“No, ma’am.”

“You’re not going to swear at me for being an outsider?”

“No.”

“You’re not going to try to run me off?”

He pressed his lips together and shook his head.

She laughed her deep, husky laugh. “That’s what I hate about you, cowboy, you just never shut up.”

One corner of his mouth tipped up. “You talk enough for both of us.”

Mari tipped her head and fought the grin that threatened. “Touché.”

She moved to lean back against the deck railing, crossing her ankles as if she felt nonchalant. If there had been a pack of cigarettes on the table, she would have been tempted to light half a dozen simultaneously, but there were only her cut-off straws and the leaky pen. Her nerves were stretched as taut as piano wire. She resisted the urge to rub her hand over her tummy.

“So, you came to see the llamas,” she said, her fingernails digging into the railing.

J.D. looked straight at her. “I came to see you.”

“What for?” She braced herself for an answer she didn’t want to hear. That he wanted to tell her it was officially over between them, that he wouldn’t be taking her up on her offer. That he still wanted to buy her land. If he said one word about the land…

J.D. glanced down at the table for a moment, rolling a length of plastic straw with his finger. She had some scribbled lines in a notebook. Song lyrics, he supposed. Her handwriting was as messy as her hair. He stalled, amazed at the amount of courage he was having to dig up for this conversation. He’d spent a month storing it up and losing it, arguing with himself about his future and his motives. He had practiced what he would say on the way down here, and now he stood here, saying nothing.

Mary-Chapin Carpenter sang softly in the background, saving them from an oppressive silence.

Finally, he sighed and faced her. “Well, Will and Sam are starting over. You came here to start over. I thought maybe you and I might start over too.”

Mari’s breath caught in her throat. “Why?”

“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking these past few weeks,” he said quietly. “I’ve been wrong. About a lot of things.”

“And I’m one of those things?”

“I’ve been alone all my life, Mary Lee,” he whispered.

She knew instantly what he meant. That he had been emotionally abandoned as a child. That he had protected himself ever since. That he was letting down his guard for her.

“I reckon I thought it would be safer, easier,” he said. “But it’s just lonely and I’ve grown weary of it.”

She had been alone too. Alone inside herself while she went through the motions of fitting in in a world where she didn’t belong. She knew the unique ache of that kind of loneliness.

“What do you say, Mary Lee?” he asked, spreading his hands, his heart pounding at the base of his throat. “You gonna give a hardheaded cowboy a second chance?”

She looked at him standing there in his good clothes, clean-shaven, and his hair combed, and her heart nearly overflowed. You’re hopeless, Marilee. Hardheaded didn’t begin to describe him. He was contrary and ornery and they didn’t see eye to eye on much of anything. And he was closed and stubborn and opinionated… And he was good and honest and strong and brave, and she loved him. No question that she loved him.

The air went out of J.D.’s lungs when she smiled that wry smile.

“Does this mean you’ll actually take me on a date?” she asked suspiciously.

“Dinner and dancing?”

“Dancing?” She sniffed, mischief sparkling like diamonds in her eyes as she pushed herself away from the railing. “You can’t dance.”

He took a step closer, squaring his shoulders at the challenge. “Can so.”

“Cannot.”

A smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Come over here and say that, city girl.”

Mari stepped up to him with her hands on her hips and looked him in the eye. “Show me.”

Carefully he took her in his arms and danced her through a slow two-step around the deck. While Spike looked on from the cushion on the Adirondack chair, they moved in perfect unison to a sweet, pretty song about Halley’s comet and innocence and simple joys. He moved with grace and confidence, guiding her, holding her in a way that made her feel safe and protected and small and feminine. Above them the sky turned purple with twilight and the moon rose in the east, a huge white wafer above the jagged teeth of the Absarokas. Down the valley the coyotes began to call.

Mari kept her gaze locked on J.D.’s, searching for a truth she wouldn’t count on him speaking. That he could give her his heart. That she could trust him with hers. That the years of wariness hadn’t left him permanently isolated.

She caught the slightest whiff of aftershave, and tears of love filled her eyes as she slid her arms around him and pressed her cheek against his chest, slowing their dance to a shuffle. He was a man as hard and unyielding as the land that bred him, and she might spend the next fifty years tearing her hair out over his stubbornness, but she wouldn’t trade a second of it for all the gold in California.

She mouthed the words against the soft cotton of his shirt, like a precious secret, like prayer. I love you.

J.D. wrapped his arms around her and pressed a kiss to the soft tangle of her hair. His heart felt huge and tender in his chest, beneath her cheek. Looking out across the valley to the mountains beyond, he felt both old and new, strong and vulnerable. He felt as if they were the only two people on earth, alone in paradise, starting fresh. He vowed to do it right this time. No lies, no games, cards on the table, nothing held back.

The music slowed. The sweet harmony of twin fiddles faded away, and the last notes were played on the guitar.

Their feet stilled.

Their hearts beat.

Mari held her breath.

And Rafferty tipped her chin up and gazed down into her blue, blue eyes and whispered, “I love you.”