Cowgirls Don't Cry(113)

“What?”


“Never thought I’d be confessing my love to you in the damn parking lot of a bar.”


“I never thought it’d take a hair pulling fight to prompt me to tell you how I felt about you.” Jessie rubbed her lips across his and whispered, “Promise you won’t stomp on my heart, Brandt McKay. I swear it would crush me in a way I’d never recover from.”


“I promise. I love you. So will you marry me?”


Her mouth opened. But something stopped her from answering.

“You do understand that I won’t be like Luke? I promise to be faithful to you forever. I don’t see fidelity as an option clause in marriage vows.”


Jessie bit her lip and stared at him with those wide eyes.


“Don’t leave me hangin’ now,” he half-snarled.

“What about your family? I think Dalton and Tell will be okay with us being together. But your dad?

He hates me. Can you—”


“What’s the worst he can do? Say no?” Brandt kissed her. “Nothin’ would be worse than not havin’


you in my life, Jess. Nothin’.”


“Then if you’re sure…Yes. I’ll marry you.”


He whooped and spun her around, not noticing the cold, or anything else except the look of happiness in Jessie’s beautiful eyes that he knew mirrored the happiness in his soul.

Chapter Twenty-Three


Brandt would rather have a root canal without anesthesia than talk to his father.

He knocked on the front door of the house he’d grown up in.

His mother answered, dishtowel in hand, as usual. “Brandt. Sweetie, it’s good to see you. You don’t need to knock. Come in. What’s up?”


“I have something I wanna talk to you guys about.”


She kept her expression neutral. “Go into the dining room. Your dad’s in there. I’ll be right in with coffee.”


Brandt rounded the corner and saw his dad sprawled in his padded captain’s chair at the end of the big oak table. He stopped out of habit to gauge his father’s mood.

If Casper McKay was happy he’d push back in his chair and tip his hat up to meet your gaze. If Casper was out of sorts, he wouldn’t acknowledge your presence at all.

Brandt studied him. In the last two years he’d aged ten. His black hair was mostly gray. The deep blue of his eyes had faded into the hue of old denim. His eyebrows were still black, still drawn together in a frown. The firm set to his mouth gave the appearance of a permanent scowl. His lean face and long neck flowed into a hard, tight frame, a body weathered on the wide-open spaces of Wyoming. A mindset that was as cold, hard and unforgiving as the land that’d forged him.

No smile. No “How are you?” just a calculating stare and a curt, “Brandt.”


Definitely in a piss poor mood.

Brandt left his hat on and he grabbed the back of the dining room chair in front of him. “Dad.”


“You here for a reason?”


“Yeah.”


“Well, spit it out.”


His mother brought Brandt cup of coffee and refilled Casper’s cup before attempting to hightail it out of the room. Brandt snagged her elbow. “Stay. I want you to hear this too.”


She nodded and slipped into the chair on her husband’s right side.

“Well?”


“Landon’s mother picked him up yesterday and they’re gonna be livin’ in Casper. After they get settled she wants to talk about visitation rights.”