The Morning-After Proposal

He sat next to her, taking an equally rickety chair. It creaked from his weight. “Yes, Miriam is gone. I’m so sorry, Julia.”

Dizzy, confused, lost in sudden grief, she corrected him. “JJ. I’m still JJ.”

“Not to me.”

“I’m no one to you, Dylan. We met by accident.”

His voice turned rough. “I buried your mother. I had a service for her.”

Guilt assaulted her hard and fast, and she hugged his jacket, pulling it tighter around her body. “I shouldn’t have argued with Mom. I shouldn’t have left her.” She rocked in her chair, feeling sick inside. “Was she shot? Is that how she died?”

“Yes.”

The sickness remained. “Thank you for taking responsibility for her. You weren’t obligated to do that.”

“I convinced the FBI that I was. That Miriam needed me.”

Because there was no one else, she thought. Besides JJ, her mother didn’t have any family.

She didn’t want to picture the woman who’d raised her being struck by a bullet, but the crimson-stained image presented itself, ripping into her mind, tearing at her conscience. “Where did you bury her?”

He shifted his feet, and his boots made a scraping sound. “Arizona.”

“Where you live. Where I used to live.” She caught a glimpse of untamed emotion in his eyes, and the look made him seem dangerous.

She didn’t understand why he affected her that way. He’d done nothing wrong. On the contrary, he’d done everything right. He’d rescued her from a kidnapping; he’d given her wayward mother a resting place.

Then why did his soul seem so dark? Why did his eyes betray him?

“Come home with me, Julia.”

“JJ.” Unable to control her reaction, she snapped at him.

“Julia.” He snapped at her, too.

And then they stared at each other, a hard-edged, pulse-hammering, uncomfortably possessive moment passing between them.

This man, the handsome cowboy who’d done everything right, wanted to steal the identity she’d created. To force Julia to bury JJ—the way he’d buried her mother.

“Come home with me,” he said again.

She shook her head, imagined herself in his arms. “No.”

“You need to visit Miriam,” he pressed. “To say goodbye to her.”

Heaven help her. She didn’t want to return to Arizona, to kneel beside Dylan at her mother’s gravesite. To trace the headstone he’d chosen. To let him see her cry.

She’d already cried on the day he’d rescued her from the mess her mother had gotten her into. She’d already wept in his arms when he’d carried her out of that dirty, dingy trailer and into the desert sun.

How much more reliant on him could she be? And how much more pain could she bear from her mother’s passing? From being safe at the Rocking Horse Refuge while her only parent lay dying?

“I loved my mom,” she said. “But things were never right with us. Not even when I was a little girl.”

“I know.”

“Yes, of course you do.” She frowned, realizing she was still wrapped in his jacket, in the scratchy warmth he’d provided. “You hired P.I.s to investigate me. You uncovered my secrets.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe I just touched the surface.”

No, she thought. He’d touched more than that. So much more. She removed his jacket and handed it to him. “I need to talk to Henry. To tell him what’s going on.”

“That’s fine.” The wind whipped Dylan’s hair, blowing a loose strand across his face, creating a dark slash against granite-cut cheekbones. “But I’m not leaving this refuge without you.”

When she walked to the front door and turned to look back at him, he looked directly at her, too.

Like a warrior who’d just raided a woman’s heart.

JJ went inside and approached Henry. She knew the parlor, with its cherry wood curio cabinet and doily-covered end tables, was his favorite room in the house. But only because his wife had crocheted the doilies and had packed the curio with things that were special to her, including a faded photograph from their wedding day.

JJ glanced at the picture and tears sprung to her eyes. She didn’t have any photographs of her mother. They’d run off in the middle of the night, leaving nearly everything behind. No keepsake items. No tangible memories.

“What happened?” Henry asked, when he saw her expression. “What did that boy say to you?”

“He told me that my mother was murdered.” She gripped the edge of the sofa. “But he told me that he buried her, too.”

Henry came forward and gave her a gruff yet tender hug. “I’m so sorry about your mama.”

“Me, too.” She knew the old cowboy understood grief. He’d been rattling around without his wife for the past five years. She gulped some air into her lungs and stepped back, afraid she would cry and not be able to stop. “I don’t know what to say. How to explain all of this.”

“Just start from the beginning, honey. Tell me who you are, and who Dylan is to you.”

“My real name is Julia Joyce Alcott, and eight months ago Dylan rescued me from a kidnapping. He stumbled upon me by accident. Afterward, my mother and I left town, and Dylan started searching for us because he learned there was a hit man on our trail.”

She kept talking, repeating everything Dylan had told her. Summoning personal details, she admitted that her mother was a compulsive gambler who’d borrowed an excessive amount of money from loan sharks and couldn’t pay it back. “I didn’t know who the kidnappers were until my mother told me what kind of trouble she was in. Then she begged me not to say anything. She said they would come after me again if we gave them up. But if we ran away, if we got new identities, we would be free. But once we were on the run, she started gambling again.”

“So you and your mama had a falling out?” Henry asked, filling in the blanks.

“Yes. And that’s how I ended up here and she ended up dead.”

“That hit man could have gotten you, too.” The old man shivered. “But you’re safe now, JJ. And you’ll always have a home here. You’ll always be part of the refuge, even if we’re struggling to make ends meet.”

She glanced at a blue and white doily, where the pattern frilled into a scalloped edge. “Thank you, Henry.”

They sat in silence for a moment. They both knew the refuge gave him purpose. He’d always been a cowboy, breeding cutting horses, but he’d started saving abused and abandoned animals after he’d lost his wife.

“So are you and Dylan sweet on each other?” he asked suddenly.

She shook her head, keeping her feelings, the heat Dylan evoked, to herself. “He keeps calling me Julia.”