Chapter 27
CLAY
Two weeks later
Clay could see the film trucks coming into view in the distance as he and Dev and three of the other hands rode back to the ranch after almost a week out in the furthest pastures, moving cattle.
Something he’d timed deliberately for the few days Stevie and her entourage were here filming her video clip.
Had he wanted to be here the day she arrived? Had he wanted to see her again? Talk to her again? Hold her again? Touch her again?
Like an ache in his bones that never fucking went away.
But… she had work to do and he knew he had to let her get on with it.
If he’d been a less selfish man, he’d have stayed out for longer and waited for them to leave.
Not having her around after those few weeks together had been surprisingly hard, but he’d got through it.
He’d put his head down, he’d worked the ranch, he’d worked with Mags to advance their partnership into a business plan then a bank loan.
He’d tried really hard not to be a prick to everyone because his nearest and dearest didn’t deserve to be his verbal punching bag. They’d tolerated it after his injury; he doubted they’d be so generous again. So he smiled, he was chatty, he went to cookouts.
He even took some trail rides.
Because being butt hurt over a woman he’d known for such a short period of time was incredibly dumb.
They’d had a great time, and it had ended – like he knew it was going to.
And unless he wanted to admit to something more going on – which he did not because she was a music star who lived in Boston for fuck’s sake – it made no sense to be the rain on everyone’s parade.
He’d be lying though if he didn’t admit to looking forward to the daily photo exchange they seemed to have settled into even if it was a double-edged sword.
Her choices made him smile and stirred a yearning for her that didn’t quit, but they also showed quite glaringly how disparate their worlds were.
This morning he had sent her a closeup of a flower growing along the flanks of the river, the mountains behind blurred. She had sent him a photo of her trailer where she went for morning make-up, her name on the door.
He was mountains. She was metropolitan. He was cowboy, she was Music City.
So, probably the wisest thing to do would be to not rip that plaster off, stay out another night because the filming wrapped today – there was a cookout to celebrate it – and they’d all be gone tomorrow.
But, hell, he wanted to see her.
He’d been surprised when her record label had approached his parents a couple of weeks ago about using the ranch for the music video.
Mags had talked about it as a vague possibility when Stevie had first come to stay, but there hadn’t been any serious thought given to it until it had suddenly presented itself as an opportunity.
Clay imagined it hadn’t been Cindy Everhart’s first choice so he wasn’t sure how that had all gone down, and he hadn’t asked when Stevie had mentioned they were heading to the RVR in one of their text exchanges.
He’d decided that a lot of Stevie’s life was difficult at the moment and that he would be the easy part.
Which included not pressing her for details on the ranch being chosen or hassling her about telling her mom the truth about her stage fright.
She’d asked him that last day not to try and fix things and he’d learned from that, learned that she’d needed him just to be there – not to act – and he’d decided to keep carrying that through.
At least until after that goddamn monolith of a tour anyway.
And in the meantime, he’d just keep sending her pics from the ranch hoping to be something grounding in all the flurry.
It took another hour to get back to the ranch and sort out their gear and see to the horses before he could jump in his truck and head to the cabin.
He needed a shower because although Stevie had once confessed to liking the smell of horse and sweat on him, he doubted she’d feel the same about five days’ accumulation.
His mind preoccupied with thoughts of Stevie, Clay barely noticed the scenery on the well-worn track to his cabin.
Not much had changed since she’d left but the days weren’t as hot or as long and, in the morning now, there was that September crispness to the air.
The leaves were just starting to change and before too long, pops of blazing colour would dapple the landscape.
Turning into the track that cut through the trees, he spotted a figure sitting on the third stair of his porch and his heart rose to his throat.
Stevie.
She stood as he climbed out of his vehicle.
Her hair was loose, curled into long waves, and she was wearing a fringed red shirt, a fringed tan leather skirt and the most impractical white cowgirl boots he’d ever seen.
She looked like she had the first day he’d seen her, like Stephanie Everhart, country music star.
But her purple-grey eyes, shining with all their memories, told him she was still his Stevie girl.
And that’s when it hit him. He loved her.
He was in love with her. His chest filled with it, his lungs fit to burst. He’d spent the last two months thinking about how much he liked her, how much he missed her, how great her laugh was, how hot she looked wearing his hand as a necklace, how cute she looked when she was cranky, how fondly she smiled when she talked about her sister, how she got a little V between her brows when she was strumming on her guitar with some lyric or other on her mind.
How… special she was.
But they were all just subterfuge. Euphemisms he’d been hiding behind, trying to put other names on the things he was feeling.
Because they were so new and fledgling and really fucking inconvenient.
How could he possibly trust them? How did he know he wasn’t just romanticising the woman who had absorbed his every waking moment – and most of his sleeping ones – since the day she’d emerged like a fucking angel through the swirling dust?
But he knew now.
This wasn’t romanticising, this was his living, breathing reality. He knew it like he knew the pulse of the mountains. He loved Stevie Everhart.
And, yes, it was complicated and he didn’t know how any of it was going to work, but he’d go to the ends of the earth to make it work – if she wanted it, too.
He strode towards her, his steps eating up the distance between them, and when his foot hit the bottom tread, she whispered, ‘Clay,’ and he opened up his arms and she fell into them, her arms clinging tight around his neck.
‘You’ve wrapped?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
They didn’t say anything for long moments, just held each other, Clay’s heart aligning with the thud of hers, beat for beat.
It was like the other half of him slotting into place.
Clay had always thought that home was something tangible.
A dwelling. Bricks and mortar and land. But now he knew it could be a person.
And he’d found his.
‘I love you,’ he muttered into her hair.