Solid Gold Cowboy - Maisey Yates (read ebook pdf .TXT) 📗

reason I didn’t tell you not to go through with the wedding is that I knew that you deserved to have something more offered to you. And I was too cowardly to do it, not too good.”

“Well, are you too coward to do it now?”

“Not at all. Will you marry me? Invade my space and change my life?”

It wasn’t sudden at all. It was ten years of late-night conversations, walking together in the streets of the town, sharing themselves. They might have only kissed for the first time a week ago, but they’d fallen in love, deeply, truly, a lot longer ago than that.

“Yes,” she said. “I will.”

“Good. Hey, do you know about the tradition of carving your name in the bathroom of my bar?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Yes. I have heard about that.”

“I think it’s high time my own name was put in there, don’t you think?”

“Laz!”

“What? People are already going to talk. So let’s really give them something to talk about, Jordan.”

And then she smiled. Really smiled. That smile that only he ever saw. That spark in Jordan that she kept buried deep, and didn’t show the world, but only a very few people who were lucky enough.

And he was lucky enough.

“You have yourself a deal.”

EPILOGUE

IT WAS THE funniest thing, when Jordan moved in with Laz—for real—she started sleeping.

She worked out a schedule where her mornings weren’t as early, he adjusted his so it wasn’t as late.

Laz liked sharing his life. That was the biggest surprise of all. He liked sharing his meals, his space, his wood shop. Jordan decided to learn to knit, and she got a chair that she put out there, and she sat while he worked. They often didn’t talk at all, they were just together.

Most of all, they learned to talk, and trust. Each other, and themselves.

He was the Laz Jordan loved, not the boy who had felt unloved by his parents. And she was the Jordan he loved. Not a daughter of addicts. Not a woman who had to keep herself on a tight leash for fear she might do something wrong.

Just Jordan. Just the love of his life.

Just everything.

He used to be in the business of giving out advice. But now, his biggest business was just to love her. Every day, with all of his heart.

Forever.

When Lark Ashwood returns home to Bear Creek, Oregon, she is determined to realize her dreams of setting up a craft café. She’s equally determined to avoid the history she’s been running from–especially when it comes in the irresistible shape of local garage owner Ben Thompson. But as Lark embarks on a quilting circle with her mom and two sisters, she soon realizes that the key to her future lies in unlocking the past...

Read on for a sneak preview of Maisey Yates’s emotionally compelling new novel for HQN

Confessions from the Quilting Circle

Confessions from the Quilting Circle

by Maisey Yates

March 4th, 1944

The dress is perfect. Candlelight satin and antique lace. I can’t wait for you to see it. I can’t wait to walk down the aisle toward you. If only we could set a date. If only we had some idea of when the war will be over.

Love, Dot

Present day—

Lark

Unfinished.

The word whispered through the room like a ghost. Over the faded, floral wallpaper, down to the scarred wooden floor. And to the precariously stacked boxes and bins of fabrics, yarn skeins, canvases and other artistic miscellany.

Lark Ashwood had to wonder if her grandmother had left them this way on purpose. Unfinished business here on earth, in the form of quilts, sweaters and paintings, to keep her spirit hanging around after she was gone.

It would be like her. Adeline Dowell did everything with just a little extra.

From her glossy red hair—which stayed that color till the day she died—to her matching cherry glasses and lipstick. She always had an armful of bangles, a beer in her hand and an ashtray full of cigarettes. She never smelled like smoke. She smelled like spearmint gum, Aqua Net and Avon perfume.

She had taught Lark that it was okay to be a little bit of extra.

A smile curved Lark’s lips as she looked around the attic space again. “Oh, Gram...this is really a mess.”

She had the sense that was intentional too. In death, as in life, her grandmother wouldn’t simply fade away.

Neat attics, well-ordered affairs and pre-death estate sales designed to decrease the clutter a family would have to go through later were for other women. Quieter women who didn’t want to be a bother.

Adeline Dowell lived to be a bother. To expand to fill a space, not shrinking down to accommodate anyone.

Lark might not consistently achieve the level of excess Gram had, but she considered it a goal.

“Lark? Are you up there?”

She heard her mom’s voice carrying up the staircase. “Yes!” She shouted back down. “I’m...trying to make sense of this.”

She heard footsteps behind her and saw her mom standing there, gray hair neat, arms folded in. “You don’t have to. We can get someone to come in and sort it out.”

“And what? Take it all to a thrift store?” Lark asked.

Her mom’s expression shifted slightly, just enough to convey about six emotions with no wasted effort. Emotional economy was Mary Ashwood’s forte. As contained and practical as Addie had been excessive. “Honey, I think most of this would be bound for the dump.”

“Mom, this is great stuff.”

“I don’t have room in my house for sentiment.”

“It’s not about sentiment. It’s usable stuff.”

“I’m not artsy, you know that. I don’t really...get all this.” The unspoken words in the air settled over Lark like a cloud.

Mary wasn’t artsy because her mother hadn’t been around to teach her to sew. To knit. To paint. To quilt.

Addie had taught her granddaughters. Not her own daughter.

She’d breezed on back into town in a candy apple Corvette when Lark’s oldest sister, Avery, was born, after spending Mary’s entire childhood off on some adventure or another, while Lark’s grandfather had done the