Chapter 21
Zane
“What are we making for dinner?”
Hope gives me a look as she pulls carrots out of the fridge. “You don’t have to help, I’ve got this.”
“I get to help. And this way we can spend time together, because we got interrupted earlier.”
A door claps open on the other side of the house.
I groan. “And we’re going to be interrupted again in a minute, so put me to work.”
She rolls the carrots my way. “I’m going to roast these. Not sure what we’ll eat them with, but maybe…chunk them up? Fun shaped wedges?”
“Can do.” I grab a cutting board and set up next to where Bellamy is scribbling aggressively on a piece of paper. “What are you drawing?”
“You know.” She taps her green marker on the busy circle.
I don’t. But after thinking about it a second, I make a reasonable guess. “Mr. Frog?”
“His name is Froggie.” But she looks very pleased that I could recognize him in her drawing.
“Does Froggie like carrots?”
“Of course. But his favourite food is cookies.”
“Shocker.” I find my favourite chef’s knife and start chopping as Bellamy jibber jabbers at me, extolling the virtues of cookies as a superior dinner over carrots.
Her argument is persuasive, albeit not Mom-approved.
Hope sighs exasperatedly.
I grin at her, and when she looks at me, I wink.
“This is fun,” I murmur.
“What’s fun?” my mother asks, coming out of nowhere.
I clear my throat. “Being Hope’s sous-chef. Did you see Bellamy’s excellent portrait of Froggie?”
Which redirects the artist into jibber jabbering at Luna, who doesn’t seem to mind at all. It’s fitting that today she’s wearing a Weird Girls Club shirt.
After a lifetime of raising boys to be men she could be proud of, my mom deserves some girl time.
I glance at Hope, who’s seasoning some chicken thighs. I wonder if she’ll have another girl. In seven months, the girl to boy ratio in this house could be completely tipped upside down.
What a gift that would be for Luna Kincaid.
A shock, of course. But after that, she’ll be thrilled.
“Hey, Mom,” I say abruptly. “Can I steal the girls tomorrow morning for a while?”
She looks up. “Sure?”
“We need to pick up Hope’s car from the garage. But I thought I’d show them the waterfall first.”
Luna opens her mouth, then thinks again about whatever she was going to say. Maybe she wanted to take them to Lover’s Canyon herself.
But I hope she understands from how I’ve phrased it, that I have my own reasons for wanting it to be an outing just for the three of us.
“Of course,” she says softly, her eyes drifting to Bellamy with lingering affection. “I will happily take some time in the middle of the day to paint. The star calendar says tomorrow is a good day to create something new, you know.”
Like art.
Or a family.
That night, Hope finds me in the library. She curls up in my lap at the desk, and I kiss her thoroughly, but then I tell her I’m going to send her upstairs alone.
“As much as I liked sleeping with you on the couch, you need to sleep in a proper bed.” I gently press my hand to her belly. “And I want you to be well rested for tomorrow.”
“What are we doing?”
“Going on a little hike.”
Her eyes light up. “The dragonfly mating canyon?”
I chuckle. “Yes.”
“That’s fun.”
“It really is.”
“I can’t wait. Good night, Cowboy.” She kisses my forehead after she slides off my lap. “Sweet dreams.”
The. Fucking. Sweetest.
I have a shower before bed, and I take myself in hand, my cock heavy, my balls aching. Good night, Cowboy.
Fuuuck.
I close my eyes and chase that feeling.
In the morning, I text Cash to get visual proof that Derek is on the island, far from Dragonfly Creek.
Then we get the essential chores taken care of as quickly as possible. Luna insists she doesn’t need any help with the kale, but she does take the girls with her to collect the eggs while I feed the horses.
Hope shows up a few minutes later.
She’s wearing jean shorts today, rolled up high on her long thighs, and the shorts and rubber boots combination is distracting in the best way.
“You’re staring, Cowboy,” she murmurs as she brushes past me.
No point lying about it. “I told you, looking at you is a pleasure in itself.”
She twirls around. “I thought I’d help. And say good morning to Shadow.”
“My barn is your barn. My horse…” I gesture to Shadow’s stall. “Your horse.”
When we finish there, Luna and Bellamy are still with the chickens, so I hold out my hand.
“What?” Hope takes it anyway.
I spin her under my arm. “I like watching you twirl. Do you dance?”
She shrugs. “Not since high school.”
I hum a little two-step. “I love dancing.”
“Do you?”
I spin her again, then pull her in close. “One day, City Girl, I’m going to take you to a barn dance and it’s going to be the best night of your life.”
“Promises,” she says as I bump her into my chest.
I grin. “Absolutely.”
If my mother wonders why Hope’s cheeks are pink when we join them at the chickens, she doesn’t say it out loud.
Sooner than later, she’s going to find out about the baby, so a blushing woman is really just the tip of the iceberg.
But right now, Luna has bigger fish to fry. She’s trying to teach Bellamy how to pick up the chickens.
“They’re scary.”
“They really aren’t,” my mother says patiently. “And sometimes they escape, so you need to be able to grab them and return them to the enclosure.”
“He can do it.” Bellamy points at me.
I scoop up the nearest chicken. “Like this?”
Bella squeaks and puts her hands to her cheeks as the hen ruffles her feathers angrily at me. “So scary.”
“Nah, I’m the boss of them.” Then I put the chicken down, and she runs away. “You’ll have to practice tomorrow. It’s time to go see dragonflies now.”
“I’ll get Bellamy’s booster seat from the house,” Hope says. “Come with Mommy, please.”
Luna grabs my arm as they move ahead.
I look back at her. Almost as long as I can remember, she’s been half my size. But once upon a time, she was to me what Hope is to Bellamy.
So I wait for whatever she wants to say.
She doesn’t beat around the bush.
“Do you know what you’re doing with that girl’s heart?” she asks crisply.
“Yes.” My answer is immediate and without any doubt.
Luna looks unconvinced. “She’s been through a lot. You can’t hurt her.”
“I know. I won’t.” I rub my jaw. “It’s nice to see you with Bellamy, you know.”
“Oh.” Luna sucks in a quick, sharp breath. She presses her hand to her chest.
“Come here,” I mutter, yanking her against me for a tight hug.
She squeezes me back. “I always wanted to be a grandma,” she says as she pats my back. “But I never wanted to put that pressure on you.”
“So you like the idea of kids running around here, terrorizing your chickens?”
She laughs and pushes me toward my truck. “Go. Have a wonderful morning at the canyon.”
I’ll take that as a yes.
The whole drive to the trailhead, I’m perfectly, painfully aware of Hope’s bare thighs on the passenger side of my truck. They look good there.
She looks good beside me, her sunglasses perched on the end of her nose, her fingers drumming on the open window as Bellamy chatters at us from the back seat.
We have the small parking lot to ourselves, which is nice.
As soon as Hope gets Bellamy out of her car seat, she demands to be carried. Hope winces as soon as Bellamy tries to grip her side.
“Can I…” I’m not sure if that’s overstepping, but Hope looks at Bellamy, who immediately reaches for me.
I swing her up onto my shoulders. She grabs two handfuls of my hair like reins and shrieks in delight.
“Ow,” I say mildly.
“Giddyup,” she orders.
“I’ve been called worse things than a horse, I suppose.” I hold on to Bellamy’s ankle with one hand, and offer the other to Hope.
She slides her fingers through mine and squeezes. “Show us your secret canyon.”
The path climbs for fifty metres, but then it drops into the canyon fast. As we descend, the temperature does, too, the air turning damp and pleasantly cool the closer we get to the creek bed that twists and turns before running toward town.
And then we reach the end of the switch in the path.
We turn for the final descent, and Hope gasps.
The canyon walls rise all around us, slabs of pink and grey stone streaked with moss. A pool of water spills from the base of the falls, and on every flat surface, dragonflies cluster, flickers of electric blue darting here and there.
Hope tips her face up, her mouth slightly open, and as she takes in the spectacle, I watch her.
My chest puffs with pride for having brought them here.
“It gets even better,” I say, and my voice is not steady. “We can get closer to the falls.”
We pick our way around the pool on the last stretch of trail, Bellamy narrating every dragonfly she sees.
“Blue one! Blue one! Green one!”
And then the trees open up and there it is.
The falls aren’t huge. Maybe twenty feet of tumbling water. But when you’re standing in front of them, they are all you can see. The rest of the world fades away.
“The first time we came here, Cash said it was like the rest of the world didn’t exist.” I squeeze Hope’s hand. “My mom said the canyon was like a refuge, and none of us knew what that word meant. I will never forget that day.”
“Is that why you named the ranch a refuge?”
I nod. “And it’s why we bought the land we did. It’s not easy to get here from there, but our ranch borders onto this park. It shares the same water.”
“Oh, Zane…”
I swallow hard and nod. More secrets I’ve never told anyone else.
“Luna brought us here over and over again that first summer. It was an escape and a source of wonder rolled into one.”
“Because you all needed the rest of the world to not exist…” She sucks in a breath. “I can relate.”
“We can come here as often as you want.”
Her smile starts out fragile, her eyes glittering, the same green and blue of the dragonflies all around us. But then it grows in sweet, sexy confidence. “I’d like to come here all summer long, too.”
Because she’s staying.
Because she knows she’s mine.
“Maybe the dragonflies come here for the same reason,” she murmurs.