A Rancher's Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

felt as if he would mourn the loss. “So why haven’t you remarried?”
    “I hadn’t met the right woman;” he shrugged. He hadn’t until now, and even now she wasn’t right.
    No, she was right. The age was just all wrong.
    She nodded. “Well when you do meet her I hope you don’t let a silly little thing like age get in your way. As long as you’re both two legally consenting adults, love is all that should matter.”
    “What did you say?” He thought he heard her right, but he needed to make sure. It was almost as if he was getting permission to court her; and she didn’t even realize she was giving it to him.
    “I said love is all that should matter—between two legally consenting adults that is.”
    “Of course.” He nodded. “It’s just…most people might not agree.”
    She shrugged. “Those people don’t have to live with your decisions. Do what’s right for you and don’t worry about the rest of the population. Either they’ll get over it or they won’t, but if they don’t then that’s their problem.”
    “You’d be okay if your mother married a man your age?”
    “She did,” she said. “And it didn’t bother me that he was my age…”
    “But?” He heard the cliff of her unspoken words and he wanted to know what she was going to say.
    “It bothered me that he was my guy first. We had been dating. I…”
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    A Rancher’s Love ~ Capri Montgomery
    “You’re serious? She went after your man?”
    “I don’t think that she went after him,” she chuckled. “Yeah, I guess in a way she did. But my mom is gorgeous; men gravitate toward her. Kind of like the moth to the flame thing. I guess what bothered me most is how I found out about it. Over a family dinner when they both announced they were dating each other when I was the one who took him to the dinner. There I am, his date, sitting across the table from him when he takes my mother’s hand in his and drops that bomb. I can’t tell you how much that hurt.”
    “I can imagine,” he felt anger rising in his heart. He couldn’t understand how any man could do that to a woman as beautiful, as kind, as incredible as Zoe. More than that, he couldn’t understand how her mother could do that to her.
    She shrugged. “But that’s in the past. The future is out there somewhere,” she gestured to the outside world as she looked out of the kitchen patio doors. “I just have to go find my place in it.”
    He wanted her place to be right there, in his home, on his ranch, in his heart. He wanted her to stay.
    But did he have the right to ask? He wasn’t sure that he did.
    “So, now you know why I was driving out to Seattle to audition for a role on a reality cooking show that I wasn’t thrilled about, but I thought it would work—well, you know most of it anyway. Then my GPS
    device took me off the freeway and through the mountains, and I swerved to avoid a deer and that took me through your fence and into your creek.”
    She spoke so smoothly as if she was giving him her food order and not telling him of the bad circumstances that led her to his ranch. He hated that she had faced the pain she had, but he was thankful fate had brought her to him. Before her recovery time was up he was going to do everything in his power to get her to stay. They were nearing the end of May now. If she left, even if she agreed to come back to visit, the winter months would probably keep her at bay. She was born and raised in the Florida Keys. The woman was used to warm weather and sandy beaches. Their neck of the woods didn’t have sandy beaches, and the only warm weather they had lasted from late May to mid September before the temperatures started falling again.
    “When you’re up to it I’ll show you around the ranch. You can ride one of the horses too.” He loved to ride and he hoped getting her addicted to the wide open space of his home would make her fall in love with it enough to stay longer so she could fall in love with him.
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