by Jessa Chase
“Wait, what?”
“We’re keeping it.” He looked at Daisy and appeared to realize for the first time that this wasn’t something they’d had a chance to discuss yet. “Give us a minute, folks.”
“We’ll be right back!” Daisy said to the crowd as he pulled her off the stage.
The cool evening air hit her when she exited the school. She hadn’t thought to grab her jacket when she’d left the diner. Just a tank top and jeans, not even something with proper sleeves. She shook her head and chastised herself when she felt goose bumps popping up along her bare arms.
She continued to follow Cole in silence until they were around the corner of the school building.
COLE
“Are you okay, Cole? What is going on here?”
Good lord, he thought to himself. His name coming out of her mouth was really something else. He felt irrational, like he wanted to fall to his knees and beg Daisy to say his name again. Instead, he shook his head and looked out toward the school parking lot, doing his damnedest to look anywhere but down her low-cut tank top. He had important things he needed to say, and he really didn’t need any carnal distractions getting in the way.
“I’m fine. And I don’t know.”
Daisy groaned, slapped her palms on her hips.
“Well then why’d you drag me out of there? Why’d you say we’re keeping the diner?”
“I don’t know.”
She bit her lip and looked down at her shoes as she kicked the gravel around. “I mean, I know we haven’t had a chance to talk about any of this, but I know you don’t want to live here. I don’t understand why you’d say we’re going to keep the diner.”
“I didn’t take the job.”
“What?” Daisy’s jaw fell open.
“I turned down the partnership.”
“I don’t…I don’t even understand. Why would you…Why?”
“Because I found a better partnership, right here.”
Without thinking, Cole stepped into her space. He moved in too close for any kind of polite conversation. Too close to be misinterpreted as anything other than what it was.
He looked down at her, watched the way she tipped her head back to look up at him. The way her neck bent and begged to be touched and licked. He remembered how she felt in his arms, how she smelled. How she tasted.
“There’s really only one thing to do here, you know.”
He watched her swallow with erotic fascination. Her eyes were big and bright blue, and she shivered in the cool evening air. This wasn’t any regular kind of fear. Daisy wasn’t scared of Cole hurting her, yelling at her, or even picking a fight.
This was abject longing fighting a losing battle with a staggering fear of rejection. Unbridled attraction, warring with a very real fear that he might use her up and turn away from her after he’d had his fill.
All of which made perfect sense, seeing as he’d done exactly that the night they’d met. Had continued to do every damned bad thing she feared he would, when he’d made choices that affected her, without discussing them with her. When he’d implied that what she wanted for their future wasn’t good enough. That Madelia wasn’t good enough.
He cupped her cheek in his hand, marvelled at how small she really was, then pressed his lips against hers until she moaned and kissed him back. He pushed her back against the brick wall, wrapped her up in his arms, and revelled in the way everything soft and sweet about her became hot and heady in an instant.
“Marry me.”
Daisy sputtered. “Marry you? Are you crazy?”
“It’s the perfect solution to all of our problems. We get married, we run the diner, we raise this baby and Mason together and we give both kids a stable, happy family. We die old and fat and happy after a long lifetime of love.”
“Okay, yeah,” Daisy said after a moment. “You are definitely crazy.”
“You know what? I see something funny happen, and the first thing I want to do is tell you about it. I see a happy couple and I imagine our future together. You are all I think about, and yeah it’s driving me crazy. So I’m ready to end the insanity and I’m asking you to marry me already.”
“People don’t do this, Cole. They just, they don’t.”
Cole raise an eyebrow and waggled it. “They do it all the time in those unfinished novels you keep in your notebooks.”
“Those are fiction. They’re silly, romantic stories. They aren’t real life. Men don’t say the things you just said, they don’t…”
“They don’t stick around?”
Daisy sighed. “Not in my experience, no. They don’t.”
“Well I’m here and I’m sticking around. Consider me stuck, completely and forever, on you.”
Daisy threw her hands up in the air and paced away from him. Cole stood still and watched her, tried to calculate in his head how close she might be to actually agreeing with him. Now that he’d said it all, admitted he wanted her to be in his life forever, he felt the first real stabs of fear that she might not go along with it.
He loved her, dammit. They were having a baby. Wasn’t that enough to start a life on? He cut the distance between the two of them in two steps and laid his hands on her hips. He massaged his thumbs against her belly, imagining what she’d look like when she swelled with his child. The thought made him bold.
“I love you, Daisy Hewitt. I love Mason, and I love our baby growing inside of you. Marry me.”
“This is stupid, you’re stupid, and I guess I must be stupid as well,” Daisy said with a resigned sigh and a smile.
“Why’s that?”
“Because I love you too.”
He grinned. “Well, let’s get back in there and tell everybody. They probably think I’ve kidnapped you at this point.”
Daisy laughed, and they walked back in hand-in-hand.
Stacie was still on the stage, microphone in hand, when they re-entered the cafeteria. She looked confused, but handed the microphone back to Daisy when she requested it.
“Okay,” she said with a shaky laugh. “You’re probably wondering what that was about. Well, he was right. We are going to keep the diner. And we’re going to run it. Together.”
The crowd cheered, but all Cole could hear was his heart, pounding in his ears. This was what he wanted. This was the life he’d wanted, even before he’d known he wanted it.
This was it.
EPILOGUE
DAISY
She balanced the notebook on her big round belly, and scribbled out the end of a scene before she forgot what she wanted to include. As she read back what she’d written with her pencil between her teeth, she grinned. Writing had gotten easier, like the words were just flowing out of her. She wondered some days if it was the hormones, or if just being in love made writing about love easier.
Suddenly all she could think about what the gooey happy, lovey-dovey endings. She wanted to see the final kiss in her minds’ eye, she wanted to hear the happy love songs at the end of the movie.
Ideally, she hoped to be able to finish up her current story and have a chance to send it off to be edited before her daughter came into the world.
Their daughter.
Daisy rested her pencil on the notebook and smiled. She and Cole had been happy to hear their baby was healthy and developing well, but over the moon when they found out they were having a little girl. Mason, for his part, was more excited than she’d ever seen him before. He had big plans for his little sister, Daisy surmised.
“Enough daydreaming there,” Cole said as he came around the side of the couch, holding a steaming cup of coffee between his palms. “Drink up, then get back to writing.”
Daisy stuck her tongue out at her husband, but accepted the cup and sipped gladly. “Ah, the good stuff.”
“Yep, per doctor’s orders, it’s half caf, half decaf. Loads of cream for the calcium.”
“You’re so good to me.” Another sip, then Daisy leaned over and kissed Cole soundly on the lips. “Good husband
.”
Cole growled against her lips, and with one deft movement he managed to secure her coffee cup on the side table and pull her toward him until she was straddling his lap.
“Good wife,” he replied, running his hands along her hips, her thighs, before resting on her belly. “Any plans to make that official?”
Daisy scrunched up her nose. They’d done a quick courthouse signing of the marriage documents shortly after the announcement at the town council meeting. At the time, all they’d wanted was the legal protections. Daisy figured they’d have the romantic walk down the aisle when they were ready.
When her body was ready, she thought glumly as she looked down at her distended belly.
Daisy intertwined her fingers with Cole’s. “I’d say we’re pretty official, in all the ways that count anyway.”
“True,” he hedged, pulling a small box out of his pants pocket. “But I’d really like to see something shiny and sparkly on that ring finger of yours.”
He popped open the ring box and showed off the delicate ring within. Along with the ring was a silver necklace. “What do you think? I figure for now you can wear it around your neck, and after little Rose comes, we can get it sized down to you.”
“Rose?” Daisy pulled the ring and necklace out of the box, tilted her head so that he could clasp it around her neck. “What happened to Olivia?”
“I seem to be pretty enamored with flower names at the moment. Can’t imagine why.” He kissed her neck where he’d clasped the necklace together, let his lips trail down the sensitive skin until she sighed and melted into his arms.
“What about Lily? Or Violet?”
Cole nipped at her neck, made her jump, before he continued his travels down her collarbone.
“Mmmm,” she moaned, forgetting for a moment what they were discussing. “Holly? Hibiscus?”
He took an achingly long time to get there, but when he reached the swell of her breasts, they both forgot everything except each other, in that moment, together.
About The Author
Jessa Chase lives in the wilds of the Inland Northwest of Washington State. When she isn’t working in a busy Family Medicine clinic, she enjoys writing about strong women with goals and ambitions, and the powerful men who fall madly in love with them.
Her house is overrun by animals of all shapes and sizes, including dogs, chickens, and her daughter. There’s never a dull moment!
Find out more at amazon.com/author/jessachasebooks
Or visit jessachase.blogspot.com
If you’d be interested in author updates, including when my next book will be in stores, as well as freebies and access to other interesting authors in my genre, please join my mailing list today!
Click here to subscribe
Other Books By Jessa Chase
Love in Madelia Series (complete)
Available as a set or separately
Be Mine, Valentine
A short medical romance
Can I Ask A Favor?
If you enjoyed this book, I’d really appreciate it if you would post a short review on Amazon. I do read all the reviews personally so that I can continually write what people are wanting.
If you’d like to leave a review then please visit the link below:
Waiting on Love
Thanks for your support!
-Jessa
