BootsandPromises by MylaJackson

Boots and Promises
    Ella Lang stood in the bedroom doorway
of her tiny Manhattan apartment, staring at the man she loved more than life.
    Jesse James O’Brien lay spread out naked
across the sheets. Six feet three inches of muscled cowboy, his feet hanging
over the end of the double bed, the most gorgeous specimen of masculinity a
woman could ever hope for.
    The night had been grueling at the
theater. Nothing had gone right. Stage props hadn’t cooperated. Ella had not
one, but three, wardrobe malfunctions and missed one of her cues.
    Her focus hadn’t been on her
performance, so much as on this man, this fish-out-of-water cowboy who had no
business moving to New York just because she had.
    Hindsight being twenty-twenty, Ella
knew she should never have let him come. He belonged in Texas on the Rockin’ O
Ranch with his father and brothers and sister, not cooped up in a postage-stamp
apartment, searching for work in a city that preferred celebrities over honest,
hard-working cowboys.
    God, he looked so peaceful, lying
sprawled across the bed.
    Ella didn’t want to wake him.
Instead, she eased around the corner of the bed and entered the tiny bathroom,
peeled off her clothes and showered away the residual stage makeup and
hairspray that was as much a part of a performer’s life as her voice and
acting. She towel-dried her hair and debated slipping into a nightgown or just
sleeping naked like Jesse. After only a moment’s hesitation, her pussy growing
warm and wet, she opted for naked. She hung the towel on the towel bar and
turned to switch off the light. At that moment, she noticed the blue jeans
hanging on a hook on the back of the bathroom door.
    Jesse’s jeans.
    She lifted them down and hugged
them to her chest, the scent of Jesse and denim reminding her of Texas and the
home she’d left to follow her dreams. Visions of wide-open spaces and fields of
fresh green hay came to mind, kicking her in the gut with a truckload of
homesickness. Refusing to give into the ready tears building in her eyes, Ella
folded the jeans over her arm, intent on hanging them in the closet in the
bedroom.
    Something dropped from one of the
pockets and bounced off her foot, causing her to glance down. On the floor
beside her lay a tiny box.
    Heart thumping, Ella bent to
retrieve it, her knees nearly giving way as she realized what it was. The
little blue package with a pretty white bow had bold black letters spelling Tiffany
& Co written in neat script across the top.
    Ella’s heartbeat skittered to a
halt and her hand shook so badly she dropped the box again. This time, as she
lifted it, she couldn’t resist. She had to see what was inside. She pressed an ear
to the door. No sounds emanated from the other side as Jesse slept on.
    After  slipping the bow off the
edge, she removed the box lid. Inside was a black ring box. She lifted it from
the blue packaging and pushed open the lid. Nestled against midnight-black
velvet was a breathtakingly beautiful, marquis-shaped diamond on a simple
white-gold band.
    Her breath caught, joy filling her
heart so full her chest hurt.
    Jesse was going to ask her to marry
him. As the reality and enormity of what he was about to do sank in, she sat
down hard on the floor, the tiles cool against her naked bottom. The cold
against her skin spread quickly, shadowing the initial joy.
    Ella had waited so long for Jesse
to ask her to marry him. Before she landed a significant role on Broadway, she
wouldn’t have thought twice about giving up all her dreams to get hitched and
stay in Texas, raising horses and babies. Now…she had too much invested in NYC.
She couldn’t go back. Not yet. Part of her would regret not fulfilling her
life’s ambitions, always wondering if she’d made the right decision, never
seeing her name, Ella Lang, on a playbill or in neon lights across a marquee.
    If this ring was what she thought it
was, Jesse was going to ask her to marry him. And he'd probably insist on
staying in this