She knew he meant today, but she felt as if she’d been waiting for him forever—and she hoped that, after today, they could move toward a forever together.
“Have you had time...to process everything?” she asked him.
“I didn’t really need time,” he said, his voice raw with emotion. “I only needed to think about everything I could have with you, Ava, Max and Sam, and how empty my life would be without you in it.” Finally, he drew her into his arms. “I don’t know if there are any words to express how much I’ve missed you.”
“I think I know,” she said. “Because I’ve missed you just as much.”
He kissed her then, with a hunger that bordered on desperation.
And she kissed him back the same way, expressing without words the truth and depth of her feelings.
And then, when the kiss finally ended and she managed to catch her breath again, with words: “I love you, Liam.”
“You said that earlier,” he reminded her.
“And you didn’t trust my feelings.”
“I didn’t trust my own,” he said. “And I didn’t know if I was capable of being what you needed.”
“You are everything that I need,” she told him. “Everything that I want.”
“I hope you mean that,” he said. “Because I love you and Ava, Max and Sam, too. When you asked me earlier if the idea of being their dad appealed to me at all, I didn’t say anything because I was afraid to admit how much I wanted what you were offering. But I’m admitting it now. I’m putting my heart on the line—for you and our future together. Our family.”
Tears filled her eyes and overflowed along with the joy in her heart.
“Please don’t cry,” he said. “You know I can’t handle tears.”
“You’re going to have to get used to them,” she warned. “Because I sometimes cry when I’m really happy, and I know we’re going to be really happy together.”
He lifted his hands to frame her face and gently brushed her tears away. “Happily ever after,” he promised.
Epilogue
August 13
“Okay, we’ve practiced and practiced, but this time it’s for real, so I need you to stick to the script. Do you understand?”
His tone must have conveyed the seriousness of the situation, because Ava, Max and Sam—officially toddlers now—nodded solemnly.
They were dressed in coordinated outfits that their grandmother had picked out: Max and Sam in denim overalls and red T-shirts, Ava in a denim skirt and white shirt with a glittery red heart on it. They all wore cowboy boots and hats and held oversized cue cards in their hands. One by one, he lifted them up to sit on the hay bales he’d arranged for this moment.
It wouldn’t be Valentine’s Day again for another six months, but that was exactly how long it had been since Liam and Macy had shared their first kiss, and he figured that was enough time to convince her he knew what he wanted.
“No, Ava, you’re in the middle,” he reminded her, pointing to the spot between Max and Sam.
She stubbornly stayed where she was, her legs stretched out in front of her, booted feet crossed at the ankles. He picked her up and settled her on the hay between her brothers. She gave him a mutinous look that he recognized all too well as a precursor to trouble.
“And if we get this right, we can go for ice cream later.”
His promise seemed to placate the little girl—at least for the moment.
“You ready, Max?”
Max responded by extending both of his arms, proudly displaying the blank side of the card he held.
“That’s good,” Liam said. “But when Mommy comes out, you’re going to turn the card over.”
He turned the card, so the word was visible—albeit upside down.
Liam rotated the cardboard. “Just like that.”
While he was getting Max organized, Sam dropped his card. Naturally, he leaned over to pick it up—and nearly toppled off the hay bale. He lost his hat in the process and cried out in distress.
“It’s okay,” Liam soothed, settling the hat back on top of the boy’s head and placing the card back in his hands—and beginning to question the wisdom of his own plan.
He recognized the sound of Macy’s SUV pulling up outside and breathed a sigh of relief that she was on time. Checking the kids again to ensure they were in position and ready, he pulled out his cell phone to send a quick text message asking Macy to meet them behind the barn.
Half a minute later, she came around the corner, a smile lighting her face when she saw them. “What are you guys doing out here?”
“We have an important question to ask you,” Liam said, then turned to her children and prompted, “Max?”
The little boy turned over his card, his sister did the same with hers, his brother followed and then Liam showed his own.
Each card held a single word that, when put together, should have spelled out: WILL-YOU-MARRY-ME?
But when Sam dropped his card, Liam had mistakenly given the boy his, and Ava had turned hers over upside down so that what Macy saw was: YOU-ME?- MARRY
Thankfully, she was savvy enough to figure out what he was really trying to ask. Of course, the princess-cut diamond he pulled out of his pocket might have helped, too.
She laughed through her tears. “You once said a man would have to be crazy to want to marry a single mom with three babies,” she said, reminding him of the words he’d spoken months ago.
“I am crazy,” he confessed. “About you and about them. And there’s nothing I want more than to make our crazy family official.”
“In that case, yes,” she said, then responded to his question the way he’d asked it: “I will you marry.”
He slid the ring on the third finger of her left hand, then drew her into his arms for a long lingering kiss as Ava, Max and Sam clapped their hands in approval.
Then the clapping stopped and Ava demanded, “I-cweam!”
Liam broke the kiss on a sigh.
“You bribed them with ice cream, didn’t you?” Macy asked, amusement in her tone.
“I wouldn’t call it a bribe...it was offered as more of a performance bonus.”
“And did they perform according to your expectations?”
“Well, my expectations were pretty low,” he acknowledged. “But I’d say my mini cupids did their job.”
“I love that you made them a part of this,” she said.
“They are part of this—part of us. Our family.”
Fresh tears shimmered in her eyes. “And that’s only one of the reasons I love you.”
“And I love you right back.”
“I-cweam!” Ava said again, stamping her booted foot for emphasis this time.
A stern look from her mother had her reconsidering her strategy.
She shuffled closer and looked at Liam with big blue eyes. “P’ease, Da.”
She’d picked up the word from hanging out with Tessa, and though he doubted Ava understood the significance of it, she’d quickly discovered that using it often got her what she wanted. Because every time she uttered that single syllable, Liam’s heart melted just like her ice cream would do in the summer heat.
He looked at Macy now. “What do you think?”
She smiled. “I think we’re going for ice cream, Da.”
And that’s what they did.
* * *
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Brenda Harlen’s miniseries
Match Made in Haven.
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A Soldier’s Return
by RaeAnne Thayne
Chapter One
Some days, a girl reached a point where her best course of action was to run away from her problems.
Melissa Fielding hung up the phone after yet another unproductive discussion with her frustrating ex-husband, drew in a deep, cleansing breath, then threw on her favorite pair of jogging shoes.
Yes, she had a million things to do. The laundry basket spilled over with clothes, she had bills to pay, dirty dishes filled her sink, and she was scheduled to go into the doctor’s office where she worked in less than two hours.
None of that mattered right now. She had too much energy seething through her, wave after wave like the sea pounding Cannon Beach during a storm.
Even Brambleberry House, the huge, rambling Victorian where she and her daughter lived in the first-floor apartment, seemed too small right now.
She needed a little good, hard exercise to work some of it off or she would be a stressed, angry mess at work.
She and Cody had been divorced for three years, separated four, but he could still make her more frustrated than anybody else on earth. Fortunately, their seven-year-old daughter, Skye, was at school, so she didn’t have to witness her parents arguing yet again.
She yanked open her apartment door to head for the outside door when it opened from the other side. Rosa Galvez, her de facto landlady who ran the three-unit building for her aunt and a friend, walked inside, arms loaded with groceries.
Her friend took one look at Melissa’s face and frowned. “Uh-oh. Bad morning?” Rosa asked, her lovely features twisted with concern.
Now that she was off the phone, the heat of Melissa’s anger cooled a degree or two, but she could still feel the restless energy spitting and hissing through her like a downed power line.
“You know how it goes. Five minutes on the phone with my ex and I either have to punch something, spend an hour doing yoga or go for a hard run on the beach. I don’t have a free hour and punching something would be counterproductive, so a good run is the winner.” Melissa took two bags of groceries from Rosa and led the way up the stairs to the other woman’s third-floor apartment.
“Run an extra mile or two for me, would you?” Rosa asked.
“Sure thing.”
“What does he want this time?”
She sighed. “It’s a long story.” She didn’t want to complain to her friend about Cody. It made her sound bitter and small, and she wasn’t, only frustrated at all the broken promises and endless disappointments.
Guilt, an old, unwelcome companion, poked her on the shoulder. Her daughter loved her father despite his failings. Skye couldn’t see what Melissa did—that even though Skye was only seven, there was a chance she was more mature than her fun-loving, thrill-chasing father.
She ignored the guilt, reminding herself once more there was nothing she could do about her past mistakes but continue trying to make the best of things for her child’s sake.
Rosa opened the door to her wide, window-filled apartment, and Melissa wasn’t surprised to find Rosa’s much-loved dog, an Irish setter named Fiona, waiting just inside.
“Can I take Fiona on my run?” she asked impulsively, after setting the groceries in the kitchen.
“That would be great!” Rosa exclaimed. “We were going to go on a walk as soon as I put the groceries away, but she would love a run much more. Thank you! Her leash is there on the hook.”
At the word leash, Fiona loped to the door and did a little circular dance of joy that made more of Melissa’s bad mood seep away.
“Let’s do this, sweetheart,” she said, grabbing the leash from its place by the door and hooking it to Fiona’s shamrock-green collar.
“Thank you for this. Have fun.” Rosa opened the door for them, and the strong dog just about pulled Melissa toward the stairs. She waved at her friend, then she and the dog hurried outside.
The April morning was one of those rare and precious days along the Oregon Coast when Mother Nature decided it was finally time to get serious about spring. Sunlight gleamed on the water and all the colors seemed saturated and bright from the rains of the preceding few days.
The well-tended gardens of Brambleberry House were overflowing with sweet-smelling flowers—cherry blossoms, magnolia, camellias. It was sheer delight. She inhaled the heavenly aroma, enjoying the undernote of sea and sand and other smells that were inexorable scent-memories of her childhood.
Fiona pulled at the leash, forcing Melissa to pick up her pace. Yes. A good run was exactly the prescription she was writing herself.
As she headed down the path toward the gate that led to the water, she spotted Sonia, the third tenant of Brambleberry House, working in a bed of lavender that hadn’t yet burst into bloom.
Sonia was an interesting creature. She wasn’t rude, exactly, she simply kept to herself and had done so for the seven months Melissa had lived downstairs from her.
Melissa always felt so guilty when she watched the other woman make her painstaking way up the stairs to her second-floor apartment, often pausing to rest on the landing. She didn’t know the nature of Sonia’s health issues, but she obviously struggled with something. She walked with a limp, and Rosa had told Melissa once that the other woman had vision issues that precluded driving.
Right after moving in, Melissa had offered to switch apartments with her so Sonia wouldn’t have to make the climb, but her offer had been refused.
“I need...the exercise,” Sonia had said in her halting, odd cadence. “Going upstairs is good...physical therapy...for me.”
Melissa had to admire someone willing to push herself out of her comfort zone, sustained only by the hope that she would grow from the experience.
That was a good life lesson for her. She wasted entirely too much energy dwelling on the painful reality that life hadn’t turned out exactly as she planned, that some of her dreams were destined to disappointment.
Like Sonia, maybe it was time she stopped being cranky about things she couldn’t control and took any chance that came along to force herself to stretch outside her comfort zone. She needed to learn how to make the best of things, to simply enjoy a gorgeous April day.
“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”
“Lovely,” Sonia said with her somewhat lopsided smile. “Hello...Melissa. Hello...Fiona.”
She scratched the dog under her chin and was rewarded with one of Fi’s doggie grins.
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While the Irish setter technically lived with Rosa, the cheerful dog seemed to consider all the occupants of Brambleberry House her particular pack. That shared pet care worked out well for Melissa. Her daughter had been begging for a dog since before the divorce. Skye had been in heaven when they’d moved into Brambleberry House and discovered Rosa had a dog she was more than willing to share. This way, they got the benefits of having a dog without the onus of being responsible for one all the time.
That was yet another thing she had to be grateful for on this beautiful spring day. She had been so blessed to find an open apartment in Brambleberry House when she and Skye returned to Cannon Beach after all those years of wandering. It was almost a little miracle, since the previous tenant had only moved out to get married the week before Melissa returned to her hometown and started looking for a place.
She didn’t know if it was fate or kismet or luck or simply somebody watching out for them. She only knew that she and Skye had finally found a place to throw down roots.
She ran hard, accompanied by the sun on her face, the low murmur of the waves, the crunch of sand under her running shoes. All of it helped calm her.
By the time she and Fiona made it the mile and a half to the end of the beach and she’d turned around to head back, the rest of her frustration had abated, and she focused instead on the endorphins from the run and the joy of living in this beautiful place.
She paused for a moment to catch her breath, looking out at the rock formations offshore, the towering haystacks that so defined this part of the Oregon Coast, then the craggy green mountains to the east.
It was so good to be home. She had friends here, connections. Her dad was buried not far from here. Her mom and stepfather were here most of the time, though they had just bought an RV and were spending a few months traveling around the country.
She would have thought being a military wife to Melissa’s dad would have cured her mother’s wanderlust, but apparently not. They would be back soon.
Melissa didn’t envy them. After moving to a new base every few years during her childhood and then following Cody around from continent to continent, she loved being in one place. This place. She had missed it more than she even realized, until she finally decided to bring Skye here.
Claiming the Cowboy's Heart Page 20