice is so light, so utterly unconcerned, that it takes me a moment to register the words. “The small ones. Better for roasting.”
I walk to the larder on autopilot, my mind racing faster than my feet.
The truck. He moves my truck to the shade every single day. Cracks the windows so the steering wheel won’t burn my hands when I need to drive somewhere. I thought it was a coincidence. I thought I’d just forgotten where I parked.
He’s been taking care of me this whole time. Every single day. And he never said a word about any of it.
The larder is cool and dim, the smell of dried herbs and root vegetables wrapping around me like a familiar blanket. I find the small potatoes in their mesh basket, and I stand there holding them while everything I thought I knew rearranges itself into a different picture entirely.
He’s been telling me. For weeks. In the only language he knows how to speak.
I press my forehead against the cool wooden shelf and let out a breath that shudders through my whole body.
You idiot. You complete and utter idiot. He’s been shouting it from the rooftops, and you had your hands over your ears.
I’m not sure how long I stand there. Long enough for my heart to stop racing. Long enough for something that feels terrifyingly like hope to take root in my chest.
When I step out of the larder, I walk straight into a wall of flannel and warm muscle.
Daniel catches my elbows to steady me, and the touch sends sparks shooting up my arms. His brow furrows as he scans my face, cataloging, assessing, checking for damage the way he always does.
“You okay?”
“Fine. Just—” I hold up the mesh bag. “Potatoes.”
He takes them from my hands without asking. I let him, which makes his eyebrows shoot toward his hairline.
“You gave those up easy.” He weighs the bag in his palm, studying me with open suspicion. “I was bracing for a fight. Maybe a tackle. You feeling all right? Got a fever?” He reaches out as if he’s going to check my temperature.
I swat his hand away. “I’m fine.”
“You just handed me something without arguing. That’s not fine. That’s a sign of the apocalypse.”
“Maybe I’m trying something new.”
“Cooperation?” His mouth twitches. “Doesn’t suit you.”
“Shut up.”
“There she is.”
We walk into the kitchen together, and I’m so aware of him beside me—the heat of his body, the smell of hay and soap and something underneath that’s just him—that I barely register Miss Maggie at the counter.
She’s doing something with the carrots, her back to us, and I have a vague impression of her wiping her hands on her apron before my entire attention narrows to Daniel.
He sets the potatoes on the counter and pulls out his phone, frowning at something on the screen. I reach for my coffee cup, but before my fingers make contact, his hand is already there—sliding it away from the edge to a safer spot near the wall.
He doesn’t look up. His thumb keeps scrolling.
Then he crosses to the window and adjusts the blind, angling the slats so the afternoon sun won’t hit the spot where I was working.
Still scrolling. Still frowning at his phone like it contains the secrets of the universe.
Then he notices the potatoes are too far from the cutting board, and he moves them closer. Positions them right where I’ll need them.
Three things. Maybe forty seconds. He hasn’t looked up once.
My heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my throat.
“Daniel.”
He glances up, and I watch the hope flicker across his face before he can lock it down. The way his shoulders tense. The way his jaw tightens, bracing for impact.
I don’t give him time to brace.
“Yes.”
His brow creases. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, I’ll marry you.” I close the distance between us, watching his eyes widen, watching the careful control crack and something raw and wondering break through. “Not for the grant. Not for the ranch. Not because I need a roof over my head.”
His phone lowers, forgotten. “Then why?”
“Because you moved my coffee cup and adjusted the blind and relocated the potatoes, and you have no idea you did any of it.” I stop in front of him, close enough to see the pulse hammering in his throat.
“Because there are wildflowers in my room, and I thought Miss Maggie put them there, but it was you. Because you fixed the sticky office door and bought my pens and stocked my tea and moved my truck every single day for weeks, and you never said a word. You never asked for credit. You never made me feel like I owed you anything.”
His throat works. “Delaney—”
“You’ve been taking care of me since the day I got here.” My voice cracks, and I hate it, but I keep going because I’m done hiding. “And I was so busy protecting myself that I didn’t even see it. I didn’t let myself see it.”
“You see it now?”
“I see it now.”
Something shifts in his expression. The hope stops flickering and catches fire.
I grab his shirt and pull him down to me.
The kiss isn’t gentle. It’s two weeks of 2 AM kitchen encounters and accidental touches and the constant ache of wanting something I was too scared to reach for.
His hands find my waist, my back, one sliding up to cup the back of my head, and I’m fisting his shirt hard enough to wrinkle it beyond repair, but I don’t care.
I’m done being careful. I’m done waiting for permission. I’m done treating happiness like a trap.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard. His forehead drops to mine, his thumb tracing slow circles against my hip.
“I’m going to be terrible at this,” I manage. “I’ll fight you on everything. I’ll reorganize your systems and drive you insane.”
His laugh rumbles through his chest and into mine. “You already reorganized my systems. You already drive me insane. Nothing new there.”
“I’m serious. I don’t know how to let someone take care of me. I’ve never—”
“Laney.” He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes, and what I see there steals the breath from my lungs. “I don’t know how to love someone without trying to protect them from everything. I’m going to be controlling and paranoid and I’ll probably piss you off on a daily basis.”
“Probably?”
“Definitely.” His grin breaks through, crooked and real and so devastating my heart stutters. “But I’m going to take care of you anyway. Whether you like it or not.”
I’m smiling. I can feel it spreading across my face, wide and ridiculous and completely unstoppable. “That’s really not a selling point.”
“It’s the truth.” He kisses me again, softer this time, lingering like he’s memorizing the shape of my mouth. “Welcome to the family.”
Family.
The word blooms in my chest, warm and bright and terrifying in the best possible way.
I glance around the kitchen, suddenly aware of the silence. The counter where Miss Maggie was working stands empty. The back door is closed. I didn’t hear it open. Didn’t hear her leave.
“Where did Miss Maggie go?”
Daniel follows my gaze, and his mouth curves with something between amusement and respect. “She’s been managing Suttons for forty years. You think she doesn’t know when to make herself scarce?”
“She planned this. The whole conversation, sending me to the larder—”
“Probably had the timing down to the second.”
I should feel manipulated. Maneuvered. Handled like one of her stubborn boys who need steering toward the obvious conclusion.
Instead, I’m grateful. Because I’m not sure I would’ve let myself see what was right in front of me without someone clearing away the things I was hiding behind.
My phone buzzes against the counter. I ignore it. It buzzes again. And again.
Daniel sighs against my temple. “That’s not going to stop.”
“I know.” I steal one more kiss—quick, fierce, promising more—before reaching for the phone. Kitty’s name flashes on the screen, and I can’t keep the grin off my face as I swipe to answer.
“Hey, you.”
“You sound weird.” Kitty’s voice is sharp with suspicion. “Why do you sound weird? What’s going on? Did something happen?”
I look at Daniel. He’s leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, watching me with an expression caught somewhere between smug satisfaction and pure wonder. Like he can’t quite believe this is real.
I can’t quite believe it either.
“I’ve got a job for you,” I tell my sister, “if you’re up for it.”