A Rugged Ranchin' Dad

Stone jerked his head around and met her steady gaze. “But Field is isolated from other kids his own age.”

“Then you haven’t changed your mind?”

He hesitated. He wanted to give her what she wanted. He wanted to make things right between them. But not at the expense of Field’s safety. He couldn’t take the chance.

“No,” he said with deliberate gentleness. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Just you wait and see.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he demanded, his voice suddenly rough with exasperation—and with intense longing for the way things used to be between them.

Dahlia merely shrugged and smiled that calm, smug little smile of hers while entwining her fingers through his. Her touch was warm and possessive, and all thought literally flew out of Stone’s mind.

All he knew was her touch.

Her velvety-soft fingertips. Her delicately shaped fingers. Her small hand with the square-cut diamond ring and matching white-gold wedding band.

He remembered the day he’d put those rings on her finger. The day he’d promised to love and cherish and protect her for all their days on earth. He’d meant every word of it, too.

Only...he hadn’t been able to protect her.

Or their daughter.

Stone grew pensive and uneasy. How could Dahlia sit beside him so calmly after what had happened between them? His wife was not a calm person. She was warm, intense, playful, intelligent, willful, obstinate, impulsive, beautiful and impatient. But she was not, by any stretch of the imagination, calm!

Until this week. This week she was not only calm, but positively serene.

Like an angel.

Oh, Lord, he was losing it, Stone groaned from somewhere deep inside. The result of too little sleep, no doubt. And too much worry. But Dahlia had always looked like an angel—and now she was behaving like one!

“Dahlia, do you feel up to talking?” He asked the question gently because he didn’t want to push her. But he had a lot on his mind, and some of it needed to be said as soon as possible.

“You want to talk to me?”

There was such bewildered surprise on her face and in her voice, that he cringed inside. He remembered the requests for conversation, for some kind of emotional connection these past twelve months. Requests that had slowly turned to angry demands and then to tearful begging.

Then they just...stopped.

“I think we should talk about what happened,” Stone said slowly.

“About what happened?”

Stone kept his gaze fastened on the road ahead. “I wouldn’t have shot Firelight,” he told her quietly. “I was angry and frustrated, and said a lot of stupid things I didn’t mean. And I’m sorry. It’s my fault you got hurt.”

“I shouldn’t have ridden off that way, without even waiting to saddle her first.”

Stone felt her fingers curl up in his hand, the light scraping of fingernails against his flesh. He wanted so much to tell her how scared he’d been of losing her, how this week had been, to him, like stumbling clumsily out into the light after a year of sleepwalking through the darkness.

But he could wait and tell her that.

Right now he was enjoying the profound relief that she had forgiven him. The rest could come later.

He was especially enjoying the feel of her hand close and warm inside his. It had been a long time since she’d allowed him to touch her, to get this close, even for a moment or two. It had been months since they’d connected physically, in any way, shape or form.

That was mostly his fault, too.

Stone’s mind skated back through the years. He’d been thinking a lot about their marriage this week. He’d taken a huge personal risk by letting himself fall in love with Dahlia nine years ago. Devastated by the way his ex-wife had abandoned him, with no warning, no explanation, just cold, calculated betrayal, he had been unable to see love and marriage in his future ever again.

Until he met Dahlia.

A warm, beautiful free spirit who’d been content to gloriously take each day as it came.

She’d been the healing balm to his wounded pride and broken heart. She’d taken him and his abandoned son and turned them into a family. Strong, loving and patient, Dahlia had guided him through a bad time in his life.

Now it was his turn. His turn to be strong. His turn to guide them past the tragedy of Brooke’s death to begin again. Only...how?

“Remember the first time I brought you to the ranch?” Stone tightened his grip on her hand.

A sweet, fleeting smile drifted over her face as she gazed up at him. “I was so scared, wondering if Blade and Rocky would like me.”

“My brothers know a good thing when they see it.” Stone grinned at her. “Wasn’t it one of my brothers who played matchmaker and got us together in the first place?”

“Flint kept telling me about his big brother Stone—”

“For months he kept telling me about this new girl at college that he’d met and how he thought I’d like her—”

“And you kept stalling, not wanting to meet another female again for as long as you lived.” Dahlia laughed.

Stone laughed, too. They’d done this countless times before, each giving their version of his brother Flint’s one and only attempt at matchmaking.

“I was still scared when it came time to meet the rest of your family, though.” Dahlia shifted slightly in her seat and leaned her head back. “I took classes with Flint, but meeting your other two brothers—and especially your baby boy—was a big day in my life.”

“And meeting you was a big day in mine,” Stone told her softly, taking his eyes off the road long enough to look at her. Dahlia’s eyes were a startling, dazzling shade of blue, a dark, velvety contrast to her pale gold skin and sunny blond hair. “The most important day in my life.”

He watched for a second or two as her blue eyes darkened and deepened in wonder, and shock waves of longing splintered through him.

“Was it, Stone?”

The wistful note in her voice wrenched at something hidden far back in the boarded-up places of his heart. How long had it been, he wondered uneasily, since he’d said anything even remotely reassuring to her?

“You know it was,” he answered, suddenly feeling too much, needing too much from her.

Taking several deep, steady breaths, he concentrated on the traffic, unable to trust his tenuous self-control. They were on a two-lane, paved country road now, and the light, morning traffic was a welcome distraction.

So were her fingers, snuggled deep inside his hand. Her closeness eased the ache of emptiness that had tormented him the past year. It had been so long since she’d wanted anything to do with him, either physically or emotionally.

Grief over Brooke’s death had taken its toll.