Page 45 of Desired

"I'm keeping it," she said.

Mason went still beside her. Not the guarded kind. The kind a man goes when he doesn't want to jar something in flight.

"The ranch," she said, in case the county had another it in circulation. "I'm calling Greene's office Monday and telling them it's off the market. It was never on it, technically, but there's a letter in my kitchen drawer with a standing interest in it, and I want it answered. Officially. No." She turned the mug in her hands, watching the steam go. "I came down here to sell my grandfather's house, and somewhere in there it turned into mine, and I'm keeping it. I don't fully know what for yet. Something with the ground and things growing out of it. I'll figure it out. I just know I'm through leaving places I love before I've finished loving them."

She heard him breathe. Out on the seam road a truck went by with its lights on, somebody heading home late, and Mason set his coffee down on the step, and took her face in both hands, and kissed her like the answer to something, long and sure, until her own coffee was in genuine danger, and when he finally pulled back his forehead stayed against hers and his eyes stayed shut a second longer than made sense.

"Okay," he said. Rough. Just that.

"Okay?" She laughed. "That's the whole speech?"

"That's the whole speech." He picked his coffee back up, and in the last of the light she'd have sworn his hand wasn't quite steady, and put his arm around her, and she fit herself into the side of him and looked out at the dark where her land was.

Monday she'd call Greene's office. Tuesday it'd be at Pearl's counter by the lunch rush, which was the same as publishing it in the paper, and the county would have opinions, and she'd stand in the middle of them the way she was learning to. The girl who was always somewhere else by spring was staying, on purpose, out loud, in writing.

Nothing had ever felt less like losing.

She drank her coffee on a cold porch under early stars with the whole thing decided, and everything she had, finally, would keep.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

She made it official on a Monday, which would matter later, because everything that came after came because she couldn't wait until evening to celebrate it.

Mason was still there when she woke, which was becoming the rule instead of the exception, a big warm fact taking up two-thirds of her grandfather's guest bed because she still hadn't moved into the big room, his arm dead weight across her and his breathing slow against her hair. She lay there a while doing nothing, which she was getting better at, and then his breathing changed and his arm came alive and pulled her back into him, and his voice arrived at her ear still full of gravel.

"You're awake."

"I'm awake."

"You got that look."

"You can't see my face."

"Don't need to. I can hear it. You've got the day all planned already and I'm in the way of it." His hand flattened on her stomach, wandered north with no shame at all, and she caught it by the wrist and held it, which stopped exactly nothing, because he just kept on with his mouth at the back of her neck instead. "Cancel the plan."

"I'm calling Greene's office at nine."

The mouth stopped.

"Yeah?" Careful. Light. His whole body had gone about two degrees stiller behind her.

"Yeah. Today. I want it on paper before I lose my nerve." She turned over inside his arms so she could see him, sleep-creased and stubbled, his dark hair wrecked, the palest eyes in Texas fixed on her from four inches away, and she put her hand flat on his chest, over the heartbeat. "I keep waiting to feel like it's a mistake. Selling was the whole plan. It was the plan when I met you, and I keep poking at keeping it, like a tooth, waiting for it to hurt." She shrugged, one shoulder, against the pillow. "It doesn't hurt."

"Lauren." Her name and nothing else. His hand came up and moved her hair out of her face, and his thumb stayed at her temple, and something worked behind his eyes that she read as happiness with weight on it, because that was what everything looked like on Mason Royston.

"That's the whole speech," she said. "I stole your format."

"It's a good format." His voice had gone rough. "Short. Says the thing."

"Says the thing," she agreed, and kissed him, and the kiss changed jobs somewhere in the middle, his hand sliding down her back to gather her in, her leg coming over his hip like it had been waiting on the invitation.

"You've got a heifer," she reminded him, against his mouth, going exactly nowhere.

"Heifer's had all night to think about her choices. She can have twenty more minutes."

"Twenty."

"I'm a professional. I estimate."