Gone Country (Rough Riders #14)(117)

Chapter Thirty-Four


Late March…


Gavin listened to Rielle’s slow breathing as she started to drift off. They were both exhausted but they’d managed to sneak in some alone time for the first time in over a week. She was gearing up for spring planting and he’d been drafted to help with calving.


Quinn and Ben had a great time teasing him about his missing rancher gene, but Gavin hadn’t minded. He looked forward to spending time with his brothers—even in the dead of night in the miserable cold and snow. Nothing built a brotherly bond faster than having your arms up a cow’s birth canal together. Chase had shown up for a week, claiming to need a break from his pregnancy-hormone-crazed wife, but the truth was he hadn’t wanted to be left out. It was weird having brothers…and yet, not.


Sierra had made a full recovery after her accident and was at the physical therapy stage. He drove her to Moorcroft for sessions with Keely. He hadn’t replaced her car and so far, Sierra hadn’t asked for a new one, which weighed heavily on his decision to buy her one. If his daughter wasn’t with her best friend, she was hanging out with Boone West. Sierra swore they were just friends and Gavin believed her—he’d never caught them even holding hands. Sierra also spent time with Charlie and Vi, who absolutely doted on her. The entire McKay family had rallied around her after the accident and she fit in with them like she’d always been part of the rowdy clan.


Which led him to the issue he and Rielle needed to address.


He idly stroked the side of her breast. “Ree? You awake?”


“Barely. You wore me out, tycoon. Man. You can do that thing with your tongue anytime.”


Gavin laughed.


She yawned. “So now that I’m awake…why am I awake?”


“We need to talk.”


Her body stiffened slightly. “Okay. About?”


“This living arrangement.”


She rolled over. “What about it?”


“I don’t want you to build your own place. I want you to stay here, living with me.”


“Like we’ve been?”


“No. I want to end the division of your space and my space, and make it all our space. Our home. I want to end the division of our time, too. I want you doing family things with us.” Gavin ran his hand down her arm and threaded his fingers through hers. “This isn’t a fling for me. It hasn’t been from the start. I love you, Ree. I want to spend my life with you. Every part of it.”


“You’re not just saying that in the wake of smoking-hot sex?”


He frowned. “Can you be serious—”


She smothered his protest with a laughing kiss. “You accuse me of being too serious.” She propped her chin on his chest. “The honest truth? I don’t want to build that house. I want to live here with you. I adore Sierra and I know she’s part of the package. That said, I’ve always been so independent and in a short amount of time I find myself depending on you more and more. What if…”


“What if I leave, and you’ve come to depend on me and I’m no longer there? Honey. That’s not going to happen.”



“I know you love me. You know I love you. But things can change so fast.”


“Not this.” He kissed her knuckles. “Years down the road, I want to look at you and remind you of this moment and do a little I-told-you-so dance.”


She laughed softly. “Now, that is something I can’t wait to see. Do we tell Sierra about the change?”


“I like that you said we.” He liked it a lot. “I don’t know that it requires a sit-down discussion. The melding of our lives has been a gradual shift over the last few months, and she’s accepted those changes. If she asks, then we’ll address it.”


“All right.”


“There is one thing I want to do to prove that I’m serious about permanently tying our lives together.”


“What?”


“Putting your name on the title to this house. Before you automatically say, no, no way, I’m not taking that gift from you, I’ll point out it’s not a gift. You’ll have to pay half the property taxes. And I’ll want you to start kicking in more money for utilities because those ovens of yours are a serious electrical suck.”


Tears filled her eyes.


“Shit. Ree, honey, I was kidding about the utilities.”


“I know that, dumbass.” She sniffled. “It’s just more than I ever expected. You…this…everything.”


God, he loved this woman.


“For me too.”


April…


“Boone. Check this out.”


Sierra aligned photocopies from the Crook County Monitor newspaper on the coffee table.


“What did you find?”


“This newspaper went out of business in the early decade of the nineteen hundreds but here’s mention of a land transfer from Ezekiel West to Silas McKay in 1898.” She squinted at the blurred text. “I can’t tell how much land, but I bet that’s the land the McKays supposedly ‘stole’ from the Wests.”