For as long as he can remember, cowboy Cal Hayden has been quietly in love with Rachel Gray, practically since the first time he laid eyes on her. But Cal is careful and responsible to his core, the kind of man who refuses to start something he can't give his whole self to. So he waited. While his father battled a terminal illness, Cal set his own longing aside and poured himself into caring for his family, holding his feelings for Rachel close rather than offer her anything less than everything. Now his father is gone, his mother is settled, and the reasons for his patience have fallen away, leaving Cal with nothing standing between him and the woman he has wanted all along, nothing, that is, except time itself. After years of holding back, he is left to wonder whether he waited too long, whether the moment he kept postponing has already slipped past him, and whether Rachel could ever feel for him what he has felt for her all this while. This short, tender novella follows a steady, devoted man finally daring to reach for love at last.