Chapter Twenty-Three
EVA
Cage had to work extra hard to catch up on the work he didn’t get done the past two days. Between me begging him for sex and him happily obliging and our picking a tree and decorating it, he’d had very little free time.
Jeremy was coming back today. He’d texted Cage last night to tell him that he’d be here late, but he’d be here. Cage had mentioned we needed to hire someone else and let Jeremy go. I agreed. He shouldn’t have to continue working here. Not if he wanted to do other things.
It was just after nine when Jeremy’s truck came rolling over the hill and across the field. He was a good man. Daddy was right about that. I loved him and I wanted him to find happiness. I wanted him to fall in love with a girl who couldn’t imagine life without him. It would happen. I knew it would.
He wasn’t Josh, but he looked just like him, and Josh had been beautiful. Jeremy was just as special. His truck stopped, and he stepped out then headed toward where I stood under the magnolia tree beside the porch.
“From the smile on your face, I think I stayed gone long enough for you two to fix things,” he said as he put his hat on his head.
“Yes. Thank you. For everything. Thank you.”
Jeremy grinned and then turned his head to spit out that nasty tobacco I wish he’d stop dipping. “You’re welcome. For everything,” he replied. “I figure Cage York ain’t gonna let you get too far out of his reach again. I hope you get everything in life you want, Eva. You deserve it.”
“You too, Jeremy. You too.”
He straightened his hat and looked out at the barn. “I’d hug you, but I gotta go work with your man today, and he’s watching me right now like he might need to come up here and beat my ass at any second.”
I glanced back and, sure enough ,Cage was standing beside his truck with his hands on his hips and his hat pushed back off his forehead, a piece of straw sticking out of his mouth. He looked like a television ad for sexy cowboys. I blew him a kiss and laughed.
He shook his head and grinned before shooting Jeremy one more pointed look. Then he turned and walked over to the barn door. “Don’t see a ring on your finger. Thought I’d see one of those when I got back.”
I glanced down at my hand. I hadn’t expected Cage to purpose to me. “Why would you think that?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you’re pregnant with his baby,” Jeremy shot back.
Cage wasn’t like that. He hadn’t grown up thinking the way Jeremy and I had been taught. I wanted to believe one day Cage would ask me to marry him, but after the way I’d treated him and hadn’t trusted him, I doubted he would be trusting me with something that big for a while. I was okay with that. I understood.
“I just took another man’s ring off a few days ago, Jer. I don’t think he’s ready to stick his on there. He looks tough and he acts like a badass, but he is fragile. He expects people to leave him. He also doesn’t trust that I won’t leave him again. I have a lot of proving to do before Cage trusts me with something like forever.”
Jeremy frowned. “Really? You’re now taking the blame for all this? How the hell did that happen?”
Jeremy wouldn’t understand. No one had seen Cage with his guard completely down. I’d only seen it a few times myself. “I can’t blame him for his insecurities. His momma screwed him up emotionally. I knew that, and I didn’t stop feeling sorry for myself long enough to think about that.”
Jeremy shook his head, but he didn’t say anything else about it.
“I’m gonna help him find a replacement. Then I’m hitting the road.”
“Where are you going? I thought you didn’t want to go to school, that you wanted to stay here on the land?”
He nodded. “I did. I’ll be back. But right now I want to just ride. Go see other places. Not settle down anywhere, just find myself.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I wanted him to be happy, but I didn’t want to be the reason he was leaving.
“Let me go help him before he decides to come get me,” he said with a wink, then headed down to the barn.
He seemed happy. This was what he wanted to do. Maybe he’d find that girl to make him complete out there on the road. Once he opened the barn door, I turned and headed back inside.
CAGE
Jeremy walked into the barn, looking pissed. “Why don’t she have a ring on her finger, York?”
I grabbed my work gloves from the bench I’d left them on earlier. “I’m working on that. Not that it’s your damn business.”
The tension went out of his shoulders and he nodded. “Oh. Good. She don’t seem to think you are. She thinks you can’t trust her or some stupid shit. I wasn’t following her. I just knew it was dumb.”
Couldn’t trust her? What the hell was the woman thinking now?