Texas Tango: Texas Montgomery Mavericks, Book 2 by Cynthia D’Alba

her eyes for a moment then opened them to meet his gaze. “No. This is truly the only thing I can do for her before she’s gone. If she wanted anything else, I’d get it for her. You must understand. When your wife was ill, didn’t you feel the same?”
    At the mention of Susan, Travis’s chest squeezed and all the breath rushed from his lungs. She was right. The memory of those final days flashed through his mind. The sorrow. The desperation. The days of trying to prepare himself for something there was no preparation for. He gave her hand a little squeeze.
    “Near the end, when I knew we’d done everything medically we could for Susan, I would drive sixty miles every other day to buy her a particular ice cream I could only get at one store. Sixty miles there and sixty miles back.” He smiled at the memory. “I even bought a specially equipped freezer to keep in the truck so the ice cream wouldn’t melt before I could get it home. A couple of weeks before I lost her, I bought her a white mare. We’d always talked about raising pure white horses.” He dropped his gaze to their interlocked fingers. “It was silly, but I thought if she saw the horse that maybe…” He shook his head. “I don’t know. That seeing the horse from our plans would give her the will to live. Desperate thinking by a man too young to experience that kind of loss.” He squeezed her fingers. “I think now I finally understand why I agreed to your crazy plan. I understand your need. I do.”
    She sighed. “Thank you.”
    When she began to pull her fingers from his, he stopped her. “You have to get used to me touching you for this to be believable.”
    “You’re right.” She resettled her fingers between his.
    His gut pulled taut at the sight of their linked hands. He’d spent more intimate time with Caroline over the past five days than he had in the past five months. He’d always found her physically attractive, but now he was drawn to her on an unanticipated emotional level also. An unexpected heat flared in his chest and he found his breathing picking up speed. “So, you’re going to go ahead as planned?”
    She nodded.
    He squeezed her fingers before pulling his hand free. “Then I have something for you.”
    He stood and rummaged in his flight bag stored in the overhead bin until his fingers touched a velvet box. He pulled it out and retook his seat. Caroline gave him a quizzical look. He popped open the box and displayed three rings. The middle ring supported a large emerald-cut diamond solitaire highlighted on each side by two rows of diamond baguettes. It was flanked on the right by a gold man’s wedding band and on the left by a complimentary wedding band with two rows of baguette diamonds. The wedding band was designed to fit under the diamond solitaire to complete the set.
    “You just happened to have these lying around your house?” Caroline asked, incongruity tempering her tone.
    “Well, my safe actually. The rings belonged to my dad’s mother. I inherited the set, but Susan didn’t like them. Thought they looked too old fashioned, so I locked them away. Hadn’t looked at them for years. I’d forgotten how much I liked the engagement ring.”
    “It is beautiful.” She took the ring box from him. Turning the box from side-to-side, she admired the rings from every angle. As the sun streamed through the small porthole window and shot through the diamond, primary colors sparkled off the bottom of the overhead bin. “Absolutely stunning.” She looked at him. “Are you sure you want to use these?”
    “Did you bring rings?”
    “No. I ran out of time with getting everything else done before leaving.”
    “Then…” He pulled the engagement ring from the box. “Give me your left hand.” When she did, he slipped the ring on her fourth finger. It fit as though it’d been made for her. For a moment, the view in front of him swam. The hollowness inside he’d felt since Susan’s death was filled by a