Life After Wife (Three Magic Words Trilogy, #3)(54)

Tanner drew his dark brows down in a frown. “Only slick trick I see is that she left half the place to Elijah rather than me. I’m the one who’s got the most ranchin’ experience, and he’s the war vet who was probably going to be a motorcycle bum and ride around the country the rest of his life.”

“I’d have ridden around the country for about three months and then reenlisted or done what Jed did and applied at the Bureau.” Elijah talked to Tanner but looked down the table into Sophie’s eyes.

“I think he means that Aunt Maud pulled a slick trick by leaving half the ranch to Eli and the other half to Sophie. She knew she was tying two cats in a burlap bag and throwing them over a clothesline, and it was her last joke on them,” Hayden said.

The light went on in Tanner’s eyes. “Oh! Ohhhh!”

“Yep,” Hayden nodded.

“What?” Elijah shifted his gaze to his brothers.

“She wanted you two to get together, didn’t she?” Tanner said.

“She wanted us to partner up and run this ranch.” Elijah blushed.

Sophie giggled.

“What’s so funny? Ain’t my brother good enough to do more than partner up with you?” Tanner asked.

“She and her friends made this pact thing,” Elijah said.

“What?” Tanner looked at Sophie.

“It’s a long story,” she said.

“We got all mornin’.” Hayden refreshed her coffee cup.

“She’s got to have a ‘life after wife’ thing.” Elijah’s eyes had locked with hers again.

She blinked and looked at Tanner. “It’s like this. When Kate, Fancy, and I all moved back to this area, we were talking one night and one of us asked Fancy why she wasn’t married. She’s tiny and cute and full of life. She said it was because no one had said the three magic words.”

Tanner nodded. “‘I love you,’ right?”

“That’s the three words, but not the magic words. We decided that we have to hear that first for sure, but we all three wanted more, a lot more. Fancy wanted someone who’d give her a forever thing, not just a passing fancy that ended up in divorce courts. Kate wanted the three words, but she wanted them from her knight-in-shining…and then she couldn’t think of the word ‘armor’, and said ‘whatever,’ so we teased her about Hart being her knight-in-shining-whatever.”

“And you?” Tanner asked.

“Life after wife.”

“What in the devil does that mean?” Hayden asked.

“I was married before. My husband died in a plane crash, but when he got home from his trip I was going to divorce him. He’d been cheating on me since day one of our relationship. I want someone who can give me a life after he gets a wife. Someone who loves me past the wedding day. It’s hard to explain.”

“I get it,” Elijah said.

Hayden scratched his head. “You do?”

“Sure. She wants a marriage, not a wedding. A marriage is two people working together forever. A wedding is the day the marriage is supposed to start, but sometimes, like in Sophie’s case, it was the day the relationship died.”

Sophie nodded. “So until I’m sure, absolutely sure that I’ll have life after wife, then the three words don’t mean jack squat to me. So tell me, guys, what’re your three magic words?”

Hayden finger-combed his dark hair and set his square jaw seriously. “That’s tough. What makes you think we’ve got three magic words anyway?”

“Everyone has them and, until they figure them out, they don’t have any business thinking about settling down,” Sophie said.

“I’ll have to think about it and get back to you,” Tanner said. “Guess I’m not ready to settle down because I thought ‘I love you’ was the magic. Guess it’s just the cupcake. The icing is the magic words.”

“That’s right,” Sophie said. “What about you, Elijah?”

“I’ll be faithful,” he spit out without hesitation.

“Reason behind it?” she asked.

“He was engaged when he went to the desert the second time. He wasn’t gone a week when his woman was flirtin’ around in a bar with another man. A month later she sent him a breakup note,” Hayden said.

“She broke up with him on Facebook!” Tanner said. “Put it right out there for everyone to see and mailed the ring to Momma rather than coming around and facing my folks.”

Sophie’s interest was piqued, but Elijah looked like he was about to crawl under the table or else set the whole kitchen on fire with his red face.

“You deserve better, Elijah,” she said and abruptly changed the subject. “What’s on everyone’s agenda today? Tomorrow we really get down to business now that the new equipment is here, but what are y’all doin’ today?”

Hayden refilled his cup. “I’m watchin’ a football game while my laundry runs, and maybe getting my sleeping quarters put into shape. I think my laptop got put out in storage, so I may spend some time out there searching for it. I’m addicted to e-mail.”

Tanner shrugged. “Same thing, I guess. I might take that new tractor out around the fence line just to get the feel of how it drives.”