Page 35 of Finding Her Billionaire Cowboy Mismatch

“But Midge had August,” Annie said, stricken on the cook’s behalf, and that set the whole table off all over again.

“Now I get it,” Stephen said. “I wondered how the four of you made a fifty-dollar pot.”

Annie got up and went to tell Midge in spite of her husband’s warning.

They slipped out after pie, before Kelly could rope them into a card game. Stephen drove them out to the home place with the windows down, and they walked the long way to the pond in the last of the evening, his hand wrapped around hers, neither one of them in a hurry.

The lease money would do it, he told her. A back addition first, then the second story, the big kitchen with her deep farm sink and a window set over it to catch the morning. He talked about a garden off the south side the way his grandmother had kept one, and room for a dog again one of these days. And talk he did. That was the marvel of it. The man who’d once doled out words as though they cost him blood stood at the edge of his own pond and spent them free.

“You’re already drawing it, aren’t you,” he said, not looking over. “The kitchen. You’ve got it laid out behind your eyes down to the drawer pulls.”

“Cabinet pulls, the brushed kind,” she admitted. “And the farmhouse sink. There was a list once.”

“You mean this list,” he said, pulling a post it note out of his pocket.

That stopped her cold. He’d kept the to-do list? “Of course you did,” she said, when she trusted her voice again.

They settled by Earl’s mended chair, him in it and her in the grass against his knee, and for a while neither said a word. Then Stephen drew a breath the way a man steps off a high place. “There’s a piece I haven’t told you,” he said.

“You don’t have to,” she said.

“I know. That’s how I’m sure I want to.” He turned his hat once, then set it down in the grass.

And he told her. The wreck, and the relatives who’d wanted the insurance money. The basis for his belief that most people only wanted to take from him.

None of it came out easy and Elise didn’t rush him. She’d learned that much. A man who’d measured his words for so many years didn’t find his voice overnight.

Elise took it all in without once offering her thoughts. When he ran out of words she folded his rough hand into both of hers.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “Not for the explanation. I’d already made up my mind about us.” She pressed his knuckles. “For sharing the locked-up part. That’s all I ever wanted. Not the land or the lease or any pretty words. All I want is the real you.”

“I spent most of my life believing anyone I opened up to would take whatever they could,” he said. “Thank you for waiting on me to tell you my story.”

“It makes sense now and I’m so glad we’re moving forward together.”

“I finally learned how to trust you. Took me long enough, but…” He brushed a thumb over her wrist. “I’m thankful for you.”

The light had gone gold and low over the water, and a whippoorwill called out somewhere in the trees. Elise leaned into his side and a thought caught her sideways and she laughed out loud.

“Fifty dollars, though,” she said. “I can’t get over it. Those two men own most of this county. And your little secret puts you in their orbit.” She tipped her head up at him. “Some of the richest people in around ran a pool on our hearts, and the entire pot came to fifty dollars.”

“Ten dollars a guess,” Stephen said, grave as a banker.

“It’s insulting, is what it is.” She was laughing now. “You’d think men with that kind of money could have thrown in more than ten dollars apiece. Our great romance, and they bet on it without real stakes.”

“Cheapest matchmakers in Texas,” Stephen agreed, and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll thank every tightfisted one of them anyhow.”

She turned her face up to kiss him in the gold light, warm and certain, the whole quiet evening as a witness.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Stephen sat next to Elise at another loud and rambunctious summer supper. Every week or so while the weather was warm, Hickory Hollow and Bolton Farms got all their people together for good Texas barbecue and to let off steam. They switched back and forth on the location, but Midge was always in charge of the menu. She never disappointed.

Reaching into his pocket, he felt the small box that held the ring. His heart sped up as he looked at her and what he was about to do. “Walk with me a minute,” he said to Elise, low, near her ear.

He led her out onto the freshly mowed meadow that started just at the edge of the Hickory Hollow meeting room. Away from the racket, into the soft sunset just on the horizon. Behind them the supper rolled on without them. She tipped her head at him, waiting, that little line showing between her brows that she got when she was reading him.

“I’m no hand at speeches,” he said. “You’ve got my number on that better than anybody. So I’ll only say the parts that matter.”