His eyes widened, warmed, even misted over a little. “Damn. Do you really mean that?”
With a laugh of pure joy, she slid back off the bed.
“Hey!” He tried to reach for her, but his injuries slowed him down a bit. “Get back up here.” She shook her head as she went over the edge to the floor. “Tessa, what are you doing?”
She came up on her knees and stretched out her hand to him. He took it with his right hand, grunting in pain as he moved his bad arm. “Oops. Sorry.” She tried to let go.
But he held on. “Too late. I’ve got you now. What’s going on?”
And she did it. She said it. It was all so very simple. “Carson, I love you. I want to spend my life with you. I want to be there, if you’re ever in danger, if you’re ever alone and need someone to lean on. I’ve been so worried that I couldn’t count on you. But now I see that I couldn’t bear it if you needed me and I wasn’t there for you to count on. I have to be there for you, Carson. I need to be at your side. I just...well, I guess there’s something about a life-and-death situation that brings everything so very clear.”
He stared at her intently, as though he would never look away. “I noticed that, yes.”
“I’m not afraid anymore, Carson. You’re nothing like any man I’ve ever known before. What happened in the past, the bad choices and stupid mistakes that I made—I own them. I learned from them. I’m ready to move on. Ready for you, Carson. Because with you, it’s so different. With you, it’s so good. I love you and I trust you and I want to be with you. I want to marry you and move to California with you. I want to build a house with you up on Falls Mountain where we can come when we want to get away. I want you with me when our baby is born. I want us to raise her together. I want us, you and me, to be together in the deepest way, as husband and wife. I want it all with you, Carson. Please make me the happiest woman in the world. Please say that you’ll marry me and be my husband for all of our lives.”
“Yes.” His voice rumbled up, thick with love and hope and longing. “Dear God, how I love you.” He tugged on her hand. “Damn it, Tessa. Why are you on the floor?”
“I’m on my knees. You know, like people do when they propose?”
“Get up here.”
She didn’t have to be told twice. She surged up.
And then he said, “Wait.” She just stood there by the bed, feeling slightly bewildered. “The bureau. Top left-hand drawer. Front right corner.” She blinked at him, confused.
He chuckled. “Go. Open the drawer. Look.”
So she went over there, opened the drawer, pushed his T-shirts aside and found the red leather ring box trimmed in gold. “Oh, Carson...”
“Your grandmother told me your size.” His voice was as ragged and rough as her own. “I hope it’s okay.”
She flipped the top back, saw the giant diamond and the matching platinum band. “Oh, Carson, it’s beautiful.”
“You’re sure? Because if you want, we can—”
“It’s perfect.” She took out the engagement ring and put the box with the wedding band still in it back in the drawer. Then she gave the diamond to him and held down her hand. He slipped it on her finger. It glittered so brightly. Tears filled her eyes. “Just exactly right.”
“Come here,” he commanded.
She didn’t have to be told twice. She joined him on the bed, and he pulled her into the shelter of his good arm.
When his lips met hers, it was a promise. Their promise. For now and forever.
For the rest of their lives.
Epilogue
They were married two weeks later, out in the national forest, in a high meadow with the Rocky Mountains all around them.
Tessa wore a strapless white dress with a poufy white skirt and a vivid red satin sash. Her bouquet was all roses—red, white and blue. She wanted a patriotic wedding and she got one. In honor of Memorial Day, the day that they met.
After the ceremony, they went down into town for a red, white and blue reception in Rust Creek Falls Park. There was barbecue and wedding punch. The guests took turns guarding the punch bowl to keep Homer Gilmore from getting up to his old tricks.
Homer did put in an appearance to wish the bride and groom a lifetime of happiness—and to offer Carson one more chance at the magic moonshine. Carson thanked him for the good wishes, told him again that the deal was off and warned him to stay away from the punch bowl.
The cake was five layers, decked out in Old Glory colors, flags flying over the bride-and-groom topper. And after dark, as Tessa and Carson danced beneath the moon, Melba, Gene, Tessa’s mom and dad and her two sisters passed out wedding sparklers. Willa Traub, Callie Crawford, Kristen and Ryan Roarke and several other friends hurried to get them all lit. Tessa whirled in her new husband’s arms as the sparklers flashed and glittered all around them, bright and golden, lighting up the night.
* * *
Ten months after their wedding, on Memorial Day, Tessa woke in their new vacation house on Falls Mountain to the sound of a baby crying. Another cry joined the first.
The twins, Declan and Charlotte, were awake.
Tessa cuddled closer to Carson, wrapping her leg across his lean waist, pressing her lips to the hard curve of his shoulder.
He kissed the top of her head and grumbled, “I know. It’s my turn.” He sat up and swung his legs off the far side of the bed.
She stretched and yawned. “I’ll get the coffee going for you.”
Not much later, he brought the babies into the great room. Tessa sat in the big rocker, and he helped her get settled to nurse them in tandem.
It was a challenge, taking care of twins. But Tessa had found she loved every minute of being Charlotte and Declan’s mom. As it turned out, once she put her mind and heart into it, she wasn’t such a disaster with babies, after all.
And about that job with IMI? She’d changed her mind and taken it. A month after the wedding, she’d gone to work for Jason Velasco. IMI was a progressive company. They gave her a flexible schedule with a lot of time working from home. Plus, she’d chosen an excellent, loving nanny, so the babies were happy when she and Carson had to work. True, pumping milk for twins at her desk was getting old fast. But so far, she was managing.
Charlotte finished breakfast first. Carson took her off to change her diaper. Once Declan was done, Tessa changed him, too, and then carried him back to the great room. She laid him down beside his sister on the play mat in front of the big window that looked out over the Rust Creek Valley, green and glorious far below in the light of the rising sun. She set the mobiles spinning, and the babies seemed happy enough for that moment to lie there and watch them.
Carson held down a hand to her. She took it, and he pulled her up into his waiting arms. He kissed her long and slow. “It’s our anniversary, remember?”
“How could I ever forget?”
“A year to the day since I first saw you at the Memorial Day Baby Bonanza Parade.”
“With my dorky yellow beak and my big orange feet.”
He laughed, and then he kissed her again. When he lifted his head, he tipped her chin up with a finger. “You changed my life. I thought I was doing just fine before you came along. I thought I was happy. I didn’t know what happiness was.”
“I love you.” Her voice was husky with emotion. “Always.” She rested her hand on his right arm, traced the ridges of scar tissue under her fingers, loving the feel of them. They were a keepsake, a reminder of all they had together, of all they held precious. Of what they could have lost. “So?” she asked. “Breakfast?”
He nodded. “And then
we’ll take the twins down into town for the parade.”
“And to the barbecue in the park after that.”
“And then to the boardinghouse to say hi to Great-Grandma Melba.”
She beamed up at him. “It’s going to be a beautiful day.”
* * * * *
Don’t miss the next installment of
the new Special Edition continuity
MONTANA MAVERICKS: THE BABY BONANZA
Cowboy doctor Jonathan Clifton isn’t looking to put down roots or let anyone get too close to him. Until he meets clinic nurse Dawn Laramie, that is! Can this be love at last?
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HER MAVERICK MD
by Teresa Southwick
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Officer Wyn Bailey has found herself wanting more from her boss—and older brother’s best friend—for a while now. Will sexy police chief Cade Emmett let his guard down long enough to embrace the love he secretly craves?
Read on for a sneak peek at the newest book in New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne’s HAVEN POINT series, RIVERBEND ROAD, available soon from HQN Books.
Riverbend Road
by RaeAnne Thayne
CHAPTER ONE
“THIS WAS YOUR dire emergency? Seriously?”
Officer Wynona Bailey leaned against her Haven Point Police Department squad car, not sure whether to laugh or pull out her hair. “That frantic phone call made it sound like you were at death’s door!” she exclaimed to her great-aunt Jenny. “You mean to tell me I drove here with full lights and sirens, afraid I would stumble over you bleeding on the ground, only to find you in a standoff with a baby moose?”
The gangly-looking creature had planted himself in the middle of the driveway while he browsed from the shrubbery that bordered it. He paused in his chewing to watch the two of them out of long-lashed dark eyes.
He was actually really cute, with big ears and a curious face. She thought about pulling out her phone to take a picture that her sister could hang on the local wildlife bulletin board in her classroom but decided Jenny probably wouldn’t appreciate it.
“It’s not the calf I’m worried about,” her great-aunt said. “It’s his mama over there.”
She followed her aunt’s gaze and saw a female moose on the other side of the willow shrubs, watching them with much more caution than her baby was showing.
While the creature might look docile on the outside, Wyn knew from experience a thousand-pound cow could move at thirty-five miles an hour and wouldn’t hesitate to take on anything she perceived as a threat to her offspring.
“I need to get into my garage, that’s all,” Jenny practically wailed. “If Baby Bullwinkle there would just move two feet onto the lawn, I could squeeze around him, but he won’t budge for anything.”
She had to ask the logical question. “Did you try honking your horn?”
Aunt Jenny glared at her, looking as fierce and stern as she used to when Wynona was late turning in an assignment in her aunt’s high school history class.
“Of course I tried honking my horn! And hollering at the stupid thing and even driving right up to him, as close as I could get, which only made the mama come over to investigate. I had to back up again.”
Wyn’s blood ran cold, imagining the scene. That big cow could easily charge the sporty little convertible her diminutive great-aunt had bought herself on her seventy-fifth birthday.
What would make them move along? Wynona sighed, not quite sure what trick might disperse a couple of stubborn moose. Sure, she was trained in Krav Maga martial arts, but somehow none of those lessons seemed to apply in this situation.
The pair hadn’t budged when she pulled up with her lights and sirens blaring in answer to her aunt’s desperate phone call. Even if she could get them to move, scaring them out of Aunt Jenny’s driveway would probably only migrate the problem to the neighbor’s yard.
She was going to have to call in backup from the state wildlife division.
“Oh, no!” her aunt suddenly wailed. “He’s starting on the honeysuckle! He’s going to ruin it. Stop! Move it. Go on now.” Jenny started to climb out of her car again, raising and lowering her arms like a football referee calling a touchdown.
“Aunt Jenny, get back inside your vehicle!” Wyn exclaimed.
“But the honeysuckle! Your dad planted that for me the summer before he...well, you know.”
Wyn’s heart gave a sharp little spasm. Yes. She did know. She pictured the sturdy, robust man who had once watched over his aunt, along with everybody else in town. He wouldn’t have hesitated for a second here, would have known exactly how to handle the situation.
Wynnie, anytime you’re up against something bigger than you, just stare ’em down. More often than not, that will do the trick.
Some days, she almost felt like he was riding shotgun next to her.
“Stay in your car, Jenny,” she said again. “Just wait there while I call Idaho Fish and Game to handle things. They probably need to move them to higher ground.”
“I don’t have time to wait for some yahoo to load up his tranq gun and hitch up his horse trailer, then drive over from Shelter Springs! Besides that honeysuckle, which is priceless to me, I have seventy-eight dollars’ worth of groceries in the trunk of my car that will be ruined if I can’t get into the house. That includes four pints of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia that’s going to be melted red goo if I don’t get it in the freezer fast—and that stuff is not exactly cheap, you know.”
Her great-aunt looked at her with every expectation that she would fix the problem and Wyn sighed again. Small-town police work was mostly about problem solving—and when she happened to have been born and raised in that small town, too many people treated her like their own private security force.
“I get it. But I’m calling Fish and Game.”
“You’ve got a piece. Can’t you just fire it into the air or something?”
Yeah, unfortunately, her great-aunt—like everybody else in town—watched far too many cop dramas on TV and thought that was how things were done.
“Give me two minutes to call Fish and Game, then I’ll see if I can get him to move aside enough that you can pull into your driveway. Wait in your car,” she ordered for the fourth time as she kept an eye on Mama Moose. “Do not, I repeat, do not get out again. Promise?”
Aunt Jenny slumped back into her seat, clearly disappointed that she wasn’t going to have front row seats to some kind of moose-cop shoot-out. “I suppose.”
To Wyn’s relief, local game warden Moose Porter—who, as far as she knew, was no relation to the current troublemakers—picked up on the first ring. She explained the situation to him and gave him the address.
“You’re in luck. We just got back from relocating a female brown bear and her cub away from that campground on Dry Creek Road. I’ve still got the trailer hitched up.”
“Thanks. I owe you.”
“How about that dinner we’ve been talking about?” he asked.
She had not been talking about dinner. Moose had been pretty relentless in asking her out for months and she always managed to deflect. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the guy. He was nice and funny and good-looking in a burly, outdoorsy, flannel-shirt-and-gun-rack sort of way, but she didn’t feel so much as an ember around him. Not like, well, someone else she preferred not to think about.
Maybe she would stop thinking about that someone else if she ever bothered to go on a date. “Sure,” she said on impulse
. “I’m pretty busy until after Lake Haven Days, but let’s plan something in a couple of weeks. Meantime, how soon can you be here?”
“Great! I’ll definitely call you. And I’ve got an ETA of about seven minutes now.”
The obvious delight left her squirming and wishing she had deflected his invitation again.
Fish or cut line, her father would have said.
“Make it five, if you can. My great-aunt’s favorite honeysuckle bush is in peril here.”
“On it.”
She ended the phone call just as Jenny groaned, “Oh. Not the butterfly bush, too! Shoo. Go on, move!”
While she was on the phone, the cow had moved around the shrubs nearer her calf and was nibbling on the large showy blossoms on the other side of the driveway.
Wyn thought about waiting for the game warden to handle the situation, but Jenny was counting on her. She couldn’t let a couple of moose get the better of her. Wondering idly if a Kevlar vest would protect her in the event she was charged, she climbed out of her patrol vehicle and edged around to the front bumper. “Come on. Move along. That’s it.”
She opted to move toward the calf, figuring the cow would follow her baby. Mindful to keep the vehicle between her and the bigger animal, she waved her arms like she was directing traffic in a big-city intersection. “Go. Get out of here.”
Something in her firm tone or maybe her rapid-fire movements finally must have convinced the calf she wasn’t messing around this time. He paused for just a second, then lurched through a break in the shrubs to the other side, leaving just enough room for Great-Aunt Jenny to squeeze past and head for her garage to unload her groceries.
“Thank you, Wynnie. You’re the best,” her aunt called. “Come by one of these Sundays for dinner. I’ll make my fried chicken and biscuits and my Better-Than-Sex cake.”
Her mouth watered and her stomach rumbled, reminding her quite forcefully that she hadn’t eaten anything since her shift started that morning.
Marriage, Maverick Style! Page 19
