That part wouldn’t surprise him.

  “But even being home...I couldn’t find anything I wanted. Not to eat. Not to do. I worked. Damned hard. I had a plan.

  “I just didn’t care.”

  The silence behind her was acute. For all she knew, Jordon had quietly walked out on her. She didn’t check.

  If he didn’t have what it took to get them to a different place, then he didn’t. She couldn’t blame him.

  Any more than she could blame herself for who she was.

  “My dad was failing...”

  He’d known that. Had actually used that in his plea to get her to leave, saying that the only reason her father was still trying to keep the ranch going was because of her. That if she’d go, she’d let him off the hook and he could sell the ranch and use the profits to move into a really nice independent living place and take it easy.

  He hadn’t known her dad as well as she’d thought he had.

  “He knew he wasn’t going to be around forever. So one day he went out with his truck and came back with a horse trailer. And one horse.”

  With the brush in one hand, she smoothed her other lovingly against Brilliant’s neck.

  “Brilliant,” she said. And then, “This girl saved my life.”

  She turned then, half expecting Jordon to be gone. Felt a flare of intensity when she saw him still standing there, right where she’d last seen him.

  His gaze moving from the horse to her. Back and forth.

  “If you’re trying to tell me that this is the life you need, Mia, you don’t have to,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I’m in the process of getting to what I wanted to tell you.” She spoke directly to him. Then turned back to Brilliant for a second before leaving the horse’s side, returning the brush to where it belonged and leaning her shoulder against the stall, facing Jordon.

  “I didn’t love Shelter Valley more than I loved you.” That’s what he deserved to know. Her truth where they were concerned.

  She couldn’t be anything to him without being honest.

  “I couldn’t leave, not without hating myself. It wasn’t about the town, Jordon, the place.”

  His gaze broke from hers, but came back almost immediately, a bit more shadowed than it had been, and she added, “I love it here more than anywhere else on earth. I feel...right...here. Like I belong. But it was the people I couldn’t leave. My father, mostly, that I couldn’t leave.”

  Jordon’s arms crossed, and she heard how that sounded.

  “Not because I loved him more or was too much a baby to leave my parent. But because he’d given my brother and sister and me his whole life, Jordon. Sara and Lincoln had both left him. They could because I was still home. But who’d be there for him if I left?

  “Moving him off the ranch would have killed him. Not that it would have come to that. He’d have refused to leave. I never understood how you missed that point. He’d have died alone with the house falling apart around him. While I was, what—off in New York having sex and babies and what else, Jordon? What life was there for me? You’d be off at your dinners and business parties and functions and I’d be...what? Sitting there feeling like scum because I was thinking of myself and what I wanted and letting my father slowly die alone? Because I’d have nothing else there. You didn’t figure a place for my daily life, in your plans.”

  And...there was more.

  “The ranch was my father’s legacy,” she said then. “And mine, too. I needed to use my college degree to make a living out of it, just like you needed to use yours on Wall Street.”

  Telling him about Brilliant, having him meet her mare...it was going someplace. Jordon needed to know how much she’d loved him.

  He wasn’t saying anything.

  His chin was working though. She could only guess what he’d heard in the words she’d said.

  “I listened to you back then,” he finally spoke, his voice as soft as hers had been. “I just thought I had a clearer picture of how things would work out best.”

  There was no fight in him. No defensiveness.

  Which surprised her. And knocked her heart around some, too.

  “I didn’t factor in your father, or my mother, either. I thought about us. Heading out into the world to start our lives together.”

  “To start your life...” she had to point out. He’d left no room for her life. Not anywhere in his plans.

  “And if we’d stayed here...it would have been your life,” he answered back.

  He was right. To a point. She’d envisioned him in Phoenix, working just as he had the past couple of weeks. She’d made room for his life.

  But didn’t say so. Because the room she’d made—it hadn’t been the life he’d wanted.

  “So, we were right to split up,” she said then. Finding some kind of peace in the moment. There was sadness, too.

  But if it got them to the future—to a friendship that could be comfortable while they raised their daughters together, albeit apart, too—then a little sadness was a small price to pay.

  * * *

  Jordon didn’t approach the horse. After an evening with Mia’s family, he wasn’t feeling all that fond of himself and had a feeling the horse would know it.

  It clearly knew her.

  “You didn’t beg me to stay.”

  The words were juvenile. Probably a stupid thing to say.

  First, “You loved Shelter Valley more than you loved me.” And now that? Where was this stuff coming from?

  “How could I beg you to give up everything you wanted?”

  “I wanted you.”

  “Just not as much as you wanted New York.”

  There was no recrimination. Just a search for truth that would put the past to rest. That’s what they needed.

  “New York was my future in terms of having money to provide. To live the type of life I wanted my family to be able to live. A home that was big enough for sleepovers, and not in constant need of repair. Money in the bank to pay bills and buy groceries without having to worry, every single month, if there’d be enough. And on the months that there wasn’t, settling for eating from a big pot of homemade tomato soup until the next paycheck.”

  He regretted the words as soon as he said them. Had never, in his life, said them before.

  “I had no idea... I knew your house was small, but I never thought anything of it. It had been just the two of you. And yeah, it had needed some work, but so had the farm. A ton of it. I’d thought we were alike in that way. That coming from beat-up homes was part of what drew us together. Something we had in common. But I never had to worry about a full kitchen. Or paying bills. It was more that my father couldn’t keep up with the farm duties. Acreage was going without being planted. The tractor was failing and it was a vicious cycle, but...”

  They could always sell the farm. Which would have made them, if not rich, at least comfortable. Which was why it had made perfect sense to Jordon that they do so. He was a finance man. A guy who looked at assets and knew how best to turn them into security and more assets.

  Just as his mother had made the tomatoes she grew into sustenance to keep them alive until there was money to buy groceries.

  “I never told anyone about how hard it was,” he said then. “Mom and I never talked about it, either. We just dealt with it.”

  He hadn’t said anything because he’d been ashamed.

  And wasn’t fond of that point.

  Nor did he share it.

  “I’ll bet she was thrilled when you bought her the condo on the river,” she said, letting him know that his mother had done as he’d suspected, given Mia a rundown on her life.

  “She’s never said one way or the other. Truth be told, I don’t think it mattered to her all that much. She just wanted to be close to me.”

  That had been another eye-opener. And yet, none of it changed much.

  He was who he was. He had to provide for the future.

  And his skill set, his drive, his passion, his talent, was trading up, making more out of less.

  Mia straightened. Said good-night to her horse and led them quietly out of the barn and into the night.

  Apparently, they were done.

  He wasn’t ready but was relieved just the same.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Mia wasn’t surprised when Jordon texted on Monday to say he’d booked a flight to New York leaving Tuesday morning. He hoped to be back by the weekend, and then fly with Layla and the kids back to the East Coast that Sunday. It made sense, he said, to have his mother on the trip with them.

  She responded with supportive remarks and fought the instinct to go hug her girls to her and never let go. Or hide them someplace just until the threat of their leaving passed.

  The threat wasn’t going to pass.

  And even if she had full custody of the girls and could force the situation to be what she wanted, she’d still send them to spend good portions of time with their father in New York.

  It was an odd situation, but the girls needed both of them. And they were going to make it work.

  Yes, it would probably be best for Ruby and Violet if she and Jordon could just be a couple again, get married and live happily ever after. In one place.

  But she and Jordon were too different. One or the other of them would have to completely give up their sense of self in order for them to live in one place, which would lead to unhappiness, at the very least. And an unhappy home wouldn’t be good for the twins. Or worst case, it would lead to another breakup between them and that would most definitely be bad for their daughters because it would preclude the friendship they were forging.

  It was all happening for the best.

  And they were going to make it work.

  On and off that day, she played the litany over in her mind. Watching the girls swimming in the pool, putting their whole heads underwater. Leading them around the stable on the ranch’s smallest, gentlest horses. She made a silent promise to her sweet little ones that she and Jordon would not let them down.

  Their lives wouldn’t be cookie-cutter perfect. But they’d be well loved. And well-rounded, too. Hopefully gaining confidence in themselves and their ability to make their own ways in the world as they flew back and forth across the country and grew up with two different lifestyles.

  Some would judge. Some would find them incredibly lucky with all the opportunities they’d be given.

  It was harder to send them off for bath and story time Monday night, knowing that their time with her had an end date and that it would be months, perhaps many of them, before she got to read to them at night again.

  Still, when Jordon got home and stopped at the house to pick up the girls on his way to the cabin where Layla was making their dinner, she sent them off with a wave and smile.

  Reminding herself that a couple of weeks ago, she’d not only have been dining without them, but she hadn’t even known she had children, let alone that she was going to get to be a mother to them.

  Reminding herself not to be selfish. No one got to have it all. That would leave someone else with nothing.

  A quote she’d heard along the way. Accepted. But didn’t really like.

  To her way of thinking, everyone should have everything. She looked at life in abundance, not scarcity.

  She needed to get into town. The Shelter Valley women’s group—a tradition started by the town’s mayor when Mia was just a kid—was having dinner on campus that night. She’d never actually attended the unofficial night out designed to accommodate any women in town who wanted to give or take some sisterly uplifting, but she’d been invited many times. By several people, including the mayor herself, Becca Parsons.

  That night, Mia went. And was shocked when she walked into the catered event and was immediately swamped by women she’d known her whole life. All clamoring over to her. To congratulate her. Hug her. Offer to babysit. Or to commiserate during the long months the girls weren’t with her. There were questions in the eyes of many.

  None were asked.

  And as tears filled her eyes, Mia knew she’d waited too long to avail herself of the bounty her life had to offer her—and others. Maybe she’d hadn’t actually opened back up her heart as much as she’d thought she had.

  But she would.

  And keep it open, too.

  Jordon might have broken her heart, but she’d been the one who’d failed to let it fully heal. She’d blamed him when the fault hadn’t really been his. Other than leading her to believe that he was okay with a life in Shelter Valley. But even that, he hadn’t been overtly lying. He’d been a kid believing that he saw a light she’d see eventually. He’d been keeping the light burning for both of them, to his way of thinking.

  And she’d let his actions blow her light out.

  * * *

  Jordon had to talk to Mia. He couldn’t take the leap—introduce his New York life to the imminent advent of his daughters into his world—without being fully honest with Mia.

  They had to know, once and for all, that they could follow through on their new life plans. He was afraid that if he texted her, she’d simply tell him she was working, busy, whatever. Or, because the girls were at his cabin asleep, not with her, she’d simply fail to respond at all.

  Ditto a phone call.

  As soon as his mother settled down with the book she was reading, he placed the baby monitor beside her and told her he was going for a walk.

  The long look she gave him, the softening in her gaze, reached out to him. But she said nothing. Just nodded.

  Mia’s office light wasn’t on. Only a light over the kitchen sink was visible.

  Jordon checked out the garage, looking in the window to see her car not there.

  And sat down on her back porch step to wait for her. Not even sorry for what he was doing.

  She didn’t want him figuring out what was best all on his own, then she was going to have to talk to him.

  He saw her headlights first, coming straight up the drive instead of turning to go up to the cabins. Didn’t move from his position on the steps as she turned, and then moved on into the garage door that had just risen on its own.

  Still in the dress pants, shirt, loosened tie and shoes he’d worn to work, and to another gathering that afternoon, he left his elbows where they were, resting on his knees, and waited.

  Watched her leave the garage and head his way. He didn’t know if she’d seen him. Didn’t much care.

  She’d know he was there soon enough.

  He didn’t stand to greet her. They were on her property. He wasn’t the greeter.

  Nor did he want a standoff.

  He wasn’t there to fight.

  She looked different. She was wearing a black short-sleeved dress that fell halfway down her thighs, leaving plenty exposed to him, and black flip-flops with lots of silver bling. He focused on the bling. Cowgirl bling, he told himself. Like the belt buckle he’d seen her wear when she’d ridden horses in college.

  Her hair, wild as always, seemed to purposefully tease him as she came closer.

  She’d seen him. She couldn’t not. She was staring right at him.

  She didn’t slow down. Just came right up and took a seat on the long step beside him. Leaving a good foot between them.

  Was way too much space. And not nearly enough.

  She said nothing.

  He’d called the meeting. She was apparently content to wait for him to begin. Not even questioning his right to have done so in the first place.

  Like they were beyond that.

  He hoped so.

  “My response to the court on your behalf has been filed,” he started in. “I explained that the entire idea to donate the material to make embryos had been yours and stated that the Robinsons had no way to get in touch with you because you chose to donate anonymously so that Madeline never had another woman in mind as she was growing her babies. So that she felt they were fully hers.”

  It was the reason she’d given him, and while he hadn’t quite grasped the magnitude of what she’d been saying, he’d never forgotten it, either.

  Mia sat quietly, her arms around her knees.

  “Lastly, I asked the court to grant your wish for visitation rights and substantiated the request with examples from the past couple of weeks that exemplify why the girls need you in their lives.”

  She hadn’t dropped her arms. If anything, she was hugging her legs more tightly. But she’d turned her head to look at him, her expression made stark by the shadows of night blending with moonlight and security lights in the distance.

  He could almost feel the deep breath she took, and when her jaw moved, to speak, he figured, he said, “There’s more.”

  He couldn’t be sidetracked by anything that might come out of her mouth.

  And chances were, no matter what she said, he’d be sidetracked.

  Mia had a way of doing that to him. Taking him on her verbal journeys and tying him up in ways that were detrimental to the platonic friendship they were going to have for the rest of their lives.

  And to get there...

  To stay there...

  “I told you that partially so that you understand that I’m one hundred percent committed to making this work,” he said. “Because the other thing I have to tell you might make you doubt me.”

  Oh no. Hadn’t meant to say that. Couldn’t rewind.

  Nothing to do but go forward.

  “I love you.”

  Stark. Ungarnished.

  Truth.

  * * *

  Mia’s skin chilled as her body heated up.