Chapter 17
Ellyn
“How’s she doin’?” Joel asks the guy standing in front of one of the horse stalls as we enter the huge barn on his ranch.
As soon as we’d arrived, Joel took me into his office where he had me exchange my heels for a pair of black, rubber boots that one of his daughters-in-law keeps here for when she visits.
Thus, while I may feel slightly overdressed in the long dress I’m wearing, I’m far from uncomfortable due to my footwear.
The guy, who I assume to be Randy, looks over at us, his eyes widening when he drops his gaze to find Joel’s and my hands intertwined.
“Randy?” Joel barks out, his voice impatient. “Ol’ Girl? How is she?” he asks as we approach.
Randy appears to snap out of it while also stifling a little grin. “She’s doin’ well, boss. Pacing a little bit and restless but that’s normal from what I can tell.”
Joel nods before turning to examine the beauty of a golden-brown horse in the stall with his own eyes. While he watches her, I watch him.
His eyes narrow as he slowly scans his gaze over the length of the horse’s body as if performing an X-ray.
“Let’s give her some more water,” he says.
Randy’s gone in a flash to bring in more water for the laboring horse.
“Should you call the vet?” I ask, now looking over Ol’ Girl. Her swollen belly is apparent as she stomps around and around the stall, her head bobbing up and down.
“Not yet,” Joel says. “This is normal.”
I shake my head. “I couldn’t imagine being up on my feet while in labor,” I confess. “I know some women do it and it’s even for the best, but I was in so much pain. I ended up having two C-sections.”
“We’ll hope it doesn’t come to that with Ol’ Girl,” he says, tugging on my hand.
“No, let’s hope not.” I look over at her again at the same time Randy comes, refilling her water.
“Animals are more connected to their instincts than we humans are,” I mumble, watching Randy.
“We all can find our way back to our instincts,” Joel says.
I go to ask him what he means but he turns to Randy to let him know that he’ll take it from here. After a short exchange, Randy tips his hat at me as he leaves.
“What do we do now?” I ask, looking at Joel.
“Now, we get nice and comfortable.” He holds up his hands. “Hang on right there.”
I don’t move while watching him go to the end of the barn and open the door that looks like it goes to another stall. Instead, however, it must be some sort of storage closet because he pulls out a couple of blankets and pillows.
“I told you to stay over there,” he gripes as I rush over to assist with the pillows.
“This may be your ranch, but you aren’t my boss, boss,” I taunt.
In an instant, the tables turn on me when a spark ignites in Joel’s eyes. And there go my nipples again, pressing uncomfortably against my bra.
Joel remains silent as he covers one of the large stacks of hay with a blanket. He then takes my hand, bringing me to sit next to him before placing one of the pillows behind me, propped up against the wall.
The second blanket is used to lay over our laps. We’ve just created our own little cozy hay nooks, directly across from Ol’ Girl’s stall.
I don’t think twice about it before I curl my legs underneath me and lay my head on Joel’s shoulder. I’m in almost the exact same position as when I sat next to him on his couch watching his daughter-in-law belt out Christmas songs.
“How many times have you been in this exact same spot?” I ask Joel.
“Waiting and watching for the birth of a new foal? More times than I can count,” he says.
There’s a pause before he continues.
“Waiting and watching for the birth of a new foal while the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on rests her head on my shoulder?”
I lift my head to peer up at him.
The intensity of his gaze almost completely overwhelms me.
“First time.” His voice is low and slightly strained with emotion.
He allows his eyes to drop down to my lips and then moves them up to my eyes again. It’s as if he’s silently asking for permission to kiss me.
A sigh parts my lips. “Please,” I hear myself say.
Before the word is fully out of my mouth, his lips cover mine. Pure ecstasy courses through my veins.
Joel leans in, his massive hand moving to cup my neck, while his thumbs rests underneath my chin, keeping my head tilted upward, allowing him to plunder my mouth at will.
His kiss is fiery and sensual and everything I’ve ever craved all at once. He pulls a hunger that I thought had burned out a long time ago from deep down inside of me.
I never want him to stop kissing me.
Except we do have to stop.
It’s the sound of Ol’ Girl’s pawing that finally pulls us apart. Joel quickly checks on the mare, but must note that she’s doing okay because soon enough he brings his attention back to me.
“He was a fool.”
He surprises me with this comment, but I don’t need to ask who he’s referring to.
“I know,” I reply, grinning.
“His mistake is my gain,” he says before his lips cover mine once more.
I indulge in his kisses, sighing and grinning because all of this feels so new, yet old at the same time.
“I shouldn’t try to devour you in here,” Joel says, finally pulling back from the kiss, but wrapping his arm around my shoulders to hold me to him.
I tuck into his body.
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because, darlin’, the first time I make love to you it won’t be on a stack of hay in the middle of a horse barn like we’re a couple of horny teenagers.”
A guffaw falls from my lips.
“It sounds like you have experience with that.” I look up at him.
He grins but shakes his head. “Caught two of my sons before. Micah snuck in here with his girlfriend when he was sixteen, and then Gabriel when he was seventeen. Damn boys tried to give me a heart attack.”
“I can’t imagine what it’s like to raise boys,” I say, laughter filling my voice. “My girls were enough.”
He shakes his head, frowning. “It’s not for the weak. People say boys are easier but that’s bologna.”
“I used to say that before I had my girls.”
He pulls back, looking down at me. “Really? Why would you think that boys were easier?”
“I was young and dumb,” I admit. “I was nineteen when I met my husband. My mother raised me to believe that men should be catered to more or less, and boys were always easier to raise than girls.
“Then I had my girls.” I smile at the memories. “Shanice looked like such a little angel when she was born. From the beginning she slept through the night, breastfed well. It was almost as if she intentionally tried not to be a nuisance or give me any trouble.
“You hear those stories of how you have one kid and they’re so good and perfect it makes you want to have a second?”
He nods.
“That’s how it was with Shanice. And then we had Meghan …”
Joel and I laugh together.
“She was a pain in the ass, huh?”
“From the very start. My baby girl didn’t bother waiting until her terrible twos to become terrible,” I joke. “She was colicky, cried all night, only wanted to be held by me. Teething was a nightmare.
“We didn’t move her out of our bed until she was three.”
“And that was a fight, wasn’t it?” he asks.
“You know it!”
We laugh together.
“Through it all, though, Shanice remained her quiet, reserved self. Never the one to make waves.” Sadness makes its way into my voice as I think about my oldest daughter.
Evidently, Joel hears it because he asks, “Is she still like that?”
I push out a heavy breath and nod.
“It’s my fault.” I meet his eyes before lowering mine to the blanket.
“Her whole life growing up she watched me accept the bare minimum, never wanting to make waves in my marriage or homelife. Whenever she saw me get frustrated with something her father said or did, I just brushed it off and told her, ‘Mommy’s making a mountain out of a molehill.’”
I shake my head and turn to face the mare that’s still pacing back and forth.
“She learned to just take it.”
“What about her husband? Do you like him?” Joel asks.
It’s a question I’ve avoided asking myself in the six years Shanice has been married.
“She’s too much like me,” I tell him as an answer. “I doubt she sees it.” I look at him.
A noise from Ol’ Girl captures Joel’s attention. He goes over to check on her, murmuring words of comfort to her that I can’t quite make out.
I watch as he enters the stall, getting closer to the horse, while speaking to her in a gentle tone. He runs his hand down her nose, which I swear seems to soothe her.
“Does that come natural to you?” I ask when he comes back over to sit down next to me.
On instinct, I curl into his body again and he slings an arm over my shoulders. It’s as if we’ve practiced and done this move a thousand times before.
“Natural?” he asks while looking straight ahead. “Nah. Took a while for me to even want to be around animals.”
“You didn’t grow up on a ranch?” The surprise is evident in my voice.
He snorts. “Hardly. I grew up not too far from Harlington, dirt poor. But at seventeen, I dropped out of school and headed over to Williamsport, a few states over. I wanted to be a city boy who never had any intentions of returning to the country or working on and owning a ranch.”
“What brought you back then?”
He shakes his head. “I met my wife. She was from this area but had moved to Williamsport for work. She was only eighteen when we met. I was twenty-one. Anyway, we got involved, she wanted things more serious than I could commit to.”
Joel looks down at me.
“I never was gonna be the committed type,” he says. “And for damned sure wasn’t about to start a family with anyone.”
I listen intently, not saying anything because the person he’s describing is so far from the man I’ve come to know.
“Hard to picture that kind of life when you’ve never had a family to begin with. Not really. But Gina, she got under my skin,” he says.
“We were off and on for a couple of years. Mostly because I’m a stubborn bastard who couldn’t commit. And she was just as stubborn when I kept telling her that she deserved better.
“‘Before I knew it, she wound up pregnant.”
“Let me guess,” I say. “You knew the moment she told you that, that she was who you wanted to be with for life. So you got down on one knee right there and then.”
He chuckles but shakes his head.
“Wish I could say I was man enough to have done that. The truth is, I broke up with her. Told her to get rid of it and never contact me again.”
My heart squeezes inside of my chest. The pain in his voice as he recounts that conversation is palpable.
“Dumb son of a bitch I was,” he grumbles. “She left Williamsport. I didn’t hear from her for almost a year. I assumed she did what I told her to do about the baby.”
“But she didn’t,” I guess.
“’Course not. Eleven months later, I get a call from her pissed off daddy. Gina was in the hospital, clinging to life. She’d gotten into a car accident near the ranch. Came close to dying, and she begged her parents to call me so that I could meet our son before she died.”
Joel shakes his head.
“That was her dying wish. For me to meet my son, just once.”
He lifts his hat from his head and places it on the haystack beside him before running his fingers through his grey, trimmed hair, tussling it. Unease and tension course through him.
I snuggle closer, pressing my palm to his chest.
“It was when I saw her in that hospital bed that I knew what a fool I was. Then her mother brought the baby to the hospital. Micah was three months old. Soon as she put that little boy in my arms, I never wanted to let him go.”
Joel shakes his head, shoulders rounded in shame as he stares at his black cowboy boots.
“She made it though. Gina was tough as nails. Only a few days later, she turned it all around and pulled through. I wouldn’t leave her side after that, although she wanted me to.”
He chuckles.
“Told me she only wanted to see me ’cause she thought she was dying. Now that she was healin’, I could return to Williamsport. I refused, though. Took months, but eventually, she forgave me.
“I proposed and we got married.”
Joel looks me in the eye.
“She was kind enough never to tell Micah what an asshole I was for leaving her after I found out she was pregnant. But it was harder to forgive myself for missing her pregnancy and the first few months of his life.”
I reach over and squeeze his thigh.
“You wanted to know why my sons call me Joel. It took me years to feel worthy of being their father. Never felt like I deserved the title, so … Joel.” He nods.
My heart breaks.
“We all make mistakes when we’re younger.”
“Some are unforgivable,” he counters.
“But you’ve spent the past almost four decades being the father and now grandfather your children needed,” I remind him. “From what I can tell, you’ve more than made up for your past and earned the title of ‘dad’.”
He lifts his gaze, looking at me, a renewed spark in his eyes. Not for the first time, I realize that although strong, sometimes abrasive, and more than a little gruff on the outside, Joel Townsend is a big ol’ softy where it counts the most.
I lean in and press my lips to his. The kiss is short-lived, more meant to comfort than to be sensual.
“Now, I can’t even get those damn boys I raised to put up Christmas lights with me or the tree,” he gripes.
I bump his shoulder.
“Didn’t they all just spend Thanksgiving with you?”
He grunts and I interpret it as a begrudging yes.
“And doesn’t your oldest grandson call you at least once a week even though he’s in the Air Force and stationed in a different state?”
Joel narrows his eyes at me, but his lips twitch. “What’s your point?”
“Nothing at all,” I reply, bumping his shoulder again.