Page 36 of Finding Her Billionaire Cowboy Mismatch

She smiled up at him, and the warmth of it reached him before she said a word.

“I’m done talking about the past,” he said. “I’ve spent enough nights out at that pond letting it eat me alive. All I want now is the future.” His voice came steady now, steadier than it had been all night. This was the part he was sure of. “I want to rebuild that house with you and fill it up with kids. Your white dishes in my grandmother’s cupboards, and the two of us old and gray on the porch someday. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Elise. You’ve helped me see that I’m brave enough to want things out loud.”

He went down on one knee took the little box out of his pocket. He opened it so she could see the sparkle of the solitaire diamond. “Elise Pollard,” he said, “I love you with all I am and all I have. I’d count myself the luckiest fool in Texas if you’d be my wife.”

“Yes. Definitely yes,” she said, the word breaking and laughing at once.

Stephen got up, and his hands were shaking when he slid the ring onto her finger. Her hand was shaking too, and it all seemed perfect. As sure as he knew they both were, the future was happening now and it was glorious.

A year ago, the thought of two women crowing over a matchmaking scheme would have made Stephen’s neck go hot. He’d have hated being somebody’s project, but tonight he only felt gratitude. Let them take the credit, every last dollar of that insultingly small pot. That project had handed him the rest of his life.

Then Elise had her hands fisted in his shirt and was pulling him down to her, up onto her toes to meet him, and she kissed him there in the porch light with a yard full of hollering witnesses and her brand-new ring cold against the back of his neck. He kissed her the way a man kisses when he’s done being afraid of the thing he wants most.

When they came up for air she pressed her face into his neck, then pulled back to look at him. “I love you so much.” Then she was laughing and crying at once. He wrapped both arms around her and held her as the treasure she’d been all along.

EPILOGUE

ONE YEAR LATER

Elise walked to Stephen in a flowing ivory dress of lace and silk. And of course she wore her good boots. The aisle was a strip of mowed grass between two banks of folding chairs, and it ran down to the pond and the big live oak, clear to the patch of bank where he’d kissed her the first time and undone every plan she’d ever made.

He’d asked her for exactly one thing about the day. “Let’s have the wedding by the pond,” he’d said. She agreed because it was the perfect spot to blend their past with their future.

Her two matrons of honor, Annie and Kelly, waited for her wearing the particular smug glow of women whose scheme had paid off in a wedding. They’d earned it, Elise supposed.

Stephen stood at the end of the aisle in a dark jacket, scrubbed and nervous and so handsome. Chad stood up beside him as best man, with Maddox and Robert next to him managing to keep the jokes for later.

She reached him, and he took both her hands in his. “Hi,” she whispered.

“Hi,” he whispered back. Their wedding party and guests faded into the background as the two of them stood together to pledge their everlasting love to each other.

They kept the vows simple, the way they’d kept everything between them. Stephen had his on a card in his shirt pocket, but he didn’t even need to take it out.

“I spent a long while being a closed-up man,” he said, his voice low and level. “You opened me up completely. I’ll spend the rest of my life being the proof.” He stopped, and pressed his lips hard together, and when he finished the last sentence his voice was strong and clear and unwavering. “I’ll love you till they put me under that oak, Elise. And into eternity.”

Elise had hers on three index cards, color-coded, because… of course she had color-coded notes. “Stephen Garrett,” she said, “you answer a three-paragraph email with one word. You keep it simple where another would pen a sonnet. Early on, I wasn’t sure if he had much of a vocabulary at all.”

She let the laugh roll through the rows of chairs before she went on, and her own voice went soft. “Then I learned to read you. You only say what you mean. You showed up, and stayed, and told me the truth even when it cost you so much.” Her voice wobbled but she continued. “I’ll take your one word responses every day with joy. I love you with all I am and all I’ll ever be”

The preacher was three words into the pronouncement when Stephen quit waiting on the cue. He had her face in his hands and he kissed her with a dip as the whole gathering stood to cheer.

The reception spilled out across the land the way the ceremony had, no boundaries to hold it in. Lights ran branch to branch and a fiddle band sawed away on a flatbed. Everyone danced in the freshly cut grass.

Stephen danced with his bride under the string lights. He wasn’t a graceful dancer, even with all the practice, but she loved that he’d wanted to be his best for their big day.

Robert stood to toast them and got three sentences in before he steered the whole business toward himself. “I’ll say only this,” he announced. “Not one of you would be standing in this pretty spot tonight if I hadn’t had the wisdom to hire one Elise Pollard as my office manager. You’re welcome. I accept all credit.”

“You did not make this happen, Robert Shipley,” Annie called out. “Kelly and I made this happen. You were a subcontractor.”

“A subcontractor who dreamed up the supply run,” Robert said.

“On my suggestion,” said Kelly.

The whole crowd laughed, and beside Elise, Stephen laughed too, the easy unguarded way he’d relaxed into.

Later, Annie and Kelly cornered her by the cake table, one on each side, and hugged her till her ribs creaked. “We did good,” Annie said wetly. “We did so good.” Kelly didn’t say a single word, which for Kelly was the loudest thing she could have done, and Elise hugged the both of them close and let them have every ounce of the credit they’d been angling for since this thing started.

Near the end of it, when the band had slowed to the late songs and the little ones were asleep across laps, Elise caught Stephen’s hand and drew him away from the lights, up the rise to the old house.