Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
AUbrEY
Who knew a last-minute wardrobe malfunction would almost ruin the rest of my life?
I’d almost missed him! But there Rye sat atop the most beautiful horse I’d ever seen, the blueish-gray color of his coat separating Rye and Blue at the end of a line of cowboys on their horses.
This was it, the last goodbye before their drive. I recognized Grady Sr. at the opposite end of the line, looking stoic and like Kevin Costner in his black felt hat, and I realized then that I had more in common with Calla Graves than I wanted to admit.
God, my man was a vision, his hair curling beneath his tan hat and his strong thighs holding him steady on his steed. His arms were bare; he wasn’t wearing his usual denim button down, but I didn’t mind one bit. His hands holding his horse’s reins, covered by riding gloves, looked strong and sure.
My book-club friends had convinced me to wear the pink dress Rye loved when I told them at our emergency meeting all the beautiful things he’d said to me, and how no matter how much I’d tried, I couldn’t stop loving him.
Was it too soon? They’d all agreed, yes.
Did we care? Not a one of us.
And when I tried on the dress in the library’s bathroom and couldn’t get it zipped up the back, Phil had rushed out to her truck. She returned with a travel sewing kit, ripped that zipper right out, added fabric from a similarly colored pink T-shirt Sam happened to have had in her bag, and then Phil hand sewed inserts on either side of the zipper so I could fit my forty-seven-year-old ass into the dress. Man, that woman had fast fingers.
She said she’d mend it properly later, but for now, it would have to do, and then Roxi drove me to G&S Ranch in her cruiser, lights on and speed limits ignored. Our friends followed in their cars, and as soon as we’d parked, Daisy went on a walkabout to find Rye’s mama. She wasn’t planning to let Calla ruin things for Rye and me.
As I took off in search of my destiny, I realized the Graveses’ property looked like the freaking county fair with all the people, shade tents, and picnic tables. I smelled massive amounts of barbecue sauce and strawberries, but I didn’t see any of it because the only thing I could focus on was Rye in the distance.
Somewhere behind me, my friends cheered me on as I weaved in and out of all the people congregating in the pasture next to the biggest rust-red-colored barn.
The other riders’ friends and families called out their goodbyes. There were wishes of “good luck,” and I heard lots of “I love you”s, but I wasn’t going to say it until I knew for sure Rye would hear it.
Raising my hand above my head while I held the dress out of the dirt with the other, I shouted his name.
People had started to notice my desperate sprint toward the man I loved. Women moved out of my path, tugging their little kids out of the way by their shirts and dirty hands. One little boy dropped his popsicle when his mama pulled him out of my way, and he wailed his disappointment. Normally, I would’ve stopped and found him a new popsicle, but not today.
Today, the title “Mom” was the last thing on my mind.
Today, I was just Aubrey, the wild, “grab the bull by the horns” woman I’d always been, here to claim her cowboy. Maybe it had taken me a few years to find her again, but I had, and I wasn’t planning on looking back.
I jumped around the mother and son and raised my other hand in the air, letting the dress drag through the dirt. Jesus. Had I shrunk from menopause too? I didn’t remember the dress being this long when I’d worn it twenty years ago. I had on the same boots today I’d worn with the dress back then, but the stupid things were still stiff, and running was causing an unbearable pinch on my toes.
“Ryder Graves! Wait!”
He hadn’t heard me. He turned his horse, and I watched as his body tightened in preparation for his ride.
“Rye! Wait for me!”
Calla stood in my direct path. Maybe I should’ve stopped to talk to her. To promise her I wouldn’t hurt her little boy’s heart, but even she couldn’t get in my way today.
As I passed her, her surprise at seeing me running toward her son to tangle him up in an inappropriate love match quickly died when Daisy stepped up to the plate. She wrapped her arm around Calla’s shoulder and shook her finger in the woman’s face to warn Calla to keep her opinions to herself.
Daisy winked and smiled at me, and loudly she said, “Good girl. Go get your cowboy.”
She’d given me the last push of adrenaline I needed. At the top of my lungs, I screamed, “Rye!”
He stopped his forward movement. Looking over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed and he scanned the crowd, but he still hadn’t seen me.
Two heavy-set old men were the last obstacles in my way, and I prayed that when I pushed past them, I wouldn’t knock them down.
Good grief, has running always been this hard?
The men heard me huffing and puffing behind them. They stepped to the side, and one of them extended his arm with a smile and his hat held out to show me the way.
Rye had given up. I saw the way disappointment lowered his shoulders, and he lifted his reins and began to move.
He was leaving!
“Ryder. Fucking. Graves! Stop. Don’t go!”
Finally, he saw me.
His face lit up, changing from a hard mask of defeat to the biggest smile I’d ever seen. He jumped from his horse and walked toward me a few steps, but then he stopped. Another cowboy with black hair under an even darker hat led his horse closer to Rye. Rye handed the man his reins, and then the other guy backed up and Blue went with.
I stopped running and, with my hands on my shaking thighs, tried to catch my breath. I held up a finger, hoping Rye would know I just needed an old-lady minute. Everyone was watching me. I felt their eyes on my back, but I couldn’t have cared less.
Some smartass behind me blared “In Your Eyes” from their phone. I couldn’t tell who the offender was, but I had my suspicions about Benji, though how he would have any clue who Peter Gabriel was stumped me.
Before they’d left this morning, both my boys told me they supported whatever decision I made. All along I’d known they would, but the fear was real. Who was I if I wasn’t Aubrey George, widow and mom?
But I was the same girl from a million years ago, just with a few more miles on her and a lot wiser. I could be all those things at the same time, and it didn’t change who I was to the people who loved me.
And if I loved Rye as hard as I knew I could and he loved me back, I’d be a better mom and daughter and friend, because I’d be happy.
As soon as my front door had shut behind the boys, I flipped on my porch light and vowed never to turn it off again, and that was when the mad dash started, which was also when I realized I needed help and called my friends.
I could feel them now behind me, supporting me, and when I could breathe again, I straightened and locked my eyes on Rye’s.
At the edge of the fenced pastures, past an open gate at the start of the hills that would lead him away, Rye stood, hands on his hips, smiling and waiting for me to come to him, to let my fears and doubts go and give myself to him.
And that was my plan, just as soon as I took off these godforsaken boots. I yanked my dress above my knees and pulled them off, one at a time, and chucked them into the dirt. Catcalls and whistles sounded around me, and they carried on the wind from the cowboys still mounted on their horses. Even over the incessant mooing of the cows as they moved in increasingly more urgent circles in their pens, I heard them.
Rye laughed, his own age lines crinkling at the edges of his eyes under the shadow of his hat, and like he couldn’t wait one second longer, he took two more steps toward me.
I ran full out, as fast as I could go, my feet hitting the dirt over and over, ruining the pedicure Ronnie had given me and probably the hem of my dress.
When I was close enough to hear him, he said in an easy voice, “Hey, Spitfire. Nice dress. Change your mind about seein’ me off?”
“I changed my mind about everything! You’re not goin’ anywhere without me.”
“What about your store?”
“The shop is closed for two weeks while its owner goes through some renovations.”
“Oh, I’ll renovate you alright,” he said, the edges of his smile lifting deviously.
When I was ten feet away, he lifted his hat and pulled his white undershirt over his head by the hem. I couldn’t figure out why he’d be stripping in front of literally everyone he knew, but then I noticed the new black and gray ink on the left side of his chest, above his heart.
As he fixed the hat back on his head, I stopped my feet and strands of my hair whipped forward into my open mouth.
Pointing to his new tattoo, I whispered, “Is that… me?”
“You like? Got it up in Oregon. I needed somethin’ to remind me of you while we were apart.”
“I look—” I stuttered, trying to catch my breath. “I-I’m sexy.”
“Fuck yeah, you are.”
The pinup portrait of my face and bare shoulders, turned and peeking out from Rye’s muscled chest, with thick, waving tresses of my hair curving and wrapping around the image, was so realistic that I had a hard time not looking at it. The only color in the entire design was the rosy, golden hue of my hair. The peonies surrounding the image—my favorites—were black and gray too.
I stepped forward slowly, reaching my hand toward the tattoo. “Can I touch it?”
When I met Rye’s gaze, I found a proud smile plastered across his lips. “You don’t have to ask to touch me, baby. You own me. You can do whatever you want with me.”
Taking the last few steps until I was a breath away from him, I touched my portrait forever inked onto Rye’s skin with tentative fingers, softly tracing a line of a peony’s leaf and then the ridge of my nose. The lines were still a little raised with irritation.
“You really should have this covered and protected from the sun. It’s still healin’, but… she’s beautiful.”
“She’s you ,” he said, pulling off his gloves and tossing them down to the dirt, “so yeah, the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“But she doesn’t look like me now.”
“Fair maiden,” Rye whispered, wrapping me up in his strong arms. He lifted me, and I wound my legs around his hips, trying not to picture him naked, wearing only his leather chaps. “What have I told you about how you see yourself? The only reference the artist had was the picture I took of you after my birthday dinner. Remember?
“You were on my bed on your knees wrapped up in my sheets. I called your name, and you turned toward me and bit that sweet bottom lip.” He touched my lip with one finger. “Your hair was messed from the love we’d made, your face was flushed and bright and happy, and you seduced me again and made me watch you pleasure yourself with your eyes on my body.
“Baby,” he said, “she is you. Look. Says so right here,” and he tipped his head, looking at a banner beneath my image where, in swirling script, two words had been etched:
My Spitfire.
My cheeks heated, and I peeked around us to make sure no one had heard what he’d said, but he claimed me in front of everyone, took my mouth roughly with his, and he kissed me like no one else was watching.
As he crowned me with his sweaty hat, the crowd cheered us on. I swore I heard Billie somewhere, hooting like a rabid owl on steroids.
But I paid them no mind. I was lost in Rye.
“I love you,” I promised him, and I kissed him back, moaning and grasping for handfuls of his hair, wrapping my body tightly around his, letting him know with everything I had inside me that he was it for me. I’d finally found my happy ever after…
And my happy ever after was Rye freaking Graves.