Page 84 of Puppy Kisses

She didn’t pull out of his embrace, but she did draw her head back so that her mouth was no longer within kissing distance. “You thought?” she prodded.

“I thought that tying you to this place was the worst thing I could do.” His voice cracked, but he didn’t bother to hide it. Mostly because his heart was cracking wide open along with it. “But it isn’t, is it? We’re already tied. Not to a ranch or a house or even a lifestyle, but to each other.”

“You think we’re tied to each other?”

No. Heknewthey were—knew it down to his very bones.

But that was the thing about being tied to someone else: there were two of them in it together, both of them bound by the same power. It wasn’t up to him to say what happened next. The burden of their relationship didn’t rest entirely on his shoulders.

How could he have been so stupid?

Dawn wasn’t asking him to change or give anything up. She was only asking that he make room for her at his side.

“The worst thing I did was deciding that I knew what was best for you—and for us,” he said, brushing his thumb across her cheek. It was damp with her tears. “You know yourself better than anyone. In fact, it’s one of my favorite things about you. Who am I to tell you what you can and can’t do? Who you can and can’t love?”

“You can’t,” she said simply.

He knew it for the truth it was. He also knew that everything hinged on what he said next. Unable to help himself, he slid his hands up her back, holding her so close that she could feel how entangled his heartbeat was with hers.

“That day in the car when you told me that there hasn’t been anyone else, I realized there was nothing on earth I wouldn’t do for you, nowhere I wouldn’t go. There hasn’t been anyone else for me, either. Not since the moment we met.”

“Oh. I didn’t know.”

He nodded but moved on, determined to get the rest of this out. “It happened again at the poker game when you tried to shake me out of my stupidity. To set all that up, to put yourself so far out there, and for me? I didn’t understand. I thought—Ihoped—that if I cut the ties between us, I’d be the only one who got hurt.”

“Well, you weren’t,” she said.

His heart roared—with joy at hearing how much he mattered to her and with agony at realizing what he’d done to her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. It was an inadequate thing to say, barely scratching the surface of the remorse and regret that flooded through him, but it was all he had. “I know it’s taken me a stupidly long time to come around, and I don’t deserve it, but if you give me another chance, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you. Even if it means selling this place and starting over somewhere new with you. Even if it means uprooting an entire field to plant your rosebushes.”

He drew a deep breath, since this last one was the most difficult to get out. “Even if it means stepping back and giving you the time and space you need to make this community your own. I’m yours, Dawn Vasquez, any way you’ll have me. I’m yours even if you won’t have me at all.”

“Oh, Adam.” Dawn somehow managed to get her hands free and lifted them to his face. The press of her palms against his cheeks was so much more intimate than their kiss had been because she held it there. Long after the moment passed, even as Gigi and Uncle descended upon them and began prancing around their legs as though they’d been separated from them for hours instead of minutes. She just held him. Loved him. Acceptedhim.

He couldn’t wait to start offering her the same thing in return.

“You’re such an idiot,” she murmured. “You’ve always been such an idiot. Don’t you know that I’m already exactly where I want to be?”

“You mean Dearborn Ranch?” he asked.

“No.” She got up on her tiptoes and kissed him with a light flutter of her lips and a sweet sigh. He knew, in that moment, that Dearborn Ranch would never be as much a part of him as this woman.

Places were just places. But people were everything.

“I mean right here with you.”

Epilogue

“I’m still not sure I understand. Why are we all wearing hats?” Alice Vasquez adjusted the elastic band under her chin so that the paper cone on top of her perfectly coiffed brown hair sat at a jaunty angle. “Everyone else seems to be wearing their normal clothes.”

“Because, Mom.” Dawn reached forward and tucked a stray lock behind her mom’s ear. “This is a celebration. We’ve been counting down the days until Dawn’s auction date for months.”

“I’m not sure I understand why you and the cow have the same name,” her dad put in. Both of her parents had just returned from a luxurious semester of lecturing in Spain, so they were looking tan, well rested, and not at all pleased to be attending a cow auction in paper hats. “Is it a joke?”

“Yes, Daddy,” Sophie answered for her. “It’s an inside joke between Dawn and Adam. She was always his favorite cow.”

Their dad glanced askance at the animal. This was the first cow auction for the entire Vasquez clan, and all of them could say with complete sincerity that they hoped it would be their last. There was something unsettling about all these pens of cows being sold to the highest bidder for a future as a nice chuck roast. Even Dawn, who had long since inured herself to the ranch-to-table process, was finding it difficult to look the cows in the eye.