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Mike led them back to the pantry area where there was some rotted wood in the back. “I’m just worried I’m going to find more things like this,” said Mike.
“Like I said,” Jace said. “We really do have the budget. We don’t want to cut any corners. This needs to be a luxury escape. Affordable, but the kind of people that want to travel here and stay in a historic place, want it to be charming without being uncomfortable. We don’t want them thinking it just feels old and outdated. We definitely don’t need soft floorboards.”
“Of course not,” she said.
Mike looked between the two of them, and she knew that they were now in an uphill battle with gossip. Because he had definitely seen them kiss.
“I’ll keep looking around,” said Mike.
“Well,” she said, when they were alone in the pantry. “He saw that.”
“Fine with me,” said Jace.
“I mean, the argument could definitely be made that most people will think that we were already sleeping together, but...”
“I wanted to talk to you about that. I’m staying here. I’m not going back to the rodeo. I’m investing in the hotel. It isn’t that I don’t know what I want, it’s that I was resisting what I want. You know I don’t like dreams. And you know I like everything locked in place. I like it sure, I like it certain. The hotel’s a little bit of a gamble, but I don’t mind gambling with money. As for the rest... Nothing in my life is mine. And that’s by design. Whatever I don’t have, I don’t have because I didn’t want it. I love my family, but I recognized pretty early that loving people is painful. I’ve been riding the rodeo because it was there. Because it was something to do. But that’s not enough for me anymore. I need something that’s mine. I’m going to stay in Lone Rock—that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
Her heart started to throb. “And?”
“And I want you. I want you, Cara.”
“You... You want me?”
It wasn’t really a declaration of love... Did she even want a declaration of love? The very idea was sort of terrifying. She hadn’t fully let herself process her feelings for him. And he was... Well, he wasn’t a romantic. That much was sure and certain.
“Yes. I want...”
They heard footsteps again. “Hold that thought.”
Mike returned. “Sorry,” he said. “Just wanted you to look at some things in the bathroom.”
“Rain check,” he said.
Her heart was thundering so hard, she didn’t think she could take a rain check. But they did decide that they would just go ahead and follow Mike while he looked around. “I’ll write up a bid,” he said an hour later. “One that’s based primarily around modernizing the bathrooms, making sure you have new plumbing, good hot water heaters and modern fixtures in the kitchen, which I know won’t really have anything to do with the guests, but if you’re going to hire anybody to do some cooking... It’ll make things easier.”
She really didn’t care about cooking. Or plumbing. Or anything but what Jace had been about to tell her, but she knew she couldn’t completely abandon the point of all of this, not right now. Not when the point of this was business, and not for her to kiss Jace. But she really wanted to kiss Jace.
And find out exactly what he had been about to tell her.
“It all sounds great,” she said. “Thanks, Mike.”
And she smiled, hoping that he would get the idea that her smile was the period at the end of this sentence. And he did, giving them a half wave and heading out the door.
She looked up at Jace. “I would really like to hear what you were going to tell me.”
“Well. You’re my best friend. And I want to be part of this venture with you... And you know, I just don’t like halfway shit. I think we should get married.”
Ten
He’d thought about it. He was confident in it. And he knew that there were a whole lot of people who wouldn’t understand how he had gone from friends, to sex once, to wanting to get married, but he wasn’t a man who operated in halfway zones. He was a man of absolutes. He hadn’t committed to anything, not for all of his life. And if he was going to commit to any one thing, then it was going to be Cara. There was no way he was going to have sex with her, then pretend that it hadn’t happened. There was no way that he was going to...
No. There was no way on earth that he was going to be cool with her moving on and being with other people. And that meant that there was only one option available to him. Locking that shit down.
That was it.
He was in on the hotel. He was in on everything. Whatever she wanted, whatever she needed. He wanted to buy land. And he wanted to build a house on it. And he was going to... He was going to do what he had always promised that he would do. He was going to take care of this woman.
That feels perilously close to a dream.
