3. Zane
Zane
“You told me she’d be up for it,” I mutter to Max.
We’re both standing in Darlene’s living room while we wait for her to fill our orders.
After talking with Bliss this morning, I drove into town to pick up an order of vaccines from Darlene, who runs a feed store out of her double-car garage.
We don’t have a full-scale feed store here, but Darlene will order anything we need and keeps a few essentials on hand, like dog food and chicken feed.
Pine Ridge is too small to keep a full feed store in business, but Darlene’s saved us a lot of drive time by ordering everything to her place.
My friend Max was the one who told me that Bliss would be the perfect candidate for a wife, and I, being the fool that I am, believed him.
Max raises his eyebrows. “You asked her to marry you?”
“You told me she’d say yes,” I remind him.
In fact, this whole thing was practically his idea.
Max blinks slowly as he stares at me. Then he sighs and runs a hand over his face. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“No, I took your advice and asked her. When I told you about my problem, you asked me if I’d ever thought about Bliss. You said she would be the perfect solution and I should ask her to marry me.” I try to keep my tone hushed.
I don’t need Darlene overhearing and sending a big ol’ group text about Zane Madden chasing Bliss Jefferson around town.
Bliss would be so mad if I was the reason rumors were flying about her.
She’s a pretty private person. In all our time working together or talking in town, she has rarely divulged any personal details about herself.
She has never come across as a very open person.
I don’t want to be the one who makes her uncomfortable by instigating the rumor mill.
Max shakes his head rapidly. “No, no, no, no. I said she would make a great wife. I thought you two might date and fall in love. You know, like you’re supposed to do! I didn’t say she would say yes if you just asked her to marry you. Did you even take her out on a date?”
“I don’t want to date. I want to marry her.”
Dad isn’t going to let me be full partners in the ranch just for dating someone.
He’s convinced that once I get married, I’ll be as happy and settled as he and my mom are.
And even though he hasn’t put any stipulations on this marriage, I know he’s hoping I’ll find someone around here so that I can continue running the ranch.
Dad’s ready to step down and take Mom on some vacations that he’s been promising her for years.
I know he’ll never fully retire, but if I become the primary owner, he’ll feel like he can leave occasionally.
Even worse, I understand him wanting to see me settled. Both of my older brothers had an interest in running the ranch, but then they traveled with the rodeo circuit, and each married someone from out of state.
“Sometimes, you deeply concern me,” Max muses. “What woman on earth is going to agree to a proposal without a date?”
“They did it in the old days.”
“We don’t live in the eighteenth century. So, did you just walk up and ask her to marry you?”
I flinch because, yes, that’s exactly what I did.
“This is bad. You didn’t tell her it was my idea, did you?” he asks a little nervously.
“No, I didn’t say your name.”
“Oh good.” Relief washes across his face. “Because I don’t think Bliss would have any compunction about giving me a black eye.”
“I just thought it was better to get right to the point.”
Our conversation gets interrupted when Darlene walks in. She’s somewhere in her early forties, brown hair with a few grays sneaking out, and tan skin that’s seen a lot of sun.
“I only have a couple of bottles of eight-way left,” she says, about the vaccines I need for my calves. “But I have a new shipment coming in on Thursday. Is that going to be a problem?”
My medicine list and Max’s are pretty similar, so we’re going to have to split whatever’s left to get us by until the shipment.
“What are you working on this week?” I ask Max.
“Prepping for the next round I’ll get in over the weekend, so if you need it way sooner, go ahead and buy what she’s got in stock. I’ve got a small batch to get by.”
Darlene hands me two boxes of 8-way.
“I thought I had enough selenium, and the Vira Shield is still in stock, but you didn’t tell me how many you needed.”
“I’m only doing about thirty calves.”
“All right. I’ve got that.” Darlene glances at Max. “Will that be okay with you?”
“Yeah, I only need the antibiotics today. I’ve got a cow with mastitis. I’ll come back this weekend when the shipment gets here.”
Darlene nods. “That sounds good. I’ll text you when it arrives. Oh, and you’ll need another vet prescription. That one’s used up.”
“Dr. Brown is retiring this year,” Max chimes in.
“He said nothing to me about it!” I mutter.
We share a veterinarian. Not exactly a high population for a veterinarian to cover, but he stays busy enough. We’re probably working him into an early retirement.
Darlene shakes her head. “I was worried that would happen. The last two times I’ve talked to him, he was talking about a warm beach somewhere.”
“Those damn beaches. They take the best of them,” Max mutters.
She hands Max the bottle of penicillin and makes a note on her phone.
“Thanks, Darlene,” I say as I walk to the door with the two bottles of 8-way. I’ll have to add them to my small cooler in the pickup.
I slip my boots on because even though this is Darlene’s place of business, it’s also her home, and if we were to wear our boots inside, she’d probably murder us.
“I’m going to grab lunch at the Shaky Pine. Want to join me?” Max asks as he steps into his boots and adjusts his jeans over the outside.
“Might as well.”
“Yeah, not like you have to plan a wedding or something,” he says as he opens the door and steps outside.
It’s a good thing I’m getting slower in my thirties; otherwise, I’d be tempted to shove him down the porch.
Max flashes me a grin when he reaches his truck. “I’ll meet you there.”
I climb into my pickup and set the medicine in my cooler with the ice pack. It’s still cold out, but the sun is shining, and the cab of the pickup will get hot while I’m eating lunch.
I drive the two blocks down the road and pull in front of the small café. Max pulls in behind me. We climb out and walk into the Shaky Pine Café.
Sharon greets us from where she’s handing out a cup of coffee to someone at a booth. “Hello, boys!” she says with a smile. “I’ll be right over to help you.”
Max and I sit down at one of the tables that has four chairs crammed around it, which don’t quite fit.
Sharon makes her way over and sets a couple of full coffee cups in front of us.
We both order the special of the day without bothering to ask what it is. The café is notorious for its homestyle cooking and real food. It’s like going home to your mom’s amazing food.
“Back to Bliss,” Max says quietly. “She turned you down.”
Max picks up the cup of coffee in front of him and simply holds it while he waits for me to answer.
“I don’t really want to talk about it. It was your bad idea,” I remind him.
“No, it wasn’t a bad idea. You just had poor execution.” Max shakes his head like a disappointed father. “You were supposed to woo her first.”
“Woo her?” I chortle. “Who even says that?”
“The man who actually has a wife.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You’re annoyingly smug for someone who tricked Charlie into marrying you.”
“I didn’t trick her,” he replies defensively. “I proposed like a normal person.”
“You gave her a puppy with a ring on its collar. She couldn’t turn you down.”
Max grins at that. “I’ll admit, I was careful to make it seem like a good idea.”
“And now you’re married despite her better judgment. Poor woman.” Annoying Max is so easy. It’s almost impossible to resist.
“Charlie has great judgment,” Max scoffs. “I don’t know why you would suggest otherwise.”
“Because she married your grumpy ass,” I reply dryly.
Actually, that’s not fair. I do like Charlie. A lot. She seems to have great judgment. She’s easy to be friends with, and she’s so good for Max. He’s been way more relaxed than I’ve seen in years.
Charlie has endeared herself to our small community by putting her contracting skills to work. She’s done some renovations on my house and even built an enclosed porch for my mom.
“My point is, I did things in the proper order. I charmed her. I flirted. I asked her to be my girlfriend, and then eventually, I proposed.”
“That’s not the way Charlie tells it.” I smile as I lift my coffee cup to my lips.
Max’s smug look falls from his face. “Fine. We had a rough start. It’s why it took so much charm.”
“You dragged her out of the house the first time you met her,” I remind him so helpfully.
Max mutters something under his breath. “There was no dragging; I carried her.”
“I’m saying that maybe I shouldn’t be taking advice from you in the relationship department.”
“I regret suggesting Bliss to you. If you’re not going to at least put some effort there—”
I cut him off. “Bliss is great. She can hold her own. Why wouldn’t I want to be married to her?”
“My dogs are great and can also hold their own. It doesn’t mean I’d marry them.”
Max is looking tired of this conversation, and I don’t know how else to convey my feelings for Bliss to him.
I didn’t propose to her because she was the only single woman in town.
I asked her to marry me because she’s safe.
I trust her. She’s the person who picked me up at my lowest point and has never used it against me.
She hasn’t mentioned my wedding day, or the fact that she’s the one who drove my catatonic self home.
Or that she stayed and made me food that night.
No one knows that it was Bliss who made me feel normal again.
Maybe even Bliss doesn’t realize that. She was the one who called me four days after my failed wedding and asked me to come help her and her dad catch a range bull. No one else had dared call or even text. No one knew how to be there for me.
Bliss showed up outside my door with a loaded horse trailer and a cup of black coffee.
The more I think about it, the surer I am that there’s no one else I’d rather marry.
Do I love Bliss? No, of course not. But the last time I thought I loved someone, she left me at the altar.
Alexa had come to town to house sit for her great-uncle.
She was working remotely and able to stay in Pine Ridge.
I met her at the bar and grill on honky-tonk night.
She was friendly, warm, and we had fun flirting.
One thing led to another, and we were getting married six months after dating. I thought I knew her.
But then she didn’t show up to our wedding, and rumor has it she was seen driving away from town with her ‘man-of-honor.’ So obviously, whatever Alexa felt for me wasn’t as strong as what she felt for her friend.
I knew from that day forward that I couldn’t trust my judgment when it came to love.
But who says you need love to get married?