by Joanna Bell
"Look who's awake," Cillian said, getting up and kissing my cheek as he pulled out a chair. "How are you feeling? Hailey said you got sick earlier. If you don't feel well the emergency room in town is open, we can –"
"I'm OK," I said, patting his hand and briefly exchanging a look with Hailey. "I was just tired."
The table had been mostly cleared, but the candles were still flickering and an air of easy contentment filled the room. Cups of dark Irish coffee sat in front of everyone except Hailey – and me. Lacey offered to make me one but I declined.
"Cillian tells me you used to ride," Lacey said. "What stables were you at in Florida?"
Lacey was one of my people, I could tell. She had that well-groomed, unspecific look about her that wealthy women of a certain age have.
"Sandy Palms," I replied. "Just north of Miami. I was never a serious rider, though. Just lessons when I was a girl."
As the conversation twisted and turned and went back and forth, Cillian reached out under the table and took my hand. It didn't have to be Christmas. It could have been any night of the year. The scene didn't need the candles or the decorations or the smell of pine needles. All it needed was that feeling that comes when a small group of people is entirely comfortable with each other, when each member feels genuine affection and respect for the others. But it was Christmas, and it was snowing outside and I did have the best – and possibly most short-lived – secret of my life concealed in the chamber of my heart that belongs exclusively to Cillian Devlin.
Brody sat cuddled on his father's lap, half-asleep until he happened to glance under the table as the grown-ups discussed the ins and outs of introducing children to horse-riding early.
"MOMMY!"
Hailey sighed and smiled at her boy. "Brody, can you please lower your voice? We can hear you just fine."
"OK," he replied in a whisper, causing a few giggles around the table. "I'm sorry."
"What's on your mind, kid?" Cillian asked, inadvertently giving his nephew the opportunity to throw a door to the future wide open.
"Do you love Astrid?"
"Brody!" Jackson scolded, in that firm but gentle way loving parents scold their children. "That's not the kind of question you ask people at –"
"No," Cillian broke in, sitting up a little straighter in his chair. "It's – it's OK. And yes, I do love Astrid."
"Why do you love her?"
I could see Hailey and Jackson were ready to say something to their son again but Cillian just held one hand up and then turned to look at me.
No one ever looked at me like that before. Certainly not my ex-fiancé – not even when we thought we were in love. There was no anxiousness in Cillian's eyes, no doubt or worry. Nothing was being withheld or hidden the way we are all sometimes prone to withhold or hide our emotions from others, lest they be rejected, or not taken seriously.
I looked back at the man who did not yet know I was going to have his child with what I imagine was the exact same expression on my own face.
"Well," he said, replying to Brody but not taking his eyes off me. "For one thing, because she's crazy beautiful. But you know what, kid?"
"What Uncle Cillian?"
"Beauty isn't enough. I don't know if your daddy told you that yet or not but it's true. Sometimes people are beautiful on the outside but not on the inside."
"And Astrid is beautiful on the inside, too?"
I was a little self-conscious during that conversation. Not in a bad way, just in my usual center-of-attention-shunning way. I was also waiting for Brody to say something awkward like little kids are prone to do. To reply to Cillian's next enquiry as to my supposed beauty with a pithy 'she's OK, I guess.'
"She is," Cillian replied. "She is beautiful on the inside. Do you know when your daddy got hurt in the fire she flew all the way to Los Angeles from Peru, so I wouldn't have to be alone?"
"From Peru?!" Brody laughed, looking up at his mom to check his uncle wasn't messing with him. "That's really far away! Right Mommy? Is Peru really far away?"
Hailey touched her son's cheek gently, sensing the serious turn of the conversation. "Yes it is," she told him quietly. "Yes, Peru is far away."
Brody considered what he'd been told for a few seconds. "But you weren't alone," he said. "My mommy was there. My gran-gran was there too – wasn't gran-gran there, mommy?"
Hailey nodded and murmured: "Mmm-hmm."
"And Aunt Lacey!" Brody continued. "And Aunt Lili! You weren't alone, Uncle Cillian – there were lots of people!"
Cillian turned towards his nephew, nodding. "You're right," he said. "You're right, there were a lot of people there. But they were there for your daddy, not me. I wasn't really myself back then."
All the adults in the room could hear the gravity in Cillian's voice. We could all feel the weight of the past – thrown off but remembered – in his words. Brody, being a child, was simply curious.
"You weren't yourself?" He asked, confused.
Cillian turned back to me and took my hand. Perhaps I shouldn't be so dismissive of Brody's childish lack of understanding – I don't think I had much more of it myself. I almost pulled my hand away, for one thing. Not because I was upset but because I was embarrassed. The focus was still on me – Cillian was keeping it on me – and it made me squirm.
He didn't let go, though. And he didn't look away.
"No," he continued, "I wasn't. I was different then. If you want to know the truth, I wasn't a very nice person. Before I met Astrid I wasn't a very nice person at all. And then I did meet her –"
"And she turned you into a nice person?"
Cillian let out a low chuckle and ran his thumb reassuringly over the back of my hand, seeing my self-consciousness. "Maybe. I think it might be more accurate to say that she showed me the value of being a nice person. Do you know that before I met her I thought it was cool to be a jerk? I thought being mean to people meant I was strong. Then Astrid left me and I realized I wasn't as strong as I thought."
"Cillian," I whispered, my cheeks beginning to tingle at how thoroughly the focus of what was a rambling group conversation had become me and Cillian. "I don't know how much you've had to drink but I think everyone has heard enough about how wonderful I am for one n–"
"No," Jackson suddenly said, quite loudly and with a big smile on his face. "No, not at all. I don't know about everyone else here, but I want to hear what my brother has to say."
I still hadn't figured it out by then. Any other night but that one and maybe I would have. But I had a distraction of my own...
"I mean it," Cillian said, openly addressing me now and not his nephew. "When you left LA I was already a different man. I already knew I wanted to be better, I already knew I had to get off the path I was on – spending every night at the Lone Pine, drowning in self-pity and booze. Even in leaving you gave me a gift. You made me see that a good life is never wasted. Don't get me wrong, I missed you. I missed you like hell. And believe me, there were a few more nights at the bar. But eventually I just thought to myself if I couldn't have you, at least I could have my self-respect, you know? I never had that before I met you. And I only got it – I only got any respect for myself – because you respected me."
He meant everything he was saying. I could see it in his eyes. A lump rose in my throat at that last sentence, at his comment about only coming to respect himself because I respected him. I thought it was ridiculous, of course, because I loved him and when you love someone you can sometimes find it difficult to see or to remember their flaws.
"I didn't think you were coming back," Cillian continued, squeezing my hand between both of his own. "I really didn't. I just forced myself to accept it. I told myself I was sad, but I would survive. I told myself if I had to live without you then I would do it. I wouldn't like it, but I would do it. I thought that was the best that a man like me – a man who has done the things I did – could hope for. And to this day I don't think I was wrong about any of that. Anyone in any circumstance can
grow or change, that's always possible. But happiness is another thing. Not everyone can be happy. When you flew back to Peru I accepted it. I accepted my fate. I accepted my sadness and my loneliness and the fact that I let myself and others down. If a fresh cup of coffee in the morning or a hike in the woods was as good as it got for Cillian Devlin for the rest of his life then hell, I thought it could have been a lot worse."
I was touched. In spite of my reddened cheeks, I couldn't help lifting one of Cillian's hands to my lips and kissing it. "It's OK," I told him. "I understand. I understand what you're saying."
I was already fighting a stinging sensation in my eyes and a tug at the back of my throat. I think I caught Hailey wiping a tear off her own cheek – maybe even Uncle Dave as well. But when Cillian suddenly sank down on one knee and reached into his pocket it, it was only then that it finally dawned on me what was happening.
He wasn't just talking about the past for no reason.
"Oh," I whispered, gulping back a sob.
"What I'm trying to say," he said, looking up at me, "is that I accepted my fate. But I don't accept it anymore. That's you, Astrid. You gave me courage to be a better man. You made me strong. If it wasn't for you I would still be down at the Lone Pine, getting into fights and drinking what's left of my youth away. And I want you to know that I'm asking you this question knowing you have plans. I ask you this question on the explicit understanding that I will support those plans. Whatever you want, I want for you. Whatever you do, I will be by your side when you do it. Wherever you need me to be, my girl, I will be there. Astrid – my love – will you marry me? For real this time?"
In the background, Hailey actually let out a little stifled cry of her own. I heard it, but I didn't glance up. I was looking down at the ring in Cillian's fingers. Actually I wasn't looking at the ring. I wasn't looking at anything. I was just in love. Completely, utterly and totally in love.
"Yes," I whispered, wiping tears off my cheeks. "Yes, of course. Of course I will marry you. Of course I –"
Cillian stood up and took me with him, lifting me out of my chair and off my feet and burying his face in my neck.
Another bottle of champagne was duly retrieved from the kitchen, Brody was carried up to bed by his father and the congratulations and well-wishes and excitement ran late into the night.
I looked around at one point, at all the shining faces around me, and the joy in the air was almost palpable.
***
At just past 2 in the morning, after everyone had retired to bed, Cillian and I found ourselves outside in the grounds of Jackson and Hailey's home, cooling off after the heat from the woodstove indoors got to be too much. It had been snowing since the afternoon and a white blanket lay across the landscape and the trees, lending the entire world a soft muffled-ness.
Cillian turned his face up to the sky, opening his mouth to catch snowflakes. I giggled as they landed on my eyelashes and the tip of my nose, and then I looked down at the ring on my finger again. The main stone was peach-toned, the smaller stones around it flashing darkly.
"Is this a Padparadscha?" I asked.
Cillian nodded. "Yeah."
I looked up at him, smiling. "How do you know about gemstones?"
"I don't," he laughed. "I asked Hailey for help. You know those smaller stones are the same ones she has on her ring?"
"Are they?"
"Yes – they're Montana sapphires. Apparently they're mined not far from here. I wanted to include them because this is the place we met, isn't it? And no matter where we go –" he broke off and I saw that he was struggling with emotion. I squeezed his hand a little tighter in my own. "Because no matter where we go – and I will go anywhere with you, Astrid Walker – I want us to always have a little piece of this place with us."
"We will," I replied. "Even without the ring, we always will."
"Oh I know, I just meant –"
"I know what you meant. I love my ring. I love the thought you put into it. I love the way you do that, you know. The way you think of me. No one ever did that before. No one ever thought of me the way you do."
Cillian gazed down at me, the outline of his broad, handsome face and his tumbling hair etched against the night sky. "And I never thought of anyone the way I think of you. You're the first. The weird thing is I don't even have to try. I always used to think relationships were hard work – boring work. But loving you isn't work at all."
I reached down almost unconsciously and put my hand on my midsection.
"You know I didn't eat anything bad earlier," I started. "When I –"
"When you got sick?"
"Yeah. I didn't eat anything bad."
"That's good."
Cillian was listening, but he didn't yet know where I was going. He didn't yet know he was going to be someone's daddy. He didn't know that soon enough he would have a child of his own, to look to him the way Brody looked to Jackson. And those few precious seconds before I told him are ones I will remember for the rest of my life.
"It wasn't the food," I continued, guiding his cold hand under my sweater and holding it against my warm belly. "That wasn't why I threw up."
Cillian looked down at me, his brows knitted in confusion. "OK, yeah. I mean, that's good. Food poisoning at Christmas would be a goddamned nightm–"
He stopped talking abruptly, staring at the spot where his hand lay under my sweater. His eyes flicked up to meet mine, and then back down again.
"That wasn't –" he started, his words coming haltingly. "That wasn't why you were... that wasn't – oh, Astrid. You better tell me what you're talking about right now. You better – oh you better tell me what you mean right this minute because from where I'm standing it sounds like –"
"I'm pregnant," I said, smiling so hard and so wide I thought my face might break. "I'm pregnant. I'm going to have a baby."
"No," he said, shaking his head. "No. No. No – oh God, Astrid. No! Are you joking? Please tell me you're not joking? Are you? Is this a –"
"It's not a joke. I only found out a few hours ago – Hailey had some pregnancy tests left over and when I threw up she said I should take them. Just to see. And then –"
"You're pregnant?!" Cillian exclaimed, before going right back to shaking his head, pacing in circles as the snowflakes glistened in his hair. "No. No you can't be. I don't get this, Astrid. Guys like me don't get this. We don't. We don't. We don't get happy endings."
I reached out and grabbed his hand, forcing him to stop. "You do," I said quietly. "You do."
He looked up at the sky, as if searching for some explanation. "No we don't," he continued, whispering, and then looking back at me. "Tell me you're not joking. Astrid, promise me. Promise me this isn't a game."
"It's not a game," I replied. "It's not a joke. I'm pregnant – with your baby."
At once, he fell to his knees in the snow and wrapped his arms around me, lifting my sweater and examining my belly.
"You don't look pregnant."
I giggled. "I know. That's exactly what I thought. But – I am. All the tests were positive."
"You're having my baby," he whispered finally, as I reached down to brush a snowflake off his cheek. "Really? You're having my baby?"
"Yes. I am."
We stayed like that – Cillian on his knees, his chin resting against my bare belly as he gazed up at me, my hands cupped around his gorgeous face – for a long time. Just listening to the snow falling, sinking into the reality of our own happiness – a happiness I don't think either of us truly believed we would ever know.
Until we did know it. Until we found each other and love knitted the loose threads of our two lives together into a new tapestry, a new story, a future we could hardly wait for.
THE END
The Cowboy's Nanny
The Cowboy's Nanny, Book 3 in the Devlin Brothers Ranch series, will be released in Jan/Feb 2021.
A sneak peek at Chapter 1 (featuring Cillian and Astrid's wedding and an introduction to Patrick Dev
lin) will be made exclusively available to my newsletter subscribers before release. To receive your copy please sign up here:
http://eepurl.com/gQ0MX5
Devlin Brothers Ranch Series
The Cowboys Baby (Book 1) – Available Here
The Cowboy's Nanny (Book 3) – Coming Jan/Feb 2021! (see previous page to sign-up for early access to Chapter 1)
About The Author
Joanna Bell lives in the PNW with a menagerie of rescue animals, a tendency towards daydreaming and a healthy fear of earthquakes. She is always happy to connect with readers.
To sign-up for the Devlin Brothers Ranch Reader's Club and be the first to know about the latest releases and news from Joanna Bell:
http://eepurl.com/gQ0MX5
Follow Joanna on Amazon (click the yellow Follow button):
https://www.amazon.com/Joanna-Bell/e/B0768K811G
To contact Joanna please e-mail her at: [email protected]
Other Books By Joanna Bell
Joanna's previous project was the beloved and highly-rated 4 book 'Mists of Albion' Viking/Time Travel romance series.
Mists of Albion Series
Mists of Albion Book 1: Eirik
Mists of Albion Book 2: Ragnar
Mists of Albion Book 3: Ivar
Mists of Albion Book 4: Magnus