Sugar Daddy (Travis Family #1)(108)

/ know, I would have said, but before I could answer he was kissing me again, and he

didn't stop for quite a while.

"I love you." I don't remember who said it first, only that we both ended up saying it quite a lot during the seven-hour-and-twenty-five-minute flight across the Atlantic. And it turned out Gage had some interesting ideas about how to pass the time at fifty thousand feet.

Let's just say flying is a lot more tolerable when you've got distractions.

EPILOGUE

I'm not sure if the ranch is an engagement present or an early wedding present. All I know is that today, Valentine's Day, Gage has given me a huge ring of keys tied with a red bow. He says we'll need a getaway place when the city feels too crowded, and Carrington will need a place to ride. It takes a few minutes of explaining on his part before I understand it's an outright gift.

I'm now the owner of a five-thousand-acre ranch.

The place, once known for its prime cutting horses, is about forty-five minutes away from Houston. Now reduced to a fraction of its former size, the ranch is small by Texas standards—a ranchette, Jack calls it mockingly, until a glance from Gage causes him to cringe in pretend-fear.

"You don't even have a ranch," Carrington accuses Jack cheerfully, scampering to the doorway before adding, "which makes you a dude."

"Who you callin' a dude?" Jack asks with feigned outrage, and chases after her. while her screams of delight echo through the hallways.

On the weekend we pack overnight bags and go to see the place, which Gage has renamed Rancho Armadillo. "You shouldn't have done this," I tell him for the dozenth time as he drives us north of Houston. "You've given me enough already."

Keeping his gaze on the road, Gage brings our entwined fingers to his lips and kisses my knuckles. "Why does it always make you so damn uncomfortable when I give you something?"

I realize there is an art to accepting gifts gracefully, and so far I haven't acquired it. "I'm not used to getting presents," I admit. "Especially when it's not a holiday or a birthday and there's no reason for them. And even before this.. .this—"

"Ranch."

"Yes, even before that, you'd already done more for me than I could ever repay—"

"Darlin'." His tone is patient, but at the same time I hear the uncompromising edge in it. "You're going to have to work on erasing that invisible balance sheet you carry around in your head. Relax. Let me have the pleasure of giving you something without having to talk it half to death afterward." He glances over his shoulder to make sure Carrington has her headphones on. "Next time I give you a present, all you need to do is say a simple 'thank you/ and have sex with me. That's all the repayment I need."

I bite back a smile. "Okay."

We drive through a pair of massive rock pillars supporting a twenty-foot iron arch and continue along a paved road that I come to realize is our driveway. We pass winter-wheat fields dappled with the wing-shadows of geese overhead. Dense growths of mesquite, cedar, and prickly pear crouch in the distance.

The drive leads to a big old rock-and-wood Victorian shaded by oak and pecan trees. My dumbfounded gaze takes in a stone barn...a paddock...an empty chicken yard, all of it surrounded by a fieldstone fence. The house is big and sturdy and charming. I know without being told that children have been born here and couples have married here, and families have argued and loved and laughed beneath the gabled roof. It's a place to feel safe in. A home.

The car stops beside a three-car garage. "It's been completely renovated." Gage says. "Modem kitchen, big showers, cable and Internet—"

"Are there horses?" Carrington interrupts in excitement, tearing her headphones off.

"There are." Gage turns to smile at her as she bounces in the back seat. "Not to mention a swimming pool and hot tub."

"I dreamed of a house like this once," Carrington says.

"Did you?" Even to my own ears. I sound a little dazed. Unbuckling my seat belt and climbing from the car, I continue to stare at the house. In all my longing for a family and a home, I'd never quite been able to decide what they should have looked like. But this house looks and feels so right, so perfect, it seems impossible any other place would suit me half so well. There is a wide wraparound porch, and a porch swing, and it's painted pale blue under the ceiling like they did in the old days, to keep mud daubers from building nests. There are enough fallen pecans beside the house to fill buckets.

We go inside the air-conditioned house, the interior painted shades of white and cream, the polished mesquite floors gleaming with light from tall windows. It's decorated in a style the magazines call "new country," which means there aren't many ruffles, but the sofas and chairs are cushiony, and there are lots of throw pillows. Carrington squeals in excitement and disappears, running from room to room, occasionally hurrying back to report on some new discovery'.

Gage and I tour the house more slowly. He watches my reactions, and he says I can change anything I like, I can have whatever I want. I am too overwhelmed to say much of anything. I have instantly connected with this house, the stubborn vegetation rooted so stubbornly in the dry red land, the scrubby woods harboring javelina and bobcats and coyotes, so much more than with the sterile modern condo poised high above the streets of Houston. And I wonder how Gage knew this is what my soul has craved.