Chapter 14
Dillon was too wired to sleep that night. It had so amazing seeing Makayla’s face light up with wonder and then crumple into tears of joy that he couldn’t stop grinning up at the ceiling of his bedroom and close his eyes. He was pretty sure he’d glimpsed Tessa secretly wiping away a few tears, too.
As for Murphy, he’d taken one look at Makayla and trotted right over to her, snuffling her pockets for treats. Dillon had slipped a plastic bag of apples into Makayla’s backpack when she wasn’t looking, and they all had a laugh when Murphy unzipped the backpack and pulled out the apple slices.
There was something magical about girls and horses. They were simply made for each other.
He made a mental note to thank Pete for thinking of Makayla and tell the farmer that Murphy and Tessa’s daughter were already wildly in love with each other.
Tired but happy, he got up at five, showered, and made breakfast. As he did so, he kept seeing Tessa in his mind’s eye.
Not the polished version. Not even the dressed-down barn version.
He saw her with a frightened heifer’s head pillowed in her lap, murmuring oh you brave girl, look at you, you’re doing such a good job, you’re gonna love being a mama.
As if it were the most natural thing in the world for a woman raised on Park Avenue to sit in the dirt comforting a laboring cow.
He saw her smiling with tears in her eyes as her daughter met her first horse that was all hers.
And he saw her staring at him wide-eyed, aware of him as a man and liking what she was seeing.
He tried to convince himself he could handle whatever was happening between them by doing his job professionally and leaving his feelings at home. But every time Tessa walked into the barn, his pulse galloped away from him as sure as he was standing there.
When her fingers brushed across his knuckles yesterday as she took the lab report from him, he’d barely stopped himself from pulling her into his arms and kissing her until neither of them could remember their own names.
It was barely dawn and he was on his second cup of coffee and his fourth mental rehearsal of the speech he was going to give himself before he went to Tessa’s farm for Chairman Meow’s weekly glucose check today. The problem was every version of his speech kept leading back to the same place.
Tessa was nothing like Lexi. And now that he’d gotten to know her—and face it, fallen head over heels for her—he wasn’t going to be right ever again.
His phone buzzed on the counter.
Reno.
“You’re up early,” he told his brother.
“Wrapped up a rodeo gig in Tucson last night. I drove until I couldn’t see straight then slept a few hours in a rest stop.
I’ll be in Cobbler Cove this afternoon. I’m working a rodeo in Bozeman starting Saturday, so I’ve got two full days off to spend with you.
Still want me to look at that letter you think is forged? ”
“Absolutely. Stay at my place. I’ve got a guest room now.”
“You finished it?”
“Last weekend.”
“Look at you. Two whole functional bedrooms. Pretty soon you’ll be hosting dinner parties.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
Reno laughed, then said seriously, “You okay, Dill Pickle?”
He hated that Reno could be a thousand miles away and still hear something in his voice that prompted the question.
“I’m fine.”
“Mm-hm.”
“I am. I’m fine.”
“I believed you less the second time.”
“Drive safe, Beano. I’ll see you tonight.”
Reno was still laughing when Dillon hung up on him.
He grabbed his keys and headed out, pulling into Fern’s farm at seven-fifteen. By seven-twenty he’d given up pretending this was a routine visit.
Tessa was on the porch with her usual a mug of morning coffee in one hand and a stack of paperwork in the other. Hamlet was drowsing across her feet.
She looked up when his truck pulled in. He could tell at twenty paces that she’d been crying.
Oh, Lord. Had something gone sideways with Murphy?
He cut the engine, reminding himself sternly that he never walked into a barn full of upset livestock without a plan, and he was not about to walk up to that porch without one either.
But as hard as he tried to think of a way to make things better, he reached the front porch with absolutely nothing useful to say.
“Morning,” she said with a hint of emotional exhaustion in her voice.
“Morning.”
“Coffee?”
“I’ll get it myself—” he started.
She shot him a withering look that cut him off mid-sentence, stood up, and went inside. She came back, handed him a mug, and their fingers brushed again. He registered the contact with a jolt of awareness that was as exhilarating as it was involuntary.
She sat back down in the old wicker chair.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
She gave him a wry look. “Do you really want to know, or are you asking because you think you should?”
“I really do want to know. I’m worried about Makayla and Murphy.”
“They’re fine. I had to fight to keep her from sleeping in the barn with him, though. She’s already out there brushing him. He’s going to spoiled rotten in no time.”
“Best way for a horse—and a kid—to be.”
She nodded. Paused. Sighed. “I found out yesterday after you dropped off Murphy that my grandfather doesn’t know my name anymore. He’s asking for his mother now. She’s been dead since 1972.”
Dillon didn’t know what to do his urge to gather her up in a hug, so he ignored it and sat down on the top step instead. “I’m sorry,” he said soberly.
“Me, too.” Then she said, in a different voice — softer, more open — “Arlo came over yesterday and sat with me for two hours. Didn’t ask a single question.
He told me about Fern’s father having dementia, and how she used to drive over to the nursing home every Sunday and let him order pie from her because he thought she was a waitress. ”
Dillon’s heart ached. He didn’t say anything.
“I thought all night about how I went my whole life thinking family was a noun.” Her voice was steady, but it wasn’t easy.
“I thought family was a fixed thing you were born into and stuck with whether it treats you well or not. But it turns out family is closer to a verb. It’s the people who show up for you. The ones who stay.”
She gazed out at the lake. The morning light was pale and clean and a little too bright as fog rose off the still water in thin wisps.
“My grandpa showed up for me when I was small,” she said. “Fern showed up for Arlo. Now Arlo’s doing it for me.”
He nodded slowly. She was not wrong. Family was measured in much more than shared blood or the same name.
She continued, “I’m trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with the version of myself I’m becoming out here. Because this person is a stranger to me.”
He looked down at his hands for a moment. They were a lot easier to look at than her pain was.
“Months before Lexi left, she started filling boxes with her stuff and hauling them out, and I barely noticed because I was always at work.”
He registered that he was telling her something he’d told no one. Not Hank. Not Reno. Not even the well-meaning therapist his mother had bullied him into seeing after the divorce.
“The thing she said to me about having nothing left for a woman—it wasn’t an attack or cruelty. It was just the truth. I wasn’t there for her. Emotionally or in person.”
He made himself look up.
Tessa was looking at him warmly. “You came when I called,” she said.
“My first day here. When I had no idea what to do about the cat. Or the horses or the llama, or the geese. You came even after I was rude to you. I expect you grumbled to yourself about me the whole drive out here and had a good smirk at getting to make me eat crow, but you came.”
A smile came to him without bidding. “I only grumbled a little. Mostly, I relished you having to eat your words.”
She smiled back but waxed serious again quickly.
“Every time since when I’ve needed you, you’ve come.
When Pete needed help, you went. When Arlo took you into Mick’s shop, you stayed.
When you bring Makayla home from school on Fridays, you always come in and tell me what she did that day, even though you have ten other places to be. ”
She paused.
“You do nothing but show up for people, Dillon.”
He shook his head in denial.
Tessa continued more forcefully, “I don’t care what Lexi said. I know what you do. Who you are.” She set her mug down. “Lexi told you a lie because she was angry, but you took it as gospel truth and believed her.”
He stared at her blankly. Was it possible?
Tessa gestured at everything around her. “You’re sitting on my porch at seven in the morning with a pig snoring between us. You. Show. Up. It’s the most fundamental thing about you. It’s why I trust you.”
He couldn’t think of a single thing to say that wouldn’t wreck him.
She added, more softly, “It’s also why I’m scared of you.”
“Why?” he blurted.
“Because the only other man I ever loved was also a man who showed up for people. He died showing up for someone else. I didn’t think it was possible to meet two men in one lifetime who are so good all the way down to their bones. But here you are.”
The world narrowed to the porch and the woman in front of him. He stood up slowly. Not because he meant to, but because the porch step was too far away from her.
As he stepped over Hamlet, she stood up. They were a foot apart. Maybe less.
“Tessa . . .” he murmured. He didn’t know what to say next.
Thankfully, she didn’t make him figure it out. She lifted her chin, her eyes as warm and inviting as dark honey warmed by the sun. She whispered, “Don’t make me think too hard about this. If I do, I’ll talk myself out of it.”
And so, he stopped thinking as well and kissed her.
His fingertips went to her jaw, touching it lightly, and her mouth was warm against his. He felt her grasp a fistful of his shirt in her hand and hold on as if she’d been waiting forever to do this.