Chapter 37

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“ W e’re going to be gone for the whole weekend,” Angel said in her team meeting the first week of August. The month of July had passed with heat waves and firecrackers, new teams functioning well, and everything coming together at Lone Star. She and Henry had started looking at several places near Three Rivers and Stinnett, but nothing had really seemed like “their place” yet.

Henry wanted to attend the ranch owners’ luncheon with his friends, as he’d been going for the past several months by himself. When she’d asked him if couples go, he’d said no, but she was a ranch owner, so there was no reason she couldn’t attend.

He talked to his cousin and his friends, and of course, they had all said she should absolutely come. They had done some date nights with his friends in Three Rivers, and Angel really liked them.

She and Henry were leaving for Three Rivers in the morning. They would go to the luncheon, and then in the afternoon, they had a couple of appointments with a realtor to show them a few properties in Three Rivers.

Angel didn’t want her desperation to choke her, but it was starting to feel like if they didn’t find a house or a farm soon, she wouldn’t be able to get married in the spring—which was silly.

If they bought a place right now, someone would have to live in it before they got married, and neither of them wanted to do that. Henry claimed that wasn’t true. They could let it sit—especially if they bought a fixer-upper—and he could work on fixing it and getting it exactly the way they wanted it before they married and then moved in.

Of course, he still hadn’t asked her to marry him. So Angel was making all kinds of future plans about marriage and houses, children, pastures for horses, attending ranch owner meetings with their friends, and she still didn’t have the diamond.

She trusted Henry, though. She believed in Henry, and she loved Henry, so she knew that was coming.

“We’ll be fine here,” Shad said. “You’ve been gone before.”

She had been gone before, and it had been luxurious and wonderful. “I’ll have my phone,” she said. “Henry has his phone. I know he’s met with his team already.” She glanced over to Levi, who nodded. “We don’t have many horses coming or going. Everything should be fine.”

“We’ll be absolutely fine,” Justin said. “Trevor’s doing great with the meetings. And I hate to say it, Angel.” He grinned at her. “But we don’t need you here.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly. She closed her folder, which ended the meeting. “Thank you guys so much.” She looked around the room. “Really, I’m going to give mid-year bonuses. They’re just a little bit late, but you guys….”

She stopped because her voice had tightened, and she couldn’t talk past that. She swallowed and fought for control, finally winning it. “You guys have really stepped up this year, and you’ve really saved me, and I want you to know that I really love and appreciate each of you.” She swallowed hard again, which actually hurt, and let her emotions rage through her. It was okay to feel things; they didn’t make her weak or unable to lead.

Justin reached over and covered her hand with his. “We love you too, Angel.”

“Yeah,” Levi said. “You’re doing a great job here.”

“Thank you,” she managed to push out. “All right, I’ve got to go get packed up. We’re leaving first thing in the morning.”

The men started to disperse, but Levi hung back, glancing at the others as they left. “Angel,” he said, once only they remained in the room. “Do you want me to check on your parents while you’re gone?”

“Yes, please,” she said. “I know Trevor doesn’t need it as often, but you’re right next door to him too. If you could just, I don’t know, pop by for something that maybe you don’t need just to see how he is.”

“He’s always fine when I do that,” Levi said.

“I know he is,” Angel said, and she was so proud of herself for getting to a point where she could ask a non-family member for help with her family. She thought she’d never, ever do that.

“My parents too. But it just gives me peace of mind to know that someone is looking after them when I’m not here.”

“I’ll do it then,” Levi said.

“Thank you.” She gave him a shy look, not sure how else to tell him how much his leadership had meant to her both personally and professionally. “Do you think Henry will ever ask me to marry him?” she asked, her hands suddenly coming up to wind around each other. “Has he said anything to you, Levi?”

Levi chortled and chuckled and laughed. “Oh, I’m not telling you that.”

“So that’s a yes.”

“I didn’t say that,” Levi said. “I will be in so much trouble, Angel. Don’t you dare tell him that I told you anything.”

“Well, you haven’t told me anything,” she said. “Tell me what?”

He mimed zipping his lips. “You’re gonna have a great weekend.” He chuckled as he left the conference room, and Angel had no choice but to head home and do what she’d said: pack for the weekend.

Angel wondered as she packed if she was choosing the appropriate things. Was Henry going to propose this weekend? And if so, wouldn’t she want to be wearing a specific dress so that when the pictures got taken—because his momma would take pictures—she would look exactly how she wanted to look?

Angel put a blue dress in her suitcase and then took it back out. “Henry’s favorite color is purple,” she said. She turned back to her closet muttering, “You can’t wear purple every single day, Angel.”

And she didn’t need to please Henry anyway. She ended up packing what she felt comfortable in, what would be appropriate for the rancher’s lunch, and for looking at properties, and for riding horses and doing equine therapy.

She zipped her bag closed and set it by her front door. When Henry came to get her in the morning, he’d load it in the back of his truck for her—which was exactly what happened.

“Ready?” Henry asked.

Angel had chosen a light lavender blouse for today, and she leaned into Henry’s strong chest. He wore his usual jeans, and today’s plaid shouted in red, white, and black. “I’m ready,” she said.

“There’s been a change of plans.” Henry’s eyes skittered around her house, never really landing on anything.

“There has?” Angel straightened and turned to get her purse. It went across her body, and she lifted it over her head while Henry continued to say nothing. “Why aren’t you talking?”

“Jerry said he couldn’t meet us this afternoon.” He cleared his throat. “He’s got a couple of places for us, but we have to look this morning.”

Angel faced him again, surprise mingling with her doubts. “Do we have time for that?”

“Yeah, if we leave right now.”

“Then, let’s leave right now.”

Henry nodded in a tight burst and spun to leave her house. She followed him, something about him just not quite right. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“I can text Alex about maybe being late.”

“Okay.” He moved to her door and opened it for her, and Angel smiled at him as she eased into his personal space.

“Hey,” she whispered, reaching up to hold his face in the palm of her hand. “Will you look at me, please?”

Henry did, blinking as if he’d just now realized where he was. “Sorry, I’m…tense right now.”

“I can see that.” She raised her eyebrows, a silent Why? passing between them.

“I don’t know why,” Henry said, but his shoulders relaxed, and the air whooshed out of his lungs. “Let’s just go, okay? I think this first place is really nice.”

Angel got in the truck, and he walked around the hood to get in beside her. “Which place is first?” she asked. He’d handled all of the communication with Jerry, and he simply forwarded them on to her. Angel loved spending her evenings looking at real estate, and she’d discovered a hidden love of floor plans that she didn’t know she had.

“It’s the Sagebrush one,” he said. “Remember we talked about the cute name of the lane?”

“Sagebrush Lane, yes.” She smiled as it came forward in her memory. “That’s the one that needs a brand-new kitchen.”

“Yeah, it sure does,” he said. “But I’ve never gutted a kitchen, and I think it would be fun.”

She giggled because gutting a kitchen was not something anyone would willingly put on their bucket list of “Fun Things To Do.”

They settled into the drive, and Angel decided not to pester him or pick at him with questions. His nerves didn’t ratchet up again until he started to slow down, about halfway between Stinnett and Three Rivers.

“It’s here on the right.”

“I’ve never seen anything here on the right before,” she said.

“There’s a road,” he said. “It goes out to a few homesteads.”

“So, ranches?” she asked.

“Well, you looked at it,” he said, his tone carrying a hint of irritation. “It’s kind of a mini-farm, but I wouldn’t really call it a ranch.”

She tapped on her phone as he made the turn, but she didn’t want to be looking at her device as she took in a possible place where she and Henry would live together, where they’d raise their family.

Trees grew up right next to the road as they did in many places in Texas, and she could only see the brown path ahead of her. It mirrored her life, and Angel simply held on as Henry drove down the dirt road.

“This place on the left is another house,” he said, indicating the branching dirt road with a nod of his cowboy hat. “I guess at one time a family owned all this land. They built several houses for their kids, and they all lived here and worked it.” The truck bumped over a large pothole, and Henry corrected the trajectory of the truck. “And then when their daddy died about fifteen years ago, they sectioned up the land according to where the houses are, and now there are six or seven out here.”

“So we wouldn’t be alone,” Angel said.

“No,” Henry said. “And it’s not a full ranch.”

“Is there room for your horse?”

“There’s room for horses, yes,” he said. “And chickens, and even some dairy cows, and some ducks and pigs if you want them.”

Angel glanced over at him. “No pigs. We’ve already talked about that.”

He grinned at her. “You’re right, you’re right.” It sure did soothe her to hear him laugh lightly. “No pigs.”

He went past another driveway on the left and then turned onto the first one that had come up on the right. “It’s this one,” he said. “It’s on the end, and there are a few more back in there, at least according to Jerry.”

They went around another bend in the road to the right and then to the left, and the house appeared. Angel pulled in a breath, because it was the most quintessential two-story farmhouse, something straight out of the pages of a children’s book.

“Look at that porch,” she said.

“Jerry said they just painted the house,” Henry said. “It’s blue now; can you tell?”

Angel leaned up and peered through the windshield. “It is blue,” she said, and that only made the house better. The porch spanned the entire width of the house, and she could see that it had a basement as well. “Three levels.”

“Plenty of room,” he said. “Five bedrooms already.”

She’d looked at the pictures, but everything felt different when she came face-to-face with property, and she could admit she’d semi-dismissed this one because of the kitchen. She reached for the door handle, a sense of wonder overcoming her. I love this house , she thought.

Henry had pulled up to a detached garage, which had a cement pad big enough for three cars. The third space extended past the garage, and Angel noted the extra parking. Of course, on land like this, they had plenty of parking for horse trailers or RVs.

“How big is it?” she asked, hugging herself, not quite daring to hope that this might be their place.

“It’s only six acres,” he said. “We don’t have to plant anything, but there’s plenty of room if you want to grow flowers or a vegetable garden.”

He came to her side and took her hand. “Jerry’s here already. Let’s go meet him.”

Angel hadn’t even seen Jerry, but he suddenly stood on the porch. She noticed his red truck as they went by it, something she also hadn’t seen. The grass in front of the house needed to be watered, and it sure seemed like no one had lived there for a while.

“How long has it been empty?” she asked as she crossed the lawn and started for the steps.

“A few months,” Jerry said. “The husband got called to a job in California, and they had to go.”

So it’s wild , Angel thought, and it kind of matched how she felt inside—and her relationship with Henry. As she climbed the sturdy steps to the porch, the strangest sense of coming home lighted on Angel’s shoulders.

She looked at Henry, and he looked at her, and she didn’t have to say anything. She hadn’t even seen the house, but it possessed a spirit that spoke to hers. As they both turned to Jerry, he said, “Let me show you through it.”

“All right,” Angel said.

“This door is solid oak,” Jerry said as he moved over to the front door. “It’s a little bit taller than normal, as you can see. Custom for the house.” He continued to talk about the flooring, the new paint, how the kitchen needed to be updated and remodeled. But everything about the place charmed Angel.

It had a beautiful front living room where she could have acquaintances and friends come to sit and visit. Or she could simply sit there and look out the big window at the trees waving their limbs to whoever passed by, or the stars as they came out to greet the night.

From there, a hall moved past the steps that went downstairs, and Angel brought up the rear as they entered a large family room. Everything was empty, so the space looked huge, and that blended into a space for a dining room table and then the kitchen.

“Their plan,” Jerry said. “Was to push this wall out a little further into the backyard.” He peered through the window over the sink. “You’d still have plenty of room for a trampoline, playsets, dogs, or chickens, but you could double the size of your kitchen.”

“Hm,” Henry said, mirroring what Angel would’ve done if she could’ve gotten her voice to work.

The master suite sat tucked in the front corner of the house with big windows and big closets and a great big bathroom.

“They’ve redone this,” Angel said, taking in the thick carpet beneath her feet and the high-end fixtures in the bathroom.

“Yep, they redid this,” Jerry agreed. “It used to be a bedroom attached to an office, and now it’s just one big bedroom, one big bath, his and hers closets.”

Angel looked at Henry again, and this time he smiled at her. They went through the upstairs, which held bedrooms and bathrooms, and the basement, which contained another large family room, a tiny kitchenette in the corner, and more bedrooms and another bathroom.

“Plenty of storage,” Jerry said. “And you have a walk-out basement here as well.” He unlocked the door and stepped through it, and sure enough, it led onto a back patio that was sheltered by the deck above.

“That deck comes off the dining room,” Jerry said, looking up. “So you’ve got some outdoor space up there and down here, and then you go right up these steps to the yard.”

Some rock steps had been built into the earth, and Angel let Henry and Jerry go ahead of her as she drank everything in. Then she also took the five steps up and stood in the backyard. Trees greeted her from the sides, with a great big copse of them right in the middle of the lawn.

“They specifically left that clump of trees to provide shade for the house,” Jerry said. “As your backyard faces west, and it can get hot.”

“I love it,” Angel said. She blinked, and suddenly the blank canvas in her mind that God had refused to paint on came to life. She could see chicken coops, a storage shed next to the weathered barn that stood there. It had been painted red in the past but needed to be redone. Her quaint, personal farm life came to fruition right in front of her, and Angel wanted it badly. She squeezed Henry’s hand just as Jerry’s phone rang.

“I’m gonna let you guys look around for a little bit,” he said. “I’ve got to take this call. Feel free to explore out here or go back in the house. I’ll meet you out front in a few minutes.”

“Okay,” Henry said, and with that, Jerry answered the call and headed for the steps that went up to the deck. He climbed them, saying things that Angel didn’t hear, and went back into the house.

She stood on the back lawn of the house she wanted. And while it wasn’t her dream house yet, it sat in the perfect place. Only forty minutes to from Lone Star, it had great views, big trees, and plenty of potential.

“How far do you think it is to Three Rivers from here?” she asked.

“Well, we could take the road to Stinnett and then up to that new road,” he said. “I’m guessing forty-five minutes. If we need to get into town, it’s probably only fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes to Three Rivers,” she confirmed.

They walked through the barn, which needed work. It needed something and someone to exist for. But Angel still loved it. She found the bare vegetable garden beside that, and while she’d never had much of a green thumb, Angel suddenly wanted to try.

They crossed the back lawn again and took the steps to the deck, which needed to be restained. Henry noted that and said, “I did this once with my daddy. He’ll come help.”

They re-entered the kitchen, and Angel felt like neither one of them wanted to say what they really thought first. She looked at him, noting that he was scuffing his toe along a piece of the floor that probably needed to be replaced.

“Henry,” she said, her courage gathering in her soul. “I love this place. I want this house.”

“We have two more we can look at this morning,” he said.

“I don’t want to.” She shook her head. “No, I don’t want to. This is it, Henry. This is our place .” She rushed to him and planted her palms against his chest. “Can’t you feel it?”

He gazed down at her, everything that had been so tight and tense since he’d shown up that morning softening. “I can feel it.”

Joy burst through Angel. “We’re going to buy this house.”

Henry’s smile curved up, and he stepped away from her and into the kitchen. He opened a drawer, and when he lifted his hand, he held a glittering diamond ring. Angel sucked in a breath. Where had that come from?

Henry looked at the ring and then came around the counter. He dropped to both knees and held it up, his expression earnest, open, and vulnerable as he gazed at her. “Every morning I wake up in my bed alone starts a terrible day.”

He grinned at her, some of his cowboy swagger returning to his eyes. “Because I want to start my day with you at my side. I want to watch out for you, and I want you to watch out for me. This is our place , and we’ve worked really hard to get here. Will you marry me, and live here with me, and build your life here together with me?”

Angel nodded as tears pricked her eyes. “Yes,” she choked out. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

“Come on over here, then,” he said, and she took the two steps to be closer to him so that he could slide the diamond onto her ring finger. She gazed at it with pure wonder, sure that this had just happened to someone else, and she was only watching it.

And yet, the weight of the gold band on her finger made it bend, and she felt Henry’s lips as they pressed over the diamond, kissing it into her hand. He looked up at her again and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her into him. He laid his cheek against her stomach and said, “I love you so much. I am going to work so hard to be the best husband.”

Angel held his head in her arms and said, “I love you too, Henry.”