Merry with a Ranger (Love Beach Holiday Collection)

Epilogue

EPILOGUE

B ONNIE

Three days after Christmas, most of which we spent in a very prettily decorated police station at Love Beach, Nash drove us across the country back to Texas. I stood at the border of the land I last saw a decade and change ago, wondering if I was actually allowed to step foot onto my native home.

Mom and Dad were taking their time coming back, and I didn’t think it was all about Mom, though Dad insisted it was. Part of me wondered how much he didn’t want to see Texas again, either. Nash offered his own home open to us while we found our feet again, and his Texas Rangers provided protection for my entire family, and me.

It was like they adopted us the moment his case blew open, though I knew he hadn’t been part of them for very long either. A new family for all. Merry Christmas, bordering on a new year.

Even a happy one.

Part of me still struggled with the fact I killed a man, thanks to Daddy teaching me years ago how to handle a gun until the guise of taking me hunting as a kid and swapping out my rifle on occasion for a handgun I suspected he stole from somewhere.

That was back in the early days when he seemed to think we might escape from our hideous life moving from place to place under the watchful eye of Texas’ worst and most dreadful.

They didn’t seem to want to pull the trigger on our strange impasse, and we ended up in an endless bout of self-inflicted purgatory. I think they were waiting for us to implode, but that never happened thanks to Daddy’s deep, deep pockets.

Now, that long, stagnant stage of my life was over. A full third, and I was free thanks to Nash’s quick talking to the local police and his connections with law enforcement.

Which brought us, quite literally, back to Texas.

“Bonnie,” Nash said my name like a caress. He stood with his hand outstretched, him on the other side of that state line. After this we’d still have a long way to go to get to his home, but right here, this moment—it meant so much to both of us.

My heart lived on that land, with him. But my feet flat out refused to move.

“How did you do it?” I pleaded, locking my fingers together into a knot. “When you were called back.”

Nash considered me for a long moment before he answered. “I wanted answers. I wanted that case to close up with my grandfather. My mother hadn’t seen me in years, and I didn’t call because I pushed her and everyone else away.” He took a step closer until we were toe to toe with an invisible line dividing us, a breath wide. “But most of all, I wanted to find you.”

My eyes shuttered, tears dropping with them. One day I’d stop crying, but today the tears still fell. One day. Maybe.

I reached out and he lifted me off my feet, turning us in a circle and placed me on Texas land.

My feet didn’t move. Heat ran up my ankles, but the ground didn’t shake, and the world didn’t end.

“How does it feel to be home, love?”

I smiled into his shirt, breathed in his leather and whiskey and caramel scent, ran my fingers over the star badge he displayed on his belt, and smiled.

“Like I’m supposed to be here with you.”