“Lord...” Unable to stop the grin tugging the corners of his lips, Wayne wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry or both. Was she for real? “You have changed.”
“I told you.” Gazing up at him expectantly, she asked, “Well? What do you think? Should we try again? This time from scratch—no fake engagement or fake cakes or anything fake. Only the real deal from here on out. What do you say?”
There was nothing to say.
A part of him was still scared this was all a dream. He’d wake back in Somalia with rockets screaming over his head.
“Wayne?” She’d taken the baby from his stroller, and now held him up for inspection. “Would you like to meet your namesake?”
“You can’t be serious? You named him John Wayne Jr.?” She’d dressed the little guy in pint-size jeans, soft-sided cowboy boots and a T-shirt featuring a Trident and the slogan, My Daddy’s a Navy SEAL.
She nodded. “Hope you don’t mind me taking liberties with the shirt? Monica ordered one for their baby, so I had her get one for me, too. You know, just in case.”
The emotion causing his eyes to tear and chest to swell was too much for one man to bear, so Wayne didn’t even try. Instead, he pulled Paisley and their baby into his arms.
“I love you,” he said into her hair. “I love our son. I love that we get to spend the next fifty or sixty years hashing out who really messed up our wedding.”
“I’ll take the hit,” she said after gifting him with the kiss he only just realized he’d been waiting to return home to ever since leaving for deployment. “Although, you started the trouble by dunking me in the pool.”
“I thought you enjoyed that?”
“I did, but I wouldn’t be very smart if I let you know. I can’t start a marriage having my guy believing he holds all the power.”
Laughing, he removed his hat to settle it on the baby’s head. Of course, it swallowed him whole. “He’s gonna need a hat his own size. And a horse. I’ll have to start looking right away for just the right one.”
“Could he learn to walk before he rides?”
“Already sassing me, and we’re not even married.” He settled his free arm around her shoulders.
“Speaking of which, when you have leave, I promised your mom that if we got back together, we’d try again for another wedding at the ranch.”
“Wait—my mom’s been in on this, too?”
“And your dad. I love them both. Your mom and Monica helped me through the delivery. After all we put her through, I think it’s only fair Jules gets her happy ending.”
Wayne paused to kiss Paisley’s nose, her cheeks and finally her lips. “I love you. Yes, to anything you want just as long as you never want to leave me again.
“As for you, big fella...” Taking the baby, he said, “We need to have a nice long talk about your future. What would you think about a career as a cowboy SEAL?”
Epilogue
“John Wayne Jr., don’t throw hay at your baby sister.” Paisley’s son may have only been a year old, but he was already a pistol—walking early and wrapping his usually grubby and sticky hands on everything—including the hay bales Peter, Wayne, Logan, Gerald and Paisley’s mom were setting out for the big Easter Sunday picnic and egg hunt being held on the ranch.
“Cowboy, you come help Grandpoppa.” Peter swept Johnny up high, catching him midshriek in the air. With the sun shining and not a breath of wind in the air, the only sound came from a few fat bumblebees buzzing on Jules’s favorite pink sweetheart roses.
Even Bruce was enjoying the day by reclining in his private pasture.
Paisley and Wayne’s daughter was barely a month old, big blue eyes open wide, taking in her world.
Not long after his return, Paisley and Wayne married in an intimate mountaintop ceremony with close friends and family and a panoramic view of the world.
“I’ve never seen either of my men so happy,” Jules mused, sipping iced tea while comfy in her patio rocker.
“It has been an amazing year,” Paisley said. “I feel incredibly blessed.” And she was. She wasn’t sure how, but every facet of her life had changed for the better. The forever family to which she’d always dreamed of belonging had become her new reality.
Never had she loved more or been loved more.
Construction had already started on the ranch’s second hacienda—a wedding gift from Jules and Peter. Every chance they got, Paisley and Wayne left San Diego to help with construction or picking out finishes. By this time next year, Wayne would have retired from the Navy and be helping his father full-time with cattle breeding.
Paisley and Monica were opening a second design business in touristy Sedona.
“Whew.” Monica rejoined them. She held Gigi in her arms. “That was a smelly diaper, ladybug.”
Gigi grinned and giggled.
“How many people are you expecting tomorrow?” Paisley asked Jules.
“At least a couple hundred. Now that the babies are fed, we should get to work stuffing eggs with candy.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Monica jiggled her daughter. “Pretty soon you’re going to be big enough to hunt for eggs, too. But until then, how about a nap?”
“Sounds good for you, too,” Paisley said to her baby girl, Feathers, nicknamed for Angie Dickinson’s character in Rio Bravo. Big surprise, the name had been her grandpoppa Peter’s idea. Her given name was Julia Katherine, in honor of her paternal grandmother.
Wayne sauntered up from the field.
Would there ever come a day when the mere sight of him didn’t give her heart a thrill? Even dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, a T-shirt and his trusty straw hat, the breadth of his shoulders and love behind his gaze never failed to stir her.
“Mom? Do you mind if I borrow my wife?”
“You can have her for about fifteen minutes, but then we’re getting started on stuffing the eggs.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He took the baby from Paisley, holding her in the crook of his muscular arm before helping her momma from her chair.
“What’s up?” Paisley asked out of earshot from the patio.
“I wanted to run something by you.”
“Okay?”
He slipped his free arm around her, pulling her close enough for a leisurely kiss, but not to wake their now sleeping baby.
“Mmm...” Pausing for air, she asked, “I could talk about that all day. But what did you need?”
“You.” He kissed her again.
“Are you trying to get me in trouble with your mom?”
He laughed. “Maybe I’ve developed a thing for bad girls?”
“You’re crazy.”
“About you.” He kissed her thoroughly. “I don’t tell you enough—I love you.” He smiled at her so sweetly. “What would you think about having another baby?”
Paisley coughed. “Two babies in two years are plenty. But thanks for asking.”
“I’m messing with you. I love our family just the way it is.”
“Me, too.”
“But I would be amenable to a puppy.”
“A small puppy?”
“Aren’t they all?”
“I mean a small breed. No Great Danes or shepherds.”
“You’re not thinking like a toy breed, are you? I can’t see myself with a Yorkie or Chihuahua.”
Several months later, on Christmas day at the ranch, beneath the tree holding twinkling white lights and their pair of fake cake cowboy ornaments, Paisley, Jules and Peter clapped and laughed as Wayne opened his last gift of the morning—a one-pound Yorkshire terrier puppy named Duke.
* * * * *
Don’t miss the previous books in
Laura Marie Altom’s COWBOY SEALS series:
THE BABY AND THE COWBOY SEAL
THE SEAL’S SECOND CHANCE BABY
THE COW
BOY SEAL’S JINGLE BELL BABY
THE COWBOY SEAL’S CHRISTMAS BABY
Available now from Harlequin Western Romance!
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE COWBOY’S SURPRISE BABY by Ali Olson.
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The Cowboy's Surprise Baby
by Ali Olson
Chapter One
Amy McNeal stepped through the sliding glass doors into the cool autumn air of Texas and breathed it in greedily, ignoring the smell of the exhaust fumes from the waiting cars. After two months in Northern Africa in summer, any temperature below blistering was a refreshing change.
As she walked toward the line of vehicles moving at a snail’s pace through the pickup area, her phone started buzzing inside her large travel purse. Amy shifted the suit bag she was carrying to her left hand and dug through the purse with her right, then pulled out her phone and tapped it to answer the call. “Hey! I’m almost at the pickup location,” she said.
“I know. I can see you. You better hurry or I’ll need to loop around again,” answered her brother from the other end.
She looked along the line of cars, trying to peer through the windows for a familiar face. “I don’t see you. A little help?”
“I’m in the black truck,” he told her.
She rolled her eyes. “This is Texas, Brock. I’m looking at about six black trucks.”
“You know, maybe I’ll just leave you to find your own way home, if you’re going to be like that,” he said, but she could hear the smile in his voice and knew she wasn’t actually in any danger of being left at the curb.
“Look right. I’m waving out the window,” he said.
She spotted him, fifty feet farther along. “I see you! Wait there and I’ll be over in a second,” she told him.
Amy dropped her phone back into her purse and strode quickly through the crowd of people waiting with their luggage along the curb. When she got to her brother’s car, a man in an orange vest was telling him he needed to keep moving, that he wasn’t allowed to wait there. “I’m here!” she said breathlessly, slinging her backpack off and into the truck bed, then hopping into the passenger seat.
With a little wave to the airport employee, she settled into her seat and Brock steered them out and away from the airport. “You know we get in trouble here if we sit idling at the curb, right?”
Amy shook her head. “I always forget about how many rules there are in America.”
Brock raised an eyebrow and glanced at his sister from the corner of his eye. “If you came home more often, you know, you might remember them.”
Amy crossed her arms and turned toward Brock. “You’ve been back in Spring Valley for two months and already you’re starting to sound like Ma,” she commented.
“She misses you,” he told her, sending a small stab of guilt through her. “It’s good to have you back.”
Amy gave her brother a smile. “It’s good to see you, Brock.”
“You’re back for the whole month, huh?”
Amy nodded. “I had to be here for my big brother’s wedding.”
There was a moment of silence, and she knew Brock was waiting for her to say what had happened that made her decide to change her plans and come home so early, rather than just for the weekend of the ceremony. Up until the day before, that had been the plan. But she wasn’t ready to explain the events of the last couple weeks, so she stayed silent.
After waiting a few more moments for her to add anything else, Brock said, “Well, I’m glad you’ll be around. Be careful, though. You might find yourself deciding to settle down in Spring Valley, regardless of your plans.”
Amy snorted. There were at least two very good reasons she would be leaving Spring Valley again. One was her lucrative career as a travel writer, and the other was a handsome cowboy with cornflower-blue eyes. She had some loose ends to tie up with said cowboy, but that didn’t mean she’d be sticking around afterward. She was here to set things straight, not make herself miserable. Or him, for that matter.
“Hey, it happens,” Brock said defensively.
“Speaking of settling down, how’s your fiancée doing?” Amy asked, both because she was interested and because she wanted to change the subject.
Brock looked for a second like he might not accept the topic shift, then gave her a wide grin she didn’t remember ever seeing on his face before Cassie came into his life. “She’s great, Zach and Carter are great, the ranch is—”
“Great?” Amy said for him.
“Really, really great,” he said, nodding, his smile even wider, if that was possible.
“So you don’t miss bull riding at all?” she asked, wondering if he’d really given up the rodeo circuit without a qualm.
Brock shook his head decisively. “Not one bit. Giving that up was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, and it gives me more time around the people I love. With the wedding, the ranch and twin boys, time is one thing that always seems to be in short supply.”
Amy wasn’t sure if she believed that Brock didn’t miss the rodeo circuit at least a little, but he seemed sincere, so she just had to assume that when he lost his heart, he lost his mind a little, too.
She could remember the rush of riding a horse in the ring, hearing the shouts of the fans, like it was yesterday instead of a decade ago. She had only made it to junior rodeo before dropping out, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still a part of her life.
Even after all this time, she still sometimes watched videos of rodeos on her computer when she felt particularly homesick.
But Brock had given it up without a backward glance. Because of love.
Amy had already warned her brother once about the danger of falling in love, so she didn’t say anything now. Still, it worried her. What if it didn’t work out for him? She didn’t want him to go through that pain. She knew what it felt like to have her whole imagined future with someone come crumbling down around her, and she worried about her brother experiencing the same thing.
Sure, Cassie was wonderful—and they were committing to marriage, after all—but sometimes people who might be perfect for each other still didn’t end up together.
“You okay?” Brock asked, breaking into her thoughts.
Amy swallowed the old hurt that was threatening to break the surfa
ce and put on a smile. “I’m fine.”
For now, at least. After she talked to Jack, though, who knew?
* * *
JACK STUART RAN a brush through the chestnut mare’s coat, enjoying the feeling of calm it created in him. No matter what else was going on, he could always find some peace around horses. Right this minute, he needed it.
“Any idea how long she’ll be around?” he asked his brother.
Tom shrugged his shoulders, not seeming to notice his brother’s sudden edginess. “I’m guessing the whole month, up until the wedding. Brock said it was the longest she’d been home since she left for college.”
Jack didn’t want to tip off his brother about how interested he was, but he couldn’t help it. He needed to know everything his brother knew. “Did he say anything else?”
How is she?
Is she seeing anyone?
Does she still think about me after all these years?
“Nope, just that she was coming to town for a bit all of a sudden. The boys tackled him right after, and you know how they are. Had to tell him everything that had happened at their lessons.”
Jack didn’t say anything, trying to bite off his disappointment that he couldn’t learn any more.
“I’m surprised the twins are still coming here at all, to be honest. What with Brock’s parents owning a riding school and Brock himself able enough to teach them. Not that I’m complaining of course—we can sure use the business,” Tom said, his mind drifting off to other topics besides Amy. “I really think it’s only to give those two lovebirds some time alone. Have you seen them together? Don’t know if I’ve ever known two people to be more infatuated with one another.”
Oh, Jack did. His older brother had been too busy at college to remember how Jack and Amy had been senior year of high school. Tom knew they’d dated, but not that they’d been in love. Jack and Amy had been planning a life together. Family, careers, everything.
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