and I love you.”
“Do. Not. Hang….”
He clicked the Bluetooth off.
If he had to hear, one more time, about how he should join some billionaire matchmaker reality television show to get a wife, he’d just jump off a building.
Gah. He rubbed a hand over his forehead and finally checked the text messages that had been coming in the past two hours, but he’d silenced. As he scrolled through several from his sisters, and some from various business managers, he suddenly felt light headed.
And he never felt light headed.
He got out of the car and sucked in a long breath. He just needed to eat something, he finally decided. As he strolled to the side of Ryan ad Charlotte’s beautiful farmhouse. Not an old farmhouse at that, but the kind of home that looked like it’d been designed in a magazine, he focused on the reason for being here. Ryan and Charlotte’s vowel renewal.
Why the heck did anyone need to renew vows? Wasn’t that the point of a vow; it was said as something that was final?
The truth was that he didn’t want to come to this family party at all. Celebrating Ryan and Charlotte’s anniversary wasn’t really his thing.
Well, strike that. He adored both of them. Not that he would tell Ryan ‘I adore you.’ This tought made him smile. To tell a cowboy like Ryan and also the man who’d been his commanding officier in the marines, that he adored him would be akin to punching in in the groin.
Ha.
He knocked at the door, suddenly feeling lighter about being here. Too bad that the lightness from his heart, seemed to go straight to his head.
Ryan pulled back the door and stuck his hand out. “Richard.
Richard took his hand and suddenly he was falling into him. “I don’t know what happened.” And it went dark.
Chapter
River didn’t mind being back in Hidden Falls. The fact was, her grandmother needed her and she was a registered nurse, so why wouldn’t she come help her? Her grandmother had taken her in every summer and made summers magical.
Well, she minded one little thing that had happened the summer after her senior year in high school.
A summer that she thought about way too much, but that she’d quit talking about a long time ago. After all, it’d almost thirteen years since that summer.
She sighed and tried not to think about the life in New York that she’d left; the doctor she’d been dating. The friends she always had to go to yoga or coffee or run with. She was helping her grandmother and that was a good thing.
It was.
River drove her grandmother’s battered old, pick up truck out to Charlotte’s home. The Charlotte she’d met days ago at the little bookstore in town and who’d asked her to come to a vow renewal.
Blech.
Who in the world had vow renewal parties River wanted to know. Of course, she’d told Charlotte no, but then changed her answer when Charlotte had made a special visit out to her grandmother to bring her the latest sweet romance. The kind her grandmother used to buy at her store all the time.
Won over.
Charlotte Hardman had won River over right there. Suddenly, she no longer felt like the popular girl just trying to have everyone come to her party; it felt like she was the kindest, most sincere person in the world.
The kind of person River wanted to be like.
So here she was, driving down the road, country music blasting on the radio, because there was Christian and Country…and she wasn’t going to listen to Christian. She and God had been on the outs for a long time.
Since he’d decided to give her dad a stroke the year before. Her dad. The guy who’d served his country his whole life. The guy who’d taken sole responsibility for her when her mother had left when she was eleven. The guy…who she missed every, dang, day. Even thinking about her father made tears well up in her eyes. No. No. No.
As she got to the turn for Charlotte’s house, she noted that she wasn’t the only one invited. There was a line of cars parked into a field that seemed to be cleared just for this event.
She pulled into the little gate where there was a guy in a cowboy hat directing parking and she rolled down her window. “Hi.”
“Hey there,” he said motioned her to keep going. “Please park at the end to keep everything orderly.” He frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t know you.”
This