His joke fell flat, I knew he saw it on my face just as I saw it on his but I suspected his was worse. He was a cowboy, horses were kind of important to cowboys.
I lifted up, pushed up closer, sliding more onto his chest, my hand moving to curl around the side of his neck all as I whispered, “Baby, I don’t know what to do to help you.”
That was when he grinned. It wasn’t a big one and it didn’t warm his beautiful eyes the usual way but it still warmed his eyes.
His hand left my panties so his arm could close tight around the middle of my back and he told me, “You’re doin’ it, Ivey.”
I nodded and smiled.
Then I said gently, “I’m sorry, Gray.”
“Me too.”
“We’ll be okay.”
It was his turn to nod. “One thing I got is insurance. So, yeah, eventually, we’ll be okay.”
It was good to know he had insurance but that wasn’t what I was talking about.
“That isn’t what I meant, honey.”
“I know that, darlin’, and my response still stands. We’ll be okay in all ways. Just that right about now, when we need to crash so we can get at least a little sleep so we can face whatever the day’s gonna bring, you need to know that it’s all gonna be okay.”
He was right.
I tipped my face so I could kiss his chest. Then I repositioned and looked at him again.
“Do you get sleepless nights often?”
“Nope, work hard all day, sleep hard all night.”
“So, you waking up is unusual?”
“Can’t say it’s never happened, can say it’s so rare don’t remember when it happened last.”
“So what woke you?”
That got me a different kind of grin but he still wasn’t committed to it.
“Thought it was my subconscious reminding me you’d gone to sleep without your panties on.”
I grinned back then pressed gently, “But that wasn’t it?”
“If you’re askin’ if I heard somethin’, then no. I heard somethin’, I’d look. I wouldn’t start somethin’ with you. If you’re askin’ if I got a sense of somethin’, a vibe, who knows? What I do know is, awake or asleep, I’d hear that blast. I sleep hard but I don’t sleep so deep I’d sleep through that and I know since I didn’t the last time.”
“Mm…” I muttered, my eyes sliding away.
“Ivey,” he called and my eyes slid back. “We got a mess outside and a fight that was already pretty fuckin’ ugly that just got a whole lot uglier. We need to sleep so we can be prepared to face the day.”
He was right.
“Okay, honey,” I agreed and started to move to settle back into him but stopped when his arm gave me a squeeze and I focused back on him.
“I’m not used to sleepless nights but that don’t mean after what happened tonight, seein’ you run around a burnin’ barn, I won’t start to have them.”
I knew where this was going from my macho man rancher cowboy so I opened my mouth to cut him off.
He saw it and his arm gave me another squeeze.
“Let me finish, baby, yeah?”
I closed my mouth and nodded.
“You saved five horses,” he whispered.
I did. I did do that.
Gray wasn’t done.
“You runnin’ into that barn like that, workin’ to save those horses, this ranch, I didn’t like it and pray to God nothin’ like that’ll happen again. But I gotta say, wherever you were born and whatever you did, pool hustler, showgirl, tonight, you were a rancher’s woman and just like you, when you do somethin’, you’re the best there is.”
That meant so much, was so beautiful, my nose instantly started stinging and his face got fuzzy as tears filled my eyes.
He pulled me up his chest, ignored my burgeoning tears and ordered, “Now, say you love me, Ivey, kiss me then settle and go to sleep.”
I swallowed then whispered shakily, “I love you, Gray.”
“Now, kiss me,” he whispered back.
I touched my mouth to his and he pulled me back down his chest.
“Now, go to sleep.”
I put my cheek to his chest nodding and deep breathing.
I didn’t go right to sleep, it took me awhile just as it took Gray but I eventually got to sleep and I did it before him.
Chapter Thirty-Two
It Was Family
The morning after the fire, early, we got visits from Shim and Roan. Roan on his way to work, Shim with the flatbed of his pickup filled with horse feed and hay. This was kind since ours went up in smoke, something they both obviously knew (thus the visits) since news travels fast in a small town even through the night. It was also a testimony to the kind of man my cowboy rancher was that he accepted it considering Shim was still a ranch hand on Jeb Sharp’s land. It was too early for the feed store to be open so it was likely this was given to us by Sharp, not Shim.