For once, Lori didn’t correct him on the cat’s name. “I don’t think she feels very good tonight. But we’re just going to cuddle it out.”

Grayson sat beside them on the couch and ran a large hand over the cat’s skinny frame before placing it over Lori’s. They stayed just like that until long past the moment the cat fell peacefully asleep—the loner and the two strays who had refused to let him be alone.

Chapter Twenty-one

Early the next morning, Grayson forced himself to get up with the sun, despite having the most beautiful girl in the world in his bed, warm and soft and always ready for him. But when he went out into the kitchen to pound a quick cup of coffee, he immediately knew something was wrong.

It was Mo. She wasn’t making her little snuffling noises. She wasn’t blinking her eyes open to acknowledge his presence for a split second before going back to sleep away the rest of the morning.

She was gone.

His heart broke as he finally lost the furry friend who had been with him every step of the way as he built a new life on the farm. At the same time, he’d come to accept life and death for his animals. It was nature. It was the cycle of things.

But Lori was going to be absolutely devastated.

Taking a blanket off the couch, he carefully bundled up the cat in it. He could bury Mo before Lori woke up and spare her the painful good-bye, but he knew that would be worse.

Carrying the cat in his arms, he walked back into the bedroom. He simply stared at Lori for a few seconds, drinking in the sight of her in his bed, her dark hair spread out across the pillows, her beautiful face calm, her endlessly energetic body finally still for a short while as she slept. Her mouth was tilted up slightly at the corners and he hoped she was dreaming of him.

Crap. He couldn’t do this to her, couldn’t wake her from her happy dreams and break her heart. He was moving away to deal with the cat himself when she stirred.

“Grayson?”

He swallowed hard before turning back to face her. She immediately noticed the bundle in his arms.

“Is it Sweetpea?” Lori’s voice was surprisingly steady.

Grayson, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to find his voice as he nodded instead.

Silently, she drew back the covers and got dressed. She wasn’t crying, but he could feel sadness radiating out from her with every single movement. Together, they walked outside, both of them automatically heading past the barn. Lori walked over to the spot with the most sweeping views of his land.

“Here. Sweetpea should be right here. Right by the barn, where you found her.”

He handed Mo to her and got the shovel. It didn’t take long to dig the hole and, soon, Lori was kneeling and placing the cat into it. One tear slid down her cheek, and then another.

“Thank you for making me feel so welcome here, Sweetpea. I love you.”

Somehow, just barely, Grayson kept his own tears from falling as Lori stepped back and he shoveled the dirt into place. She found a rock and some flowers and laid them down over the grave.

When she looked back at him, her face awash with tears and her shoulders bowed with grief, Grayson finally pulled her into his arms the way he’d wanted to from the start. They stood like that for a long time, until she started shivering in his arms. Gently, he brought her back inside, Lori crying harder with every step away from the cat’s grave.

“Love is too hard.” She fit the words in between sobs. “I’m too weak for love.” She shook her head against his chest. “I’m never going to love anything ever again. Never. Ever. Again. Not anyone or anything.”

Grayson pulled her closer, held her tighter. He’d known she would cry and he would have done anything in the world to make it so she didn’t have to.

But she had to. Because she had loved his balding, foul-breathed cat with everything she had.

He knew now that this was how Lori Sullivan loved. All the way. Every single time.

Even when she knew that her love wouldn’t be able to save anyone or anything.

“You have the softest heart of anyone I’ve ever known,” he said, whispering the words into her hair as he rocked her. “And it’s exactly what makes you so strong.”

And it was why he loved her. One of the reasons, anyway. Because he also loved her bratty comebacks. He loved the way she put her entire self behind whatever she was doing, even if she had no idea what she was doing and was getting it all wrong. He loved the way she danced as if she was connected to the clouds and the sun and the rainbows.

And he loved that she’d stormed into his life and turned everything upside down before he ever had a chance to stop her.

Maybe it wasn’t fair to lay this on her now, to combine love and death into one moment. But if there was one thing Grayson had learned during the past three years, it was that life wasn’t fair. The weather could take out his crops overnight. A healthy animal could fall sick so suddenly that there was no time to call the vet.

And a beautiful girl could show up on his doorstep and change his life with no warning at all, leaving him no time to figure out how to guard his heart from her.

“I love you.”

She was still sobbing, her tears soaking his shirt, as she lifted her head to face him. Her eyes were red and her nose was running...and she’d never looked more beautiful to him.

“What did you just say?”

It figured that when he finally lost his heart again, it would be like this. To a woman who had driven him crazy from the moment he set eyes on her.

“I said…” He paused so that she wouldn’t miss it this time. “I. Love. You.”

Her sobs receded as she blinked at him in shock. “You love me?”

She said it as though it was the craziest idea in the world. As though there was no way he could possibly love her.

Frustration—the familiar frustration he’d felt since that first day, when she’d told him she was going to be the best farmhand he’d ever had—started to eat at him.

“Yes.” He tried not to growl the words at her. “I love you.”

He waited for her to smile. To throw her arms around him. To declare her love right back to him.

Instead, she said, “Are you sure you’re not just saying it because of Sweetpea? Because if this is some crazy idea you have to make me feel better...”

Damn it. Couldn’t a guy declare his love to a girl without getting twenty questions thrown back at him, not to mention heaps of disbelief?

Not trusting himself to speak this time—he’d yell at her and then she’d yell back and then the next thing you knew, there’d be doors slamming, and none of that would be fair when she was still sad about the cat—he picked her up and headed toward the bedroom.