My mother’s voice this time was awe.
“You’re getting married this weekend?” she asked.
“Yes,” Ace said, sounding sure.
I wasn’t.
I was blinking rapidly and staring at the back of my hand like it had the answers to all that confused me.
“We’re not getting married this weekend!” I huffed.
“We’ll see,” Ace teased.Chapter 24I have been known to scream profanity.
-T-shirt
Ace
We were married that weekend.
In fact, we were married on that Friday, in the middle of a pasture, with Scooby leaning against the fence separating our field from his, and chickens pecking at our feet.
We had a photographer—Desi—taking pictures.
We had a preacher—the old one that used to guide us every Sunday when we were younger.
We also had a flower girl—though my niece was very unhappy about that aspect of it.
But, threatened by her mother with no ice cream for a month, she agreed—barely.
“Do you, Ace LeRoy Valentine, take Codie Rayann Spears to be your lawfully wedded wife?” the preacher asked.
I looked down at my wife, who had walked out to me in white, on her father’s arm, and taken my breath away with each step in my direction.
“I do,” I confirmed, my voice loud and final.
Codie’s lips twitched.
“And do you, Codie Rayann Spears, take Ace LeRoy Valentine as your husband?”
Codie mouthed the word ‘LeRoy’ and scrunched up her nose.
I supposed in our epic whirlwind courtship, I’d neglected to tell her my middle name.
My bad.
“It’s not as cool as Ace, but I think that makes you just a little bit more human,” she whispered, then more loudly, she said, “I do!”
It was chipper, quick, and squeaky, causing everyone around us to laugh.
My brothers and sister.
My friends.
Her friends.
Her parents.
Her work colleagues who, apparently, had fallen in love with her in the few days she’d been there.
Chickens.
Bull.
Okay, well the animals hadn’t laughed.
But they were still there, so I counted them.
“The rings?” the preacher asked.
I turned and held my hand out to Banks, who was my best man.
He handed me Codie’s ring, a beautiful diamond band that was the perfect fit up against the diamond engagement ring.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t seeing the band slip over Codie’s finger that caused my heart to race.
It was watching the ring slip over mine, the one I’d wear for the rest of my life, that made me feel like I was about to explode. Or my heart, anyway.
“…to love and to hold, from this day forward,” Codie repeated.
I swallowed hard as something made my eyes sting—and I refused to admit that it was tears.
Codie’s trembling fingers finally got the ring in place, and the emotion in her eyes as she looked up, her gaze catching mine, made me weak in the knees.
“By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss…”
I had Codie in my arms seconds later. I didn’t even hear the ‘bride’ as I devoured my wife’s mouth.
The fact that she was now mine, officially and irrevocably, was life-altering.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
Nobody’s but mine.
She pulled away with a hiss as she inhaled deeply.
The smile that overcame her face afterward, though? I would remember it for the rest of my life.
“You, Ace Valentine, are trouble.” She giggled breathlessly.
I gathered her into my arms, dropped my forehead to rest on hers, and said, “That’s okay seeing as you are, too.”EpiloguePart of parenting is using your outside voice to tell your kids to use their inside voice.
-Codie to Ace
Codie
Three years later
“We have too much land.”
I never, not in a million years, thought I’d say that, but it’d literally just come out of my mouth.
“What is the problem, darling?” our housekeeper/cowboy keeper as I liked to call her, Margay, asked.
I studied the sprawling pastures out of the kitchen window and then looked over at Margay.
“I was going to visit with Ace, but I don’t know where he’s at,” I admitted.
“Have you tried his cell?” Margay suggested.
I nodded with a sigh. “Yes. He’s not answering.”
“Have you tried Colt’s? Or Jensen’s?” She paused. “I think Remy is in the barn with Banks and Callum.”
I nodded solemnly. “He is. And I did.”
She pursed her lips.
“It’s only an hour until supper time,” she admitted. “Do you think that it can wait?”
I thought about that for a long second, then shrugged. “Possibly.”
Maybe.
“He needs to start carrying the two-way radios with him again,” she muttered.
I agreed. Wholeheartedly.
Especially right now seeing as nobody was answering, and I wanted to speak to my husband.
“He’s probably over there on the new land,” Margay explained.
The ‘new land’ was the newest of our ‘new land.’
In the three years that I’d been married to Ace Valentine, we’d gotten thousands and thousands of acres.
At this point, we had so much that we needed a full-time crew just to patrol the fence lines and make sure that we didn’t have anything wrong. Which, I had a feeling, we would be adding to our crew fairly soon.
All the men that started on the Valentine ranch a little over three years ago had become a partner in said ranch. The Valentine operation had grown exponentially since they’d won the insurance payout from the life insurance their mother had purchased.