Always on My Mind Page 0,91

for so long. "She is."

And during the next hour, as he sat and finally talked to his wife, the thick gray clouds blew away one by one until there was nothing but bright, blue sky above the two of them.

* * *

Lori stood backstage at the Joyce Theatre in New York City in a circle with her dancers, all of them holding hands as they got ready to go out on stage. It had been the craziest forty-eight hours of her life, but she'd loved every second of it.

Carter had brought her in to take over on choreography that had been set in stone for months. But the vision she'd had was so clear and pure that she'd choreographed a brand-new dance barely one step ahead of the dancers learning the movements.

"Thank you so much for going on this journey with me," she told them now. "You're all amazing and wonderful and I love you guys for trusting me with this dance and putting your hearts and souls into something that means so much to me." She grinned at them. "Now let's go make some magic happen."

One by one, they took their places on the darkened stage and when the lights slowly came up, the audience saw them not as dancers, but as beautiful wildflowers in red and orange, yellow and purple. All around the flowers the wild green grasses swayed in the breeze. The score the orchestra played sounded like the ocean on a clear day, with children playing with buckets and pails in the sand and seagulls flying above the gently crashing waves.

On a crack of thunder from the percussion section, the bright, sunny lighting gave way to a sudden storm, blue lights and whisper-thin streamers beginning to rain down from above the stage. To the crashing sound of the waves and the hard pellets of rain, the flowers and grasses gave in to the wildness of the storm, even more beautiful now as they were blown hard by the wind, soaked by the rain.

And then, suddenly, the smallest wildflower was ripped from the ground by the wind. She was blowing away from the rest of them, when from the center of the group, the largest, most powerful blade of grass reached for her.

He cradled her against him in a beautiful dance of protection and love as the storm continued to rage, and then, when the storm waned and the sun emerged again, he finally set the brightly colored flower free to fly away.

Oh, how beautiful that wildflower was as she flew, higher and higher in that bright, pure sunlight. The other flowers, the grasses, watched her dance through the sky, as they knew she'd dreamed of doing all her life.

The sun was setting and the flowers were closing their petals, the grasses already collecting dew in the cool night, when the wildflower emerged again in the dark sky. She'd always dreamed of flying, but one perfect dance in a storm had given her new dreams.

She still wanted to fly...but she no longer wanted to do it alone.

And then the wildflower and the blade of grass were coming together again, wrapping themselves around each other in a dance of love that was just as beautiful beneath the calm moon as it had been in the rain and the wind.

That was when the lights came up enough for Lori to see the ruggedly beautiful man in the front row. Grayson was surrounded by men in tuxes and women in sequins, but in his flannel shirt and dark jeans and cowboy boots, he was the one who shone.

She'd choreographed this dance to celebrate the beauty of his land and to bask in the passion they'd discovered together on a stormy afternoon. Now, she danced only for him, the wildflower that had been blowing off course, until his love had shown her exactly where she needed to be.

With him.

Forever.

* * *

Grayson was waiting in the wings when Lori came off stage, and she flew into his arms.

She'd said I love you to him in a dozen different ways during the dance, and now he was the one saying, "I love you. You're everything to me, Lori. Everything."

He didn't let go of her hand as she went to congratulate her dancers on the phenomenal job they'd done, couldn't have stopped touching her for anyone in the world, even when she went out of her way to embarrass him by saying, "Everyone, this is Grayson, the hottest farmer you'll ever - "

Of course