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  “She was talented,” Joe agreed.

  Dara made a sound of agreement. “Anyway, Millie thinks I should be the one to give it to the Last Ride Society. I mean, after you read it. Is that okay?”

  He wasn’t sure if his okay would be for his reading it or for her handing over the report. Joe just nodded to both. Dara made a sound as if she was pleased about that, and she glanced around at the paintings he’d moved from the storage unit. There were some in here, all wrapped up like the research project and some others were in the house.

  “What should we do with all of Mom’s paintings?” she asked. “Do you think we should try to get her that showing at the gallery in San Antonio?”

  Joe was still considering that. Considering some other options, too. “Maybe we could set up a gallery for her here in Last Ride? I could use the money from my swear jar,” he added in a mumble.

  Dara chuckled and went over to try to stuff some of the loose bills into the jar. “We could use the house,” she suggested. “You know, after you get the new, bigger one built. We’re not that far out of town, and I think people would drive out here to see it. Plus, they’d get to see the murals, too.”

  That was an idea, one that he’d have to give some thought.

  “If we lived in the new house,” Dara went on, “it might not make Millie uncomfortable to visit you.”

  Frowning, he looked at her. “Huh?”

  “You know, because it’s a house that belonged to Mom and you,” Dara added in a duh tone. “Millie might want to visit more if it was just my and your house.”

  He thought about Millie’s and his sex agreement. That they wouldn’t be together in places they’d shared with their spouses. That agreement seemed like a lifetime ago, but it could still apply if Millie and he were going to be together again.

  “You like her a lot, don’t you?” Dara pressed, not waiting for an answer. “And I know she likes you a lot.”

  “It’s complicated,” he settled for saying.

  She made a sound of agreement. “Because you’re both happy that Mom and her husband didn’t cheat. But you’re both kind of sad, too. It probably wouldn’t be easy to get past the happy or the sad even if you really like each other.”

  “No, it wouldn’t be easy,” he mumbled.

  “But, hey, it’s doable,” Dara concluded in her perkiest perky voice. She dropped a kiss on his cheek. “Read the last line of the report,” she whispered before she walked out.

  Joe wasn’t sure he wanted to read any of the lines. His mood was already low enough, but he set aside his beer and took out the report. It was a lot longer than he’d expected, close to a hundred pages, and he skimmed through the stories that Dara had given Millie. Accounts of how Ella and he had fallen in love. Their first date. Their wedding.

  Dara hadn’t left out much and had even given Millie some pictures that she’d included. Happy photos of happy times. Millie had added other accounts as well from interviews with the locals who’d known Ella. There was one from the kindergarten teacher praising Ella for the mural of cartoon characters she’d painted in the classroom. As Dara had said, Millie had talked with the gallery owner who had high praise indeed for the paintings he’d planned to exhibit.

  Joe kept skimming, kept turning pages until he made it to the last one. There was a picture here, too. Not of Ella’s tombstone as he’d expected. No. This was a casual family shot taken by the photographer of the town’s newspaper at the Fourth of July picnic. Dara had been about eight, and the three of them were sitting on a blanket, looking up at a sky filled with fireworks. Well, Dara was looking up, anyway, but Ella and he were smiling at each other.

  There was no mistaking the happiness on their faces. The love. The family. No mistaking at all.

  Joe forced his attention to the bottom of the page. To the last line that Millie had written.

  “A gifted artist who was loved and will always be loved by her husband and daughter, Ella McCann’s memory will live on.”

  Joe sat there, rereading it, and he let the grief—and the happy memories—wash over him.

  * * *

  AS IF THE bouquet were fragile and might break in her hand, Millie lay the yellow roses on Royce’s grave. A first for her. She had avoided this place like the plague when she’d thought Royce had died with his lover. But now that she knew it wasn’t true, it had been somewhat easy for her to come.

  Somewhat.

  There was sadness in place of the hurt and anger, and she wasn’t sure that would go away. Still, it was something she could live with. And that was the key word. She needed to live. That started with making her peace with Royce.

  “Sorry that I thought you were a lying, cheating scumbag,” she muttered. She’d hoped her light tone would lighten her heart.

  It didn’t.

  “So, it turns out you were the great guy that I and everyone always knew you were all along.” She paused, sank down to sit beside the tombstone. “But it turns out, I’m not the woman you married.”

  She stopped, gathered her breath and gave the roses an adjustment they in no way needed.

  “Let’s not even get into the ‘I never had an orgasm with you’ thing,” Millie continued a moment later, “but you should know that I wasn’t over-the-moon happy in our marriage. I was Millie Vanilla at my most vanilla. That wasn’t fair to either of us. You should have had a wife who thought you were her moon and stars.”

  She didn’t get a cosmic signal that Royce had heard that, or that he agreed or disagreed, but she just kept on talking.

  “I didn’t look at you the way Ella looked at Joe in that fireworks picture I put in the report,” she told Royce. “I didn’t look at you the way I look at him.” The tears burned her eyes and fell like rain. “And I’m sorry about that. Sorry that I couldn’t feel for you what I feel for him.”

  And wasn’t that a confession to make to a dead husband? Millie figured she deserved a lightning strike or two for that.

  “I’ve been crying a lot lately. Thinking a lot lately, too. Life’s kind of messed up what with Mom and Dad’s sex-tape scandal. Wonder how you would have handled that? Probably with the voice of calm and reason,” Millie added, swiping at the tears. “Me, personally, I’m going to handle it by trying not to cringe whenever I remember the bits of the tape I saw. And by not throwing it in Mom’s face whenever she rags on me.”

  She fully expected said ragging to start as soon as Asher and she had returned from their “walk of shame” trip. Laurie Jean would bounce back from this, and Asher would carry on as if he and his wife of nearly four decades didn’t have the extreme hots for each other. Hots that Millie definitely hadn’t had with Royce, but with Joe, well, a lot of things had been different for her with Joe.

  “I’ll endure some of Mom’s ire and will push back on the rest. What I won’t do is budge on donating the house, and I won’t put my wedding rings back on or wear widow’s black. Oh, and I’m not stopping the reno on my new living quarters above the shop.”

  Millie stopped. Smiled a little.

  When she spelled it out like that, she realized she wasn’t budging on anything important. Well, anything important that she could control. She couldn’t control what Joe felt for her, and it might take him a lot more than two weeks to decide if he wanted to see her again.

  In fact, he might never decide that.

  That dismal thought caused her smile to fade, and Millie stood, touching her lips to the top of Royce’s tombstone. “Have a good afterlife, Royce,” she whispered. “Maybe I couldn’t give you the moon and the stars, but I did love you.”

  She lingered a few more moments, gathering herself and wondering if she truly felt better or if she was on the verge of heatstroke. The sun was setting, but it was still sweltering.

  Wiping the perspiration and the rest of the tears off her face, she went to her car, got in and cranked up the A
C. She was still gathering herself when her phone dinged with a text. She could have sworn every part of her body did a little dance when she saw it was from Joe.

  She expected it to be another short text to ask her how she was doing. But it wasn’t. “Meet me at the drive-in?” she read aloud.

  For two weeks, she’d felt as if someone had squeezed a fist around her heart, but just seeing the message caused some of that tightness to ease up.

  Be there soon, Millie texted back though her hands were trembling so it took her a couple of tries to get the reply right. She hit Send and drove away from the cemetery—fast. Millie considered if she should feel guilty about racing from her late husband’s grave to see a man who’d become her lover.

  No guilt. All right, maybe some, but it wasn’t as much guilt as it was regret that she hadn’t given Royce the one hundred percent that she wanted to give Joe. The problem was, Joe might not want that percentage. In fact, this meeting might be so he could make a clean break with her.

  That caused her to slow down.

  Unlike her, Joe had given his all to Ella. And vice versa. He might not ever be able to dole that much of himself out to another woman. Even if he did, that woman might not be her.

  Millie was driving at a crawl by the time she reached the drive-in. The sun had already set, but she could see the interior light on in Joe’s truck. She kept up the crawling pace to reach it, and she parked beside it. Gathering her breath, she got out and threw open the passenger’s side door of the truck.

  She’d already opened her mouth to say she was sorry, an apology that would include a multitude of things, but the words died in her mouth when she saw the interior. Joe was behind the wheel, and on the console between the seats was a tray with a platter of O’Riley’s nachos, a Coke, a root beer float and a candle. The light from it flickered from the evening breeze she was letting in.

  Millie looked over the candlelight to meet Joe’s eyes. Oh, my. Those eyes would always slug her with some lust. Ditto for his face. And pretty much the rest of him, too.

  He didn’t smile at her. In fact, he kept his face blank. “I thought we could try a date, but I wasn’t sure if you’d go for one in public.”

  No way could she keep her own face blank after that. Millie smiled. “I’d go on a date with you anywhere, anytime.” She climbed into the truck seat, leaned over the tray and brushed her mouth to his.

  His expression stayed mostly blank. Mostly. Definitely no smile. “I wanted to give you time to grieve for Royce.”

  She nodded. “I just had a talk with Royce, and I worked out everything with him.” Millie paused. “I wanted to give you time to grieve Ella.”

  “I worked out everything with Ella, too. Thank you,” he added, “for what you said about her in the research report.”

  Millie gave another nod, and the silence stretched out between them. Not a bad silence but one where their gazes stayed connected. Finally, Joe reached under the seat and took out a tablet.

  “I figured since we’re at the drive-in, we should watch a movie with our dinner date,” he said.

  Millie definitely didn’t nod that time, and she was reasonably sure some horror crept into her eyes. “Please tell me that’s not Laurie Jean and Asher’s sex tape.”

  He laughed, and she hadn’t known how much she wanted that laugh until she heard it. “Uh, no. But you might not approve of my viewing choice.”

  Joe set the tablet on the dash, turned it on, and the opening scene from Jaws started. Now Millie laughed, and she was still in mid-chuckle when Joe slid his hand around the back of her neck, pulled her closer and kissed her.

  This wasn’t a mere brushing of lips. Nope. It was the real deal. French, long and hot. When he pulled back, he met her eyes again.

  “We can eat, watch the movie or have sex,” he said. Millie was about to blurt out she wanted door number three, but Joe kept on talking. “Or I can tell you—without any post-sex haze interfering—that I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  That robbed her of her breath. “The last option,” she managed. “I want to hear that part.”

  He kissed her again and murmured the words against her mouth. “I’ve fallen in love with you, Millie.”

  Her breath returned with a vengeance. One huge gust of air into her lungs, followed by an even larger gust of happiness. It filled her from head to toe.

  “Good,” she said. “Because I’m in love with you, too.” She caught on to fistfuls of his hair and yanked him back for another kiss.

  She felt him smiling against her mouth. Then, they were both laughing. Giddy was the right word. They were giddy and squishing the food, but she was positive neither of them cared about that.

  However, Joe must have been concerned that they might catch themselves on fire, literally, because he blew out the candle. He also shoved the tray onto the back ledge of the seat and turned so he could haul Millie into his lap. She had already started in that direction so it didn’t take much of an effort.

  “I love you,” she said, wanting to hear the words again.

  Joe gave them right back to her with his own murmured, “I love you.”

  That spurred another round of scalding hot kisses. Then again, it was never less than scalding when Joe and she kissed.

  “I want more,” he insisted, but he held her off when she started to peel off his shirt. “I want to stop sneaking around to see you. I want us to go on dates. I want us to have sex, often, both in and out of bed.”

  She grinned. “I don’t object to a single bit of that. Dates. Sex. Beds. Porn, optional.”

  With the scene from Jaws playing out from the dash, Joe kept his eyes on Millie. Just her. And she kept her eyes on him. Just Joe.

  “I can promise you a lot more than this moment,” he said. “More than tomorrow. More than a week.”

  Millie wanted to both smile and cry a whole bunch of happy tears, but she decided to save the tears for later. For now, she wanted to kiss her man and get something straight.

  “I want more than a week, too,” she assured him. “More than a month,” she added.

  Smiling, he moved in for another scorching round with his mouth. “I can do better than that. How about I promise you forever?”

  Oh, the blasted happy tears came, anyway, blending with the smile and even a very giddy giggle. Millie tightened the grip she had on his hair and pulled him to her.

  “Joe Cooper McCann, I’ll take forever with you any day.”

  * * *

  Look for the next book in USA TODAY

  bestselling author Delores Fossen’s

  Last Ride, Texas series when

  Christmas at Colts Creek goes on sale

  in November 2021, only from HQN Books!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Safeguarding the Surrogate by Delores Fossen

  Safeguarding the Surrogate

  by Delores Fossen

  Chapter One

  Kara Holland stood in the darkness and waited for the killer.

  With her heartbeat throbbing in her ears and her back pressed to the barn wall, she tried to listen for any sound to alert her that he was coming. Nothing. Not yet. But she’d done everything she could to lure him out and make him come after her.

  And she was ready.

  She had the Glock gripped in her hand, and thanks to the hours of firearms training, she knew how to use it. If that failed, if he somehow got the jump on her, she’d fall back on the hand-to-hand moves she’d also learned. Of course, those things didn’t guarantee that she would stop him, but she had to try. She was tired of living with this smothering weight of fear.

  Finally, she heard something. The sound of a car engine. Then a door closing. He had finally come for her.

  The next thing she heard were the footsteps, slow and cautious. They were coming straight toward her barn.

  She’d purposely t
urned off all but the single light in the tack room, and Kara had left the door cracked just enough for a thin beam to pierce the darkness. She stayed in the shadows by a stack of hay bales, but when the killer came in the barn, she’d be able to see him.

  Kara could certainly hear him.

  Along with the footsteps, the hinges creaked on the barn door, and she pinpointed every bit of her focus while she lifted the Glock. And she took aim.

  “Kara?” the man called out.

  She groaned, mixing it with some muttered profanity, because she instantly recognized that voice. Not a killer. But Deputy Daniel Logan.

  “What are you doing here?” she snapped once she could manage to speak.

  “Checking on you,” Daniel snapped right back.

  When he stepped into that beam of light from the tack room, she had no trouble seeing the riled expression on his face. Or the rest of him for that matter. He was wearing his usual jeans and work shirt on his tall rangy body. His Mercy Ridge deputy’s badge was clipped to his belt.

  “I’m fine,” Kara assured him. Of course, that wasn’t true, and he could clearly see that. After all, she was waiting in her dark barn while holding a gun. “You can go.”

  “No, I won’t.” Daniel sounded “all cop” with that one-word response. And he didn’t budge, either. In fact, he came closer, meeting her eye to eye.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Kara insisted.

  “I wanted to have a look around and see for myself if the rumors were true. They are,” he added in a snarl. “What the hell are you thinking?”

  “You know what I’m thinking,” she fired back.

  That only caused him to release a long hard breath. No doubt one of frustration. Well, she was frustrated, too. And scared. Especially scared. Something that she’d hoped to end tonight.

  “Two surrogates are dead,” Kara reminded him. Not that a reminder was necessary. Daniel knew because she’d already told him. She’d taken the news articles to him right away when she had learned about the dead women. “Both used the Willingham Fertility Clinic in San Antonio.”