by Max Monroe
“Ernie misses and loves you too, by the way.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. This man, the one whom I love so, so much, came all the way here to profess his love to me—with glitter. And his little girl, the one I’ve grown to love and adore like my own child, is standing right behind him with the biggest smile on her face. Her head nods and her eyes are wide, imploring me to say yes.
But no imploring is needed.
“Rhett,” I say, and my voice shakes with emotion. “I love you. With everything inside of me, I love you.”
He smiles up at me. “Are you sayin’ what I’m thinkin’ and fuckin’ hopin’ you’re sayin’?”
I nod, and more tears stream down my cheeks. “I’m saying yes, Rhett. I want to marry you. I want to be your wife. I want to be Joey’s mama. And I want to come home.”
He pulls a small black box out of his pocket and opens it up to reveal a ring inside. And he slides that ring down my finger. I’m pretty sure it’s vintage and beautiful, but I don’t have to really look at it because Rhett gets back on his feet and pulls me into his arms.
“I love you, darlin’.”
Lips to mine, he kisses me the way only Rhett knows how to kiss.
How my future husband knows how to kiss.
“Yippee!” Joey shouts from behind us before barreling into us at full speed and wrapping her arms around our legs. “This is the second-best day of my life!”
Rhett chuckles, pulling away from the kiss and glancing down at his daughter. “The second-best day?”
She rolls her pretty eyes. “Daddy, you know the day I became a mama to Ernie was the most special, best day of my life.”
“Well,” I say and reach out to pull Joey closer to us. “I can say with certainty this is the very best day of my life.”
“It is?” Joey replies, smiling up at me.
“Are you kidding me?” I respond. “I get to marry the best, most handsome cowboy in the whole world, and I get to call the prettiest, most special girl my daughter.”
Joey wraps both of her arms around my waist and buries her face into my stomach. “I love you, Leah. So, so much.”
I kneel down and meet her eyes. “I love you too, Jo-Jo.”
And Rhett just stands there, looking down at the two of us like a man whose entire world stands right before him.
I know this because that’s exactly how I’m looking right back at the two of them.
My future husband. My daughter. My family. My home.
Shaw Springs Ranch, One Year Later…
August 20th
Leah
I bolt upright in the bed and glance left and right with wild, panicked eyes. The sound of gunfire in my dreams sounded entirely too realistic, and my heart races inside my chest.
Rhett sits up in the bed next to me, rubbing at his eyes with the long fingers of his incredibly sexy hands. He’s still as beautiful now as the day I met him—if not more so, since I’m now privy to all the intimate details of his body I wasn’t back then.
Suddenly, another crack echoes in the air, just like the sounds I thought were in my dreams, and I reach over to shake Rhett’s shoulder aggressively.
“What in the hell was that?”
He takes his hands away from his eyes and looks at me more closely, smirking just slightly when he gets a good look at my obvious mania.
“That’s just the youth hunt, darlin’. Happens every third Saturday in August. Normally, I’d be out there too, but with the way you’ve been feelin’, I begged off this one.”
With the way I’ve been feeling, I’m starting to wonder if the whole ranch has been relocated to the bow of a rocky ship without my noticing. Nauseated, dizzy, utterly fatigued—I don’t know what in the world is going on with me.
Now, add in random gunfire from the “youth hunt”—whatever that is—and I think Rhett, Joey, and I may have joined a group of marauders to rob people on the high seas. I mean, that’s the kind of thing you usually ask your spouse about before getting involved in it, but men have been known to make mistakes before.
“Are we aboard the Black Pearl?” I ask, having new faith that Rhett will understand my reference after being forced to watch the entire Pirates of the Caribbean DVD collection a couple weeks ago. “Are you going to start going by Captain Rhett Hawk or something?”
He chuckles, pushes himself up to sitting with his back against the headboard, and crosses his ankles out in front of him. “I told you, darlin’, the shots you’re hearin’ are just the youth hunt. Not a pirate takeover. You musta missed it last year, havin’ run off on me without tellin’ me how you really felt about me and all.”
I roll my eyes at his obvious teasing and redirect. “Tell me…how is it that I’ve been here an entire year, we’re married, and I’m still getting surprised by stuff on the daily?”
“Ranch life knows how to keep the mystery alive?” he offers cheekily, and I must admit, looking at his perfect, sleepy smile aimed at me in bed makes it quite hard to maintain any sort of hostility at all. Even when my PMS has apparently decided to wreak havoc on my entire body this time around.
“We’re an old married couple now,” I insist. “I have the photos and video and memories of you and me and Joey and Tex and Jenny and the minister all there at the lodge while we promised to love each other through thick and thin, sickness and health, and bull sperm collection to prove it. There’s not supposed to be any mystery left.”
Rhett guffaws before turning to put his face in my neck, nuzzling me there. “I still can’t believe you used the word ‘sperm’ in your wedding vows. I think about it just about every day.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, yeah, get your laughs in, but you’re the one who still agreed to seal the deal after I said it.”
“Are you kidding? That’s the moment I knew I’d never regret the decision a day in my life, Leah. I don’t want some cookie-cutter, stuck-up wife. I want you—the woman who I know is gonna make me laugh all day long, every day, for the rest of my life. The woman who’s gonna love Joey and me so hard she’d put herself through anything just to be with us. The woman who woke up to gunshots this mornin’, sweatin’ and scared at an unknown situation, feelin’ sicker than shit, and still, is lyin’ here next to me, makin’ me smile. I love you, and I promise you this, I’ll keep on doin’ it until the day that I die.”
“Rhett,” I breathe through the unexpected emotion clogging my throat. How does he always manage to be so freaking sweet out of nowhere?
“I love you, darlin’. Would do anything for ya. You know that, right?”
I nod fervently. I know. Man, do I know. He shows me every single day how much I mean to him. From bringing me a hot cup of coffee in bed before he leaves for work in the morning, to making time for me anytime I call him on the radio—no matter how busy he is—to watching every ridiculous movie I want, to making love to me like I’m the most special, beautiful, perfect woman in the world nearly every night, Rhett Jameson is the kind of man women who grow up like me never know to dream of. And our marriage is the kind that lasts.
There’s a sharp bang on the door of our bedroom, followed by the swift motion of it flying open and swinging into the wall behind it as Joey comes running into our room and jumps up onto the bed like a rocket.
Rhett and I shift slightly as she wiggles her way in between us in the bed and climbs down under the covers. At seven years old, she’s starting to turn into a little lady, but she’s no less wild than the day I met her, and I doubt she ever will be. I think, with her DNA, it’s probably next to impossible not to have some pep.
“Joey,” Rhett says, his voice a whisper of authority mixed with a bellow of amusement. “What did I tell you about knockin’ on our door before you come in?”
Joey smiles, contesting cutely, “I knocked.”
I have to bite my lip to keep from snorting as Rhett’s eyes narrow. “Knock and wait, doll. One loud bang before you shoot through the door does not count as a knock.”
“
Oh. You really should’a been more spe-fis-ic then when you told me the first time.”
“Josephine Jameson,” Rhett chastises, and I smile.
“It’s specific, baby,” I correct gently, making her head whip to me as her cheeks lift up toward the ceiling.
“Spe-cif-ic,” she says, sounding out each syllable until I nod. I’m not naïve. I know she’s using my lesson as a very specific tool for avoiding her daddy’s ire, but I don’t mind. In fact, I pretty much love it.
Not that that’s a surprise—I love everything about being a parent to Josephine.
Rhett rolls his eyes and climbs out of the bed with a shake of his head. He’s used to the two of us girls ganging up on him by now, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t scowl about it every now and then, reminding me that he’s still the handsomest grumpy cowboy I’ve ever met.
Ernie comes trotting in the door, barking his request to be put on the bed since he can’t climb up on his own, and Rhett obliges, tossing him right on top of Joey and me before disappearing into the bathroom.
Ernie fake snarls and barks and licks all over Joey’s face until she dissolves into a fit of giggles. I pull them both into a hug and try not to react when my stomach roils at the movement.
What in the world is going on with me lately? I just can’t seem to find my equilibrium anymore. I wonder if I have vertigo?
“I’m so excited to go to Target today,” Joey tells me, rocking Ernie back and forth in her arms like a baby. “I love shopping for school clothes.”
“I’m excited too, Jo-Jo.”
Joey and I always have the best time on our shopping outings together, and we do them with a tiny bit more frequency than Rhett would like. Still, he never suggests we don’t go.
“I’m not,” Rhett comments from the bathroom—from the sounds of it, while brushing his teeth. I roll my eyes and laugh as he continues, “Who knows what you’ll come home with this time.”
“We only brought home a dog one time,” I contest. “And Ernie here thinks it was one of the best things we’ve ever done.”
Rhett chuckles as he exits the bathroom and flips off the light before leaning into the bed to give both me and Joey a kiss. They’re both sweet, but mine lingers longer and promises all sorts of sexy things he intends to do to me tonight. I can’t wait.
“Promise me,” Rhett whispers against my lips. “You won’t bring home any more living creatures than you leave home with this morning.”
“I promise,” I say sweetly before pecking him on the lips one more time.
“You’ll call me if you aren’t feelin’ okay?” he asks then, making my heart flip over in my chest. Rhett Jameson, if you can believe it, is the most caring man I’ve ever met, despite how grouchy he was when everything started.
“Yes. But don’t worry. I mean, I’m a doctor, for heaven’s sake. What’s the worst that could happen?”
He shakes his head at me slightly, before leaning down and kissing me one more time, ruffling Ernie’s head and chucking Joey under the chin, and then heading out to take care of business.
One thing is for sure—my man knows how to run a ranch, but it’s the least of all of his talents.
Because, hands down, Rhett Jameson is the best husband and father in the world.
Rhett
The screen door slams behind me as I set my lunch cooler down by the door and kick off my boots. One of the rules of living with a grown woman is that you take off your boots when you come in the door.
One of the rules of living with a grown woman named Leah, is knowing that she won’t kick up a fuss if you don’t—it’ll just cost her time and energy in cleaning.
And because I care about her and her time, I do my best to make her life easier rather than harder.
It’s normally bustling in here by the time I get home at the end of the day, so the glaring quiet of the house right now seems eerie. They’re home, I know, because Joey called me on the radio to let me know that dinner was at seven and I wasn’t to miss it.
She’s a bossy thing, but man, I love that about her. Last thing I want my kid to do is eat shit from other people. Sometimes, I’ll be around to make sure she doesn’t. But others? She’s gonna have to have the skills to ward it off herself.
“Joey? Leah? Where the hell is everybody?” I call out into the empty space as I make my way through the living room toward the kitchen.
“In here, daddy!” Joey calls from the kitchen, influencing me to speed up my steps.
When I round the corner, my weird arrival home gets even weirder. Joey and Leah are both seated at the table, a cake with burning candles on top of it in front of them and pink, blue, and white balloons covering the entire surface of the tile floor.
“Surprise,” Leah says, her face a complex mix of excited and nervous that I’ve never seen before.
“Surprise, what? What’s going on?”
“Jo-Jo, why don’t you get daddy a beer from the fridge,” Leah suggests instead of answering me, shoving the chair beside her out with a foot and gesturing toward it.
Joey jumps up with a mumbled, “Got it!” and yanks open the door to the refrigerator. There’s a beer right there in the front, on a low shelf she can reach without help—a place they’re not normally kept—and at the sight of it, I’m starting to think this entire thing is a whole lot of planning away from impromptu. I search the recesses of my mind for an occasion I’ve forgotten about, but as hard as I try, I can’t think of any.
Joey hands me the beer before bounding back around the table and climbing up in her chair again, and with the way the two of them are staring at me, I’m starting to think I’m the target of something nefarious. Did they bring home another damn dog?
“Leah darlin’, I’m gonna need you to be tellin’ me what’s goin’ on soon, before you can officially say you’ve witnessed two Jameson men have a heart attack.”
Leah’s face gapes at my audacious assertion. “You know what?” she snaps, grabbing something from behind the cake and slamming it down on the table in front of the chair she’s kicked out. “Here. I was trying to be all cute about it, and you had to go and bring up one of the worst days of our lives. Tex is alive and well, and so are you—and apparently, more than that, you’re virile enough to go against statistics.”
Joey giggles from her spot on the other side of the table, getting up on her knees in her chair so she can look over the cake at me.
I look from Leah to the object she set down, and then slowly, I sink to my knees.
I recognize the shape and the feeling of seeing this test in front of me, but the amount of happiness dumping into me? It’s completely unfamiliar.
“You’re…you’re pregnant?” I ask, staring down at the test that proclaims with digital wording that she’s very much so.
Pregnant, it reads again and again as my eyes bounce back and forth over and over.
When I finally tear my eyes away from the test to look at her, Leah is nodding and smiling, and a couple happy tears run down her face in an apparent surge of good hormones. “Joey and I were in Target, and she said she needed toothpaste.”
“I did!” Joey adds enthusiastically, absolutely thrilled to be a part of this whole thing.
Leah laughs a little before continuing, “I ran down the aisle to get it, and on the way back, I looked over and saw the pregnancy tests. Instantly, nausea and awareness hit me like a freight train. My boobs are bigger and everything, but I didn’t even think about it because I’ve been on birth control.”
“Mama says I’m too young to know what that is right now,” Joey chimes in.
I lick my lips and shake my head at the complete out-of-body experience of finding out this news with my daughter in the room—of finding out this news at all. When I left this morning, I told Leah not to come home with any more living creatures than she left with—and she didn’t. But, boy oh boy, was the joke on me.
“But you took the test?”
Obviously, she did. I mean, it’s sitting
on the table in front of me. But right now, my head feels too much like my ass and vice versa to make a ton of sense.
Leah takes pity on me and doesn’t tease. “Yes. While answering a million questions from Joey,” she says with a laugh. Looking me in the eyes, she shrugs. “I know it’s not the normal thing to include her in the part where you find out, but I don’t think I could have stopped it if I’d tried. Once she saw the test in the cart, she was like a miniature Sherlock Holmes.”
Joey gives the thumbs-up, and I can’t help but laugh.
We’re having a baby! Joey is going to be a big sister! And more than that, she’s getting the family she’s always deserved. A daddy and a mommy, and now, a little baby brother or sister.
New reality finally clicking into place, I shove the chair I never sat down in out of the way and scoop Leah up and into my arms. She comes willingly, clinging around my neck and shoving her face into my chest.
I can feel her heart racing, her blood zinging so fast through her veins it’s almost as if she’s vibrating. I lean down and take her mouth with mine, sweeping my tongue inside to get a tiny, sweet taste of my beautiful wife.
“I love you, Leah,” I whisper in her ear while Joey bounces up and down around us in a tribal-like dance. When I pull back to look into the woman of my dreams’ eyes, they’re bright with a touch of healthy fear and shiny with emotion. She has never looked more beautiful than she does right now, carrying a child we made with love.
“I love you too, Rhett. But…well…now, what do we do?”
It’s a complex question, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t have a simple answer. There’s only one thing left to do when you have everything.
“We be happy.”
Leah smiles and nods, tears flooding her eyes as she pulls me tightly against her again and presses her lips to mine. I drink in every blessed moment until she pulls away, before adding playfully to the to-do list.
“And, I guess, wait patiently to see if I’m gonna get any manly backup around here.”
“You think it’s going to be a boy?”
