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“The same way I should’ve been looking at you this whole time. As a woman who found the strength to survive. Who didn’t give up. Who grabbed at life and held on. Marry me, Jess. Give me another chance. I won’t leave this time. I won’t let you go.”
“Caleb,” she sighed. She raised her head and looked straight into his eyes. “Maybe…”
“Maybe what?”
She watched him for a long moment, her eyes measuring something deep inside him. Then she nodded as if he’d passed the test. “Let’s just go. I don’t need a wedding to make it right. We’ll go to California, and this will all be a bad dream. I can’t be your wife, but we can go away. For a while.”
“For a damn long while,” he growled. He kissed her. Kissed her until she melted into him and then laid her head back on his shoulder. “And I will change your mind. I’ll make you so damn happy you’ll have to marry me.”
/> She laughed.
“I can buy a horse,” he said. “Supplies. We could leave in a few days. It’s still early enough to get over the pass before fall. Or we could take the train—”
“No. No, I want to see everything.”
“Then I’ll get you a horse, and we’ll be in California in weeks. There’s plenty of land to be had. Good ranch land.”
“What if you change your mind?” she whispered.
“What if you change yours?”
She laughed again. “Why would I?”
“I behaved badly,” he stated simply.
“As did I.”
“Then I guess we’ll pull along fine together, won’t we.”
Chapter 15
‡
Jessica smoothed a hand over her plaited hair and looked around the kitchen once more. In a few days there’d be tomatoes stewing on the stove and jars lined up on the table waiting to be filled. A few weeks after that, Melisande would make pickles. Jess would never see them.
Funny, she’d hated this place for so long, it felt strange that she might miss it.
She reached out for Melisande’s hand. “Are you sure you can do it without me?”
Melisande sniffed. “It’ll likely go faster without you in here burning your fingers.”
Jessica smiled past her tears and pulled her friend in for a long hug. “I wouldn’t have survived without you.”
“Sure you would have. You just had to go deep before you could climb back out.”
Maybe that was true, but Jess doubted it. She would simply have sunk into her bed one day and never gotten back up. She let Melisande go and swiped at her tears.
Once her face was dry, she slid a sealed envelope off the table and held it out. “This is for you.”
“What is it?” Melisande eyed the paper warily before she took it.
“It’s the lease we discussed. Everything is in order. You pay the taxes to the state and you owe me only one dollar a year.”
“Why bother with the dollar?” her friend asked.
“That makes it official, I hear.”
“Seems awfully silly, but that’s fine.”
