Page 45 of Promised to the Cowboy

“I am.”

“How?”

“Because this family adopts people,” she says with a smile. “Not just here at Stoneridge, either. Over at Havenridge too. Shay, Luna, and Kitty all arrived carrying more hurt than hope, and Henry, Angus, and Tom gave them somewhere safe to land. Delaney found that with Daniel. I found it with Ethan.”

I blink. “All of you?”

Jenna laughs. “Yeah. Believe it or not, Ethan literally found me in a ditch.”

She takes a sip of water, her smile softening. “Maggie fed me. Delaney organized my life before I’d even figured out where I’d put my toothbrush. Daniel quietly made room for me, like there’d never been any question I belonged here. And Ethan...” She looks down into her glass, the smile turning unmistakably fond. “Ethan loved me.”

She looks back at me. “By the time I realized what had happened, it was already too late.”

“Too late?”

“Yeah.” Her gaze drifts toward the ranch house. “This place had already become home.”

I look back across the pasture. “I don’t know how to do home.”

“No one does the first time.” She looks at me, her brown eyes steady. “They’re doing the same for you, Evie. They already have.”

I turn my empty glass between my hands. “That’s the scary part.”

Jenna tilts her head.

“Not because I don’t want it.” I smile, but it feels fragile. “Because I do.”

Maggie left a pitcher of iced water on the porch table, and Jenna quietly tops up both our glasses.

My gaze drifts across the pasture to where Captain Winky is grazing with the others. “I’ve spent so long making sure I could leave that I don’t know what it looks like to stay. If Gabrielwantsme to stay.”

She studies me for a second. “Oh, he wants you to stay, Evie.”

“Because we’re having a baby.”

Jenna’s expression softens immediately. “Oh, honey.”

“He says all the right things.”

“Because he means them.”

“How do you know?”

“Because that’s Gabriel,” she says, like it’s obvious. “Before you turned up here, we all knew something had happened to him.”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

“He wasn’t himself.” She shrugs. “Not that Gabriel’s exactly an open book on a good day. But he was... somewhere else.”

“Somewhere else?”

“He’d drift off in the middle of conversations. Stand staring out across the pasture like he’d forgotten why he’d gone outside. Ethan asked him what was wrong.” She laughs softly. “Gabriel said, ‘Nothing.’”

“And you believed him?”

“Not for a second.” She shakes her head. “Then you showed up.”

“Pregnant.”