Billionaire Flawed 1(137)

He looked closely at her. “Liz told me that you lost your mother,” he confessed. “She said that it should make me think about how we have something like that in common. She thinks we would be good for each other.”

Hettie felt a twitch in her chest, and she swallowed, smiling. “Do you think we would be good for each other?”

“I didn’t think so.” James wrapped his fingers around hers so that she couldn’t pull away. “I have thought about it and prayed about it for two days. I haven’t been able to see past the loss…the mourning. The anger I still feel…it eats away at me.”

She nodded. “Those kinds of emotions only hurt the one who feels them. There’s simply nothing we can do about the circumstances. We must rise above.”

They were quiet for a moment, sitting on the steps with their hands together.

“For years, I have been taking two steps forward and another back,” James said. “I feel like I’m not making any progress.”

“If you are taking a step forward then you are making progress. As long as it isn’t two steps back.”

James smiled.

“If you want to, James, I will stay here with Liz and John, and we can have a few more talks.”

“You want to see if you really want to stay with me?” James asked.

She giggled. “No, I was thinking the opposite way around. I was brought here for you. This must be your decision. I had already made mine.”

“Do you think you could love a man like me?”

“From what I’ve heard, you are a wonderful man whose heart has been kept in a prison of his own making for some time now.” She reached up and placed one hand on his cheek. He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them to look into hers. “Don’t you think it’s time to let it out now so that it can heal?”

“You will stay and help it heal?”

“I surely will, James.”

James leaned forward so that he was inches away from her. “I don’t think it will take very long.”

Just before Hettie leaned in for the first of many soft kisses, she replied, “I will wait as long as it takes.”



THE END





The Mountain Bride – A Clean Western Historical Romance

Chapter One

Ella rinsed out the cooking pot and hung it on the nail to dry. She was almost done with the morning chores and was looking forward to the hour or so she would have to sit down at the kitchen table and read for a while. She was almost finished with her new book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. She had no idea what she would be reading after that.

The newspaper was folded up on the table from where her brothers had left it this morning. They were out on the farm repairing a broken fence or something like that. She wasn’t certain. She’d been caring for them and their father since the death of her mother 16 years ago. Their blessing had been her youngest brother, Alfred. Their loss was their mother. At ten years of age, Ella had been given the task of raising her brothers. Their father was not a hands-on parent. He was rarely there, and when he was, he was unpleasant, loud and demanding. He had long ago decided that the first half of Ella’s name should have been “Cinder,” giving her a long list of chores to do every day.

She ran a cloth over the counter to clean it and looked around to see if she had missed anything. It looked clean to her. She hoped it looked clean to her father.

She sat down and unfolded the newspaper to run her eyes over the words without really reading them. There was almost always some kind of news about possible impending war, how President Lincoln was handling it and local good and bad news.

She was ready to set the paper down and go to her room for her book. She gazed out the window first, folding her arms over her chest and hugging herself. It was her dream to travel to the West and start a new life, but she couldn’t see how that would be possible in her current circumstances. Her father had never let her try to get any employment in town. She had the skills, she’d been cleaning, sewing her brother’s clothes and been their nursemaid for 16 years, starting from the newborn stage with Alfred, but he wanted her there at the house, keeping everything clean and in order.

For the last few years, Ella felt secluded, isolated from the world. The worlds in her books gave her a clear idea of where she wanted to be. She’d read a lot about the growing towns and cities in the west. That was all the way across the country. It was far away from here.

It was far away from her brothers.

The thought made her a little sad. It was useless to even think about it anyway. She wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. You don’t go anywhere unless you have the money to do it. And she had no valuable property to her name.