Undeniably Yours (23 page)

“Meg . . .”

“It's a big mistake, Bo.”

Taut silence traveled between them. She could sense him hovering on the edge of decision. The first day she'd met him,
in her father's office, she'd hovered on the edge of a decision also: to let him stay or make him go. It had been a turning-point moment, just as this was. She couldn't bear to let him fall away from her reach. She had to persuade him.

“I'd really like to give this thing between us a chance.” She pressed one kiss, two, three, into his hands. Then she looked up at him with a smile that felt wobbly. “How about we just date? Isn't that what everyone else does? Let's just date.”

“I work for you.”

“You know what? I'm ready to let that worry go.”

“A lot of people won't like it.”

“I've spent a lifetime caring about what other people said about me, and I've never been able to please them no matter how hard I tried. I can't let myself care about what other people say about me anymore.”

“I care a lot about what they say about you, Meg.”

“You're going to have to get over it.”

He looked skeptical.

“C'mon. Let's just take it slow, date each other, and see where it goes. There's no real harm in that, is there?”

“No real harm? I'm already half dead over you.”

“Any chance the half-alive part is willing to give it a try?”

He looked upward, sighed deeply, then returned his full attention to her for long moments. “Yes, God help you.”

Triumph and hope pierced her. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“You won't change your mind?”

“No.”

Grinning, she launched herself into his lap. He clasped her to him, nuzzled his face against her neck, and pressed kisses against the tender skin below her ear. “I hope to God this is
what's right for you,” he whispered. “I'll do anything for you. Anything you ask. Anything to make you happy.”

“You make me happy. You don't have to do anything.”

He lifted his head, eyes alight with fire. “Meg.” Then he claimed her lips with a kiss—territorial, demanding, adoring—that communicated his feelings with unmistakable certainty.

T
hey talked for hours that night. Bo pulled sofa pillows onto the floor, and they stretched out on the living room carpet facing each other, their heads and shoulders propped up on the pillows. They ate Oreos. Kissed. Drank Dr. Pepper. Laughed. He toyed with her fingers, occasionally kissing their tips.

Bo felt like he was living wide awake inside the best dream he'd ever dreamed. He was almost too scared to believe it was real, because he wanted this—wanted her—so much. Worries kept trying to enter his head, and he kept shoving them aside.

In the wee hours of the morning, he climbed into his truck so that he could follow her car back to Whispering Creek. She'd tried to convince him it wasn't necessary to trail her home, but he wasn't buying. All the drunks swerved down the roads at this time of night.

As it turned out, between his house and hers, Bo spotted one green Honda, and nothing else. That didn't stop him from following her all the way to Whispering Creek, then watching as the security guard greeted her and waved her through.

There goes my heart
, he thought.
My everything
.

When her car disappeared, he pulled away and drove through the pitch darkness back in the direction of his house.

He hoped he'd done the right thing tonight.

With every piece of him, he hoped so.

But he didn't feel sure. Alone in the quiet, the worries were harder to shove away.

When he'd caved and told her how he felt about her, had he done what was best for her? Or had he simply done what was best for himself? Was there any chance that his actions tonight might hurt her in the end? Might hurt the farm?

Too late now. He'd have to trust God to protect Meg. He'd have to trust Meg's judgment and kindness to do right by the farm and its employees. What had happened between them couldn't be undone. He'd told her to her face that he wouldn't change his mind. More than that, he
didn't want
to change his mind. He'd rather cut off his arm than change a single thing that had happened between them.

He pulled onto the shoulder of the road, his headlights drilling into the darkness in front of him, shadowy trees swaying above him. He stacked his hands on top of the steering wheel and laid his forehead on top of them.
Oh, God. Don't let anything bad happen to her. Not ever, and certainly not because of me
.

Concern hummed low in his gut, shapeless, hard to pin down. When he'd been in the Marines, he'd had this same intuition of danger sometimes, right before his squad had come upon hidden enemies.

Why this premonition of a threat against Meg now? Was it because of the turn their relationship had taken tonight? Was there someone out there who wanted to injure her? Or was it because he didn't want people thinking badly of her because of him?

The first person he didn't want thinking badly about her was Jake. Tomorrow morning, he'd call his brother and break the news.

God, please watch over her. Don't let me do anything out of selfishness. Keep my motives right. Show me how to protect her. I'm here, and I'm willing for you to use me. I'll do anything you ask to keep her safe.

Stephen McIntyre trained his binoculars on the intersection of Holley's main street and the road that led to Whispering Creek's gated entrance.

Still nothing. No sign of Bo Porter's truck returning from Meg's house.

He lowered the binoculars. He'd parked in an alley. Commercial buildings on either side shielded his position. The interior of the dark green Honda smelled like cigarette smoke and ground-in dirt. It had pained him to put his M5 in storage, but he'd done it because the M5 could be traced to him. He'd purchased this piece of junk with cash from a used car lot near the Texas–New Mexico border.

He rubbed a smudge off the front of one of the lenses. For several days now he'd been watching Meg and had familiarized himself with her routine. On weekdays she drove to work and parked her car in a garage belonging to Cole Oil, staffed by security guards. After work, she drove straight home.

On Saturday she'd left Whispering Creek to meet with her old nanny and to visit some of the shops in town. On Sunday, she'd attended church. While her car had been parked in the church parking lot, he'd placed a GPS tracking device under her wheel well. The device had freed him up considerably, because
it meant he no longer had to trail her physically. He could trail her electronically.

He raised the binoculars back to his eyes. Earlier tonight, from his room at the Garden Inn, the tracking app on his smartphone had shown Meg exiting Whispering Creek.

She hadn't left home on a weekday evening since he'd been following her, so he'd driven to the location specified on the GPS: a small brick house in Holley situated on several acres of land. He'd parked at a distance and approached the house on foot. Though he'd been unable to see anything within, he'd recorded the house's address and the license plate number of the truck in the carport.

When Meg had been slow in leaving, he'd gone to the foreclosed, remote, and empty house that he'd been using as a base separate from his hotel. He'd pulled out his laptop and searched online until he discovered the identity of the person who owned the house and truck.

A man named Bo Porter, who apparently worked for Meg at Whispering Creek Horses.

About a half an hour ago, when his app had shown Meg on the move again, he'd followed her. He'd expected to find her driving home to Whispering Creek alone. Instead, Bo Porter's truck had been right on her bumper, so Stephen had taken a quick turn onto a side street and let them drive on together.

His GPS told him that Meg had returned to Whispering Creek. He didn't know where Bo Porter had gone, but he expected the man to return to his home any minute now. Unless he was staying the night with Meg at her place. The Meg Stephen had known had been a terrific prude about sex before marriage, but people changed.

Through the binoculars, a truck came into view. Porter's truck.

Looked like Meg hadn't changed much after all.

The truck turned onto the main street and drove the few hundred yards towards Stephen's position, then zoomed past. Stephen watched the vehicle until it vanished from sight. Thoughtfully, he slid the binoculars back into their case and set them aside.

Bo Porter was someone to Meg. Probably a boyfriend. Maybe merely a friend. Either way, Stephen didn't like the potential complication the man presented. Didn't like to think that Bo Porter could influence Meg. She'd been—was—Stephen's to control.

Watching her these past days had caused bitterness to eat at him. Why should she have so much? Meg? She had no strength, no backbone, no merit, no skill for leadership.

He'd invested a few years of his life in her the last time. But two million dollars was a drop in the bucket compared to the kind of wealth she'd come into now. He had something much quicker in mind for her this time. And a score much larger.

Meg had suggested to Bo, the night of their first kiss, that they take their relationship slow. But truthfully, neither of them could stand to. Over the following days they spent every possible minute together.

The day after their first kiss, Meg texted Bo as soon as she returned home from work, around 8:30. Her hours at Cole Oil had left her frazzled, but as soon as he arrived on her doorstep and she got a good look at him in the flesh—poof. Her exhaustion evaporated. He made her spaghetti for dinner. She explained to him how her uncle had come to her and apologized for confronting him. Bo explained to her how Michael had called him and done the same over the phone.

The next two nights in a row Meg left work as early as possible, yet still well after dark. Both nights Bo postponed his own meal until she arrived, and they ate take-out Mexican together at his place. He asked her, repeatedly, sweetly, not to work so hard. He told her he worried about her.

The day after that she went shopping during her lunch break and bought a cookbook titled
Meals He'll Love
, then tested recipes for baked chicken and chocolate cake on him that
evening.

When at work, Meg thought of almost nothing but him. Her mind constantly replayed memories of him—the things he'd said to her, how he'd looked, the shirt he'd worn, the way he'd stroked her face when he'd kissed her. Her daydreams rendered her even more useless to Cole Oil than she'd been before.

Saturday arrived like a gift on her doorstep. She ignored the work she could have and should have been doing. Instead, she and Bo worked out in her father's home gym, headed to their respective houses for showers, then met up again for BLTs (which he supplied) and a matinee of
When Harry Met Sally
(which she supplied) at his house. That afternoon, they returned to Whispering Creek and walked together across the hills and woods of the property hand in hand.

Bo had aspirations—delusions—of fishing with her, so they finally stopped at the largest pond on the property to share a picnic dinner and to try their luck at fishing. After two straight hours of talking, casting, and teasing, they put away the poles and moved to higher ground to watch the sun set.

Meg lay on her back on the blanket next to Bo, his bicep cushioning her head, her feet resting on one of his boots. Breeze tinged with the smell of jasmine brushed across her. Palest tangerine and darkest orange blazed across the enormous expanse
of Texas sky. The underbellies of the clouds shone bright and opaque white.

Meg glanced at him. The mellow bronze light played over his features and his shorn hair. As he turned to grin at her, it caught and glittered in his eyes.

She grinned back. Neither one of them needed to say a thing.

Joy suffused every cell of her body as she shifted her attention back to the sunset. Each hour with him had been like this—golden. Impossibly perfect.

“If you and I were to share a house one day,” he said, “where do you think we ought to live?”

“Hmm,” Meg answered.

He hadn't said “I love you” or “I want to marry you” again since that first night at his house. He chose his words carefully, in an effort, she guessed, not to rush or frighten her. She appreciated his caution. It suited her because she didn't want to label her own feelings for him yet. She'd been mentally skirting around an I-love-Bo-Porter moment because to love Bo—to
really
love him—she'd have to trust him fully with her heart and also with the possibility of heartbreak if he let her down. After what she'd been through before, that level of vulnerability terrified her.

So, while they avoided formal declarations, they did occasionally discuss funny hypotheticals about their future together, like the one he'd just brought up. Things like: What would you name our sixth son? What breed of dog would you buy me for my birthday? If we wanted to vacation in January would you choose the ski slopes or the beach?

“We could live in a cardboard box,” Meg said.

“Sounds windy.”

“It would be good enough for me if you were there.”

A pleased smile tugged at his lips. “No kidding?”

“Well. I am kidding, just a little.”

He chuckled. “I can't say as I'd allow you to live in a cardboard box, anyhow. Not enough security.”

“Your house, then?”

“Still not enough security.”

“Really?”

“'Fraid not.”

“I'll have you know that no kidnapper or extortionist has ever given me a moment's trouble.”

“All the same, I like the big wall and the cameras and the guards.”

She groaned. “You want me to spend my life in the big house?”

“Not if you don't like it.”

“I don't like it.”

“The guesthouse, then?”

“It's all right for me by myself, but not for a married couple.”

“How about a new house? Right here on this very spot?”

“Now you're talking.” The circle of the sun had sunk halfway below the horizon.