Lizzie held up one hand like a traffic cop. And laughed, the way she had before. He could listen to that sound forever and he planned to do just that. “We’re going to take this slow, Dallas. We need to get it right.”
“As slow as you want,” he told her, “as long as you know my mother will be on your case every step of the way. She already hears wedding bells, and so do I.” Dallas leaned over to kiss her, and Jordan predictably groaned at their public display of affection, but no one said a word in protest, even Stella. Dallas thought it couldn’t get any better than this, but he was wrong again.
Lizzie said, “We’ll manage, Dallas.” Her green eyes looked clear, unclouded, and her dark hair could use a comb right now, but she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known, inside and out. “This will be a partnership. I can oversee your parents and work around your demanding schedule on the road until you’re ready to hang up your bull rope. And you can...keep mowing our grass.”
Did that mean he was expected to move in with her? He’d take that as a yes. But... “That’s not an even trade,” he pointed out.
She whispered in his ear. “Neither is one baby with my three.” She pulled back to gaze with love at her children. “You do know what you’ve signed on for?”
Dallas grinned. “I’ll learn,” he said. “What did I do to deserve you?”
Lizzie didn’t have to answer. She slipped deeper into his embrace, Seth stayed curled in his lap and Jordan leaned against Dallas’s shoulder. Stella sat slightly apart from them, not quite ready to join the group. Still, he felt accepted just as he had years ago when he’d walked into the Maguires’ house for the first time and known he was home. Now, however fast or slow things might happen, he knew he’d made the right decision. They had. Dallas looked forward to sharing the rest of his life with Lizzie, her children and the precious baby they would welcome.
It was like a thousand blue ribbons, and a gold belt buckle, when the woman he loved looked up into his eyes and said, “Dallas, from now on I think everyone should call me Lizzie. Because that’s who I am now.”
Dallas kissed her again. Yes, she was.
But most of all, she was his Lizzie.
Keep reading for an excerpt from Montana Homecoming by Jeannie Watt.
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Montana Homecoming
by Jeannie Watt
CHAPTER ONE
NEVER GIVE THE opening bid.
Cassie Callahan gripped her auction paddle, determined to keep it on her lap until the proper moment. She was, after all, the queen of self-control. The embodiment of coolness under fire. As an assistant school district superintendent, she dealt with unpredictable school boards, principals, teachers and students by calmly addressing facts, laying out pros and cons, refusing to budge unless a decent compromise presented itself. And then she became a master negotiator. She loved it—or at least she used to love it. Lately she’d had the nagging feeling that she was putting more into her job than she was getting out of it.
Burnout, pure and simple, so it made sense that if she had something to occupy her time when she wasn’t on the job, she’d once again feel the thrill of battle as she headed out to work each morning. Thus, the auction paddle.
“Sold!” the auctioneer bawled as a nice palomino gelding was led out of the auction ring, and Cassie shifted in her seat. Showtime.
The palomino had sold for a lower price than Cassie had expected, as had the two horses before. Maybe she’d be able to buy McHenry’s Gold for a reasonable price; maybe the people attending the semiannual Gavin, Montana, horse auction didn’t understand the bloodlines the mare represented. Or perhaps they didn’t care.
Unlikely. McHenry horses were legendary, but that wasn’t why Cassie was bidding. This particular McHenry mare was a daughter of the mare that had seen her through her turbulent teen years. The last daughter. The mother, McHenry’s Rebel, had died the previous year.
“The next mare up is something of a gem, folks.”
No. Don’t make her look good. Just start the bidding.
Cassie clenched her teeth together, then instantly relaxed her jaw. No more of that. She’d promised her dentist.
The auctioneer continued singing the praises of McHenry’s Gold and Cassie had to fight to not stand up and tell him to just shut up and get on with the bidding.
Of course, she didn’t, because that was what old Cassie would have done, back before she’d had a couple thousand classes in management and psychology. Back before she realized that direct confrontation didn’t always work.
“We’ll open the bidding at ten thousand. Do I hear ten? Ten? Ten?”
Ten? The last horse had opened at three.
The ring steward led the mare in a circle. She had excellent conformation but wasn’t flashy otherwise. A bay with a broad white blaze and one white hind foot—a carbon copy of her mother, and Cassie wanted her. She practically had to sit on her paddle.
The auctioneer continued his patter. The guy in front of Cassie leaned forward as if to get a better view of the mare. His paddle hand twitched when the auctioneer lowered the opening bid to five thousand dollars and suddenly Cassie’s paddle was in the air.
The spotter pointed at her. “I have five,” the auctioneer announced. “Do I hear six? Six?”
No six. No six.
“Five and a half? Five and a—I have five and a half.”
Cassie leaned forward as she searched the crowd on the opposite side of the sale ring to see