“Curtis is a friend of mine,” he explained. “Runs a plumbing business. He’ll fix that pipe and get a pump down here to get the water out. Fans, too. But since the bottom of the furnace is submerged in water, there’s not going to be any heat. And a bigger problem.”
“A bigger problem than all this?” I wondered, noticing the washer and dryer in the corner. They might be salvageable.
“Carbon monoxide,” he said. “It’s not safe in this house right now. He’ll get the gas turned off, but an HVAC person will have to come out and see if Mabel needs a whole new furnace.”
“Right. Okay,” I said. What else was there to say? I’d never thought about carbon monoxide poisoning because of a burst pipe, but it made sense. At least Mabel wasn’t here and wasn’t supposed to be out ofrehab for at least two weeks. But all that meant I couldn’t stay here either. I shifted from one soggy foot to the other. “I um… I guess I’ll go to a–”
“My place.”
I frowned. “What?”
His eyes held mine, then dropped to my lips. “You’re staying with me.”
“Wh–”
He reached out, stroked my hair back. “Don’t ask why, sweetheart. We know why.” Leaning in further, he kissed my lips. Even softer and sweeter than in the diner earlier. “Got a little project to work on, don’t we?”
9
BUCK
As Sage changedclothes and packed her things upstairs in one of the bedrooms, I called Curtis back.
“What’s up?” he asked. We’d gone to school together. He married the daughter of the owner of the Feed and Seed and had three kids.
I paced Mabel’s kitchen, then stopped and studied her fridge. It was covered in magnets from around the world and photos of people from Devil’s Ditch. Most of them I recognized. Holiday cards, birth announcements. She was well loved in the community outside of the diner.
“How long does a new furnace take to put in?” I asked.
“If I have the model she wants in stock, a day or two.”
A day or two? That wasn’t enough time to get Sage to decide to stay in Devil’s Ditch, that her life was here in this town, on my ranch. With me.
“Make it a week.”
Ten minutes later,I had my girl in my truck and headed home. It had started to snow and it was just starting to stick to the roads.
“Wanna tell me why you want a baby so bad?” I asked.
She shifted in her seat, bending her left leg so she could face me as much as the seatbelt allowed. “Me? Why would you want to be tied to a random woman for the next eighteen years? I can see me getting random sperm, but you offering it to–”
“You. I don’t want to be tied to a random woman. I want to be tied toyou.”
Her mouth opened and closed. I’d stumped her.
“Why? You don’t know me.”
“I want to. You saw my family at the hospital. Youknow Trig and Ellie the best. They met last winter when he rescued her from a blizzard. They were married two days later.”
“What?” she asked, as if the idea was impossible. “Twodays?”
I nodded. “Colt met Molly and while they had some serious issues with her twin sister, they got married within a month. Bray and Katie have known each other most of their lives, but once Bray got his head out of his ass, they were married within the month. Lainey and Beau, too. All of them are having–or just had–babies. Cam and Taylor and Zeb and Cammie are solid but don’t plan to have kids anytime soon. Not sure about Shep and Frankie.”
“What are you saying?”
“That every Wilder finds his woman and that’s it. Ma and Pops, too.” She didn’t see the significance of driving her to my house. She saw it as temporary, until her aunt’s basement was fixed up right. I saw it as permanent. No way was she going back to that house. Mabel knew what the Wilders were about and she’d understand.
“So you think I’myour woman?” she asked, as if the idea was preposterous.
