Gently Mia laid a finger across his mouth, silencing him. “You don’t need to try. Just love me, Xavier. That’s all you need to do.”
Something leapt in his eyes, a bright blue flame. “Show me then, sweet thing,” he murmured against her finger. “Show me how you want to be loved.”
So in the warm dark of the limo she showed him.
At last, at last. She was home.
Epilogue
Something blue fluttered brightly against the green of the trees around her, making Mia rein in her horse to see what it was. Above her Black Top Mountain reared, its dark peak reaching into the upturned bowl of the sky, while on the rolling plains stretching out below her, the ranch house crouched against the flank of the mountain.
Summer at Blue Skies was always amazing and she never got tired of it, not of the expanse of sky or the green plains or the rocky mountains around them. So different from the city she and Xavier had left behind a couple of years ago.
Neither of them had ever regretted the move. Not once.
Life was certainly busy, especially now they’d set up the ranch to take in homeless city kids over the summer. But Xavier thrived on it. He loved teaching the kids how to ride and shoot, and he loved helping out around the ranch almost as much as the kids themselves loved it.
Except maybe this summer he might be more interested in the child of their own that they were expecting.
Mia’s hand came to rest unconsciously over her stomach, smiling at the flutter of blue in the tree.
“What do you see, sweet thing?”
She turned as Xavier rode up beside her, looking every inch the competent rancher in his Wranglers—not to mention incredibly hot. “Just a bluebird.”
His gaze went to her wrist, where the bluebird charm she’d found back in her alley was now on a special bracelet he’d had made for her, and grinned. “A bluebird, huh? Who would have thought?”
Well she wouldn’t have. She wouldn’t have thought in a million years that when she’d picked up that charm that day, that she’d end up here, in Wyoming, looking at a real live bluebird, with the man she loved at her side and that bluebird charm hanging from her wrist.
Her smile was very special and just for him. “All that time and I never knew that what I was carrying was my home.”
He shifted his horse closer, leaning over in his saddle to brush his mouth over hers. “A bird isn’t your home, sweet thing.”
“No, it’s not.” She touched his face gently. “You are.”
“And you’re mine.” His grin deepened into a smile that took her breath away. “Is this the bit where we ride off into the sunset?”
She laughed. “We could, but it’s not even noon.”
“Oh, I have an idea about how we could spend the time.” There was wickedness in his blue eyes, her very favorite kind.
“Uh-huh.” She leaned forward in her saddle. “I wonder what that could be?”
Xavier slid off his horse, grabbing the reins and looping them around a fencepost. Then he came over to her, stopping beside her horse and lifting his arms to her. “Come on down little girl, and I’ll show you.”
“You know, that’s the best offer I’ve had all day.” Mia grinned, tossing away the reins and sliding down off the horse.
He caught her, gathering her in close. “Oh, and by the way,” he murmured in her ear. “I love you. Just in case you didn’t know.”
It was something he told her every day and she never, ever got sick of hearing it.
“I love you too.” She smiled and put her arms around his neck. “My bluebird.”
He laughed, his eyes as blue as the sky above their head. And when he laid her down on the grass, they got bluer still.
But that was as it should be.
Because blue was the color of home.