Unbreak My Heart (Rough Riders Legacy #1)

“Good. Because there is one guaranteed way to make sure you believe this is forever.”


Those brown eyes shone with so much love I was nearly blinded by it. “How?”

“Marry me.”

Holy crap. Do not ask him if he’s serious. My mouth had gone as dry as the desert. I swallowed hard and attempted to keep a light tone. “If I said yes, would you stop calling me McKay?”

He shrugged. “I’ll probably still call you that when we’re at home, screwing around and stuff, because it’s a habit. But I would expect you, as my wife, to share my last name.”

My heart felt like it might pound out of my chest. “If I said yes, could we have a small wedding with just my dad and Ree, my grandparents, Rory and Dalton, with Lu and Raj standing up for us?” I frowned. “But the McKay-kateers would be ticked if they didn’t get invited.”

“No more than that,” he warned. “I’d be thrilled if we didn’t have a spectacle with the rest of the McKay family.”

“Would you wear your dress uniform?”

Boone grinned. “Like that, do you?”

“You know I love it. You know when I see you in it I’m so…proud of the boy who left everything behind to make his life on his own terms.”

His eyes softened. “Will you please say yes to becoming my wife?”

“Sierra West sounds pretty awesome, actually. But maybe you should talk to my dad first.”

He leveled me with that I’ve-got-a-secret-smile. “I already did.”

“When?”

“When I signed that damn stalking contract. I told him I was gonna marry you.”

Cocky bastard. “What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Son, I knew when you left her you had no choice. I also knew you’d be back for her someday. Guess that day is here.’”

My dad. Such an insightful, sentimental, awesome dork.

I felt my smile fade.

Boone was right there. “What?”

“It’s going to be hard giving Dad my notice for DPM.”

“It’s going to be hard giving the CEO notice because he’ll have a helluva hard time replacing his top executive and he knows it. Your dad will be so damn proud of his daughter for the impressive opportunity she’s earned.” He kissed me. “Keeping that distinction will make it easier for you.”

“You’re probably right.” I grinned at him. “This is a much better outcome than the last time we were in this clearing.”

“Agreed.” Boone’s eyes took on a wicked gleam. “But I would like to revisit that idea about fucking you in the wildflowers under a moonlit sky sometime.”

I whapped him on the chest. “I believe I stated that much more romantically.”

“You were a virgin. Now you know that down and dirty can be just as romantic as slow and sweet. I’ll give you a detailed reminder of both ways later.”

I shivered.

Boone rubbed his hands up and down the outsides of my arms. “It’s getting dark. We should go.”

“I’ll meet you at my dad’s house.”

“Hold on.” He crushed me to his chest and brushed his mouth across my ear. “I love you, Sierra McKay. I couldn’t have said that to you seven years ago because I didn’t know what it meant. Now I do. All because of you. So will you please agree to marry me before I lose my fucking mind?”

“Yes.”

He smiled against my cheek. “A McKay marrying a West. That’ll be an interesting twist for us to detail in the family archives.”





One year later…

“Ladies and gentleman, we’ve begun our descent into Phoenix. Winds are calm so we should have you on the ground in twenty minutes.”

I half-listened as the flight attendant blathered on with the same spiel I’d heard a million times in the past year. Okay, not quite a million, but some travel days it felt as if I lived on a damn airplane. I’d racked up so many frequent flyer miles that I usually got upgraded to first class. My favorite part of that perk wasn’t the free booze but being one of the first passengers to deplane. It seemed especially urgent today. I’d already visualized how fast I could get my roller bag out of the overhead compartment—I never checked a bag anymore—so I could hustle off the jet bridge and through the terminal until I reached the main level where he’d be waiting to welcome me home.

Home.

Finally.

For good.

While the people I’d met, the places I’d been and the sheer array of knowledge I’d amassed had changed my life, my worldview and my goals, the travel schedule the last year defined brutal. I’d kept track of the number of nights I’d spent in my own bed. Sixty. Out of three hundred and sixty-five.

Three hundred and five nights apart from him.

No, that wasn’t right. We’d spent a week together in Hawaii on our honeymoon. We’d spent another week together in Fort Hood.

Still…two hundred and ninety-one days apart was a lot of lonely nights.