The puppies spotted her first and greeted her with a cacophony of ecstatic barks, jumping at her heels as she made her way to where Matt was sitting.
“Hey,” he said, trying for casual, but she heard a world of uncertainty in that single syllable.
She sat down beside him. “Hey, yourself.”
Finnigan and Frederick were jumping all over one another, vying for her attention, so she took a moment to play with them while she tried to find the right words to say what she wanted to say.
But Matt broke the silence first, cautiously asking, “Are you still mad?”
She considered the spectrum of emotions that had churned through her system over the past twelve hours. “Mad isn’t even part of what I was feeling,” she told him. “Unless you count being furious with your ex-wife for what she did to you.”
“I wish there was something I could say or do to explain,” he said, “but I honestly don’t know that there’s any explanation.”
“You’re an idiot?” she suggested.
He managed a smile. “You’ve been talking to Kelsey.”
Georgia nodded.
“I am an idiot,” he agreed. “Because the absolute last thing I ever wanted to do was to keep anything from you.”
“Then can I ask you something?”
“Anything,” he promised.
“Why did you ask me to marry you?”
He shifted so that he was facing her. “That’s your question?”
She nodded again.
“I screwed up even worse than I thought if you don’t know how much I love you.”
“I know you said you do,” she acknowledged. “But I need to know that you want to be with me and didn’t just see the widow next door and her fatherless kids as an opportunity to have a family again.”
“Obviously you know how much I care about Quinn and Shane and Pippa, but as completely as your children won my heart, I never would have proposed to you if I didn’t want to be with you.
“We’ve both been married before,” he reminded her. “And I don’t know about your vows, but I’m pretty sure that mine included something like ‘so long as we both shall live’ and not ‘until the kids grow up and go off to college.’”
She had to smile at that. “The difference this time being that the kids aren’t an obscure concept but an immediate reality.”
“I couldn’t love Quinn and Shane and Pippa any more if they were my own, but I wasn’t thinking about them when I proposed to you,” he assured her. “When I asked you to marry me, I wasn’t thinking about teaching Quinn to throw a curveball or watching Shane knock it out of the park or even about the huge princess party we’re going to throw for Pippa’s first birthday.”
“Although you’ve obviously given all of those ideas some thought.”
“Because when I think of the future with you, it encompasses everything that I’ve ever wanted, but none of it matters without you.” He took her hands, linked their fingers together. “I asked you to marry me because when I thought about my future, I couldn’t imagine it without you. The kids are a bonus—I won’t deny that—but it’s you that I want by my side for the rest of my life.”
The sincerity in his tone, the depth of emotion she could read in his eyes, brought tears to her own.
“But if you want to reschedule the wedding, that’s okay,” he told her. “Just don’t push me out of your life. Give me a chance to prove how much I love you. Please.”
“Do you want to reschedule?”
“No,” he replied without hesitation. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I want the rest of our life together to start as soon as possible. But if you’ve got any doubts at all...”
She shook her head, because she didn’t. Not anymore. “I don’t want to postpone the wedding,” she said. “I want to marry you because I love you, and I want the rest of our life together to start as soon as possible.”
He hauled her into his arms and kissed her firmly. And then he drew back to say, “In the interest of full disclosure—”
Georgia instinctively tensed. “Is this another secret from your past?”
“No, it’s an idea for our future.”
She exhaled. “Okay.”
“I just wanted you to know that I’ve thought about someday adding to our family.”
“You’d want more children?” She hadn’t considered the possibility. Maybe because Pippa was still just a baby, the idea of having another baby had never crossed her mind. But now that Matt had mentioned it, she knew that she would love to have another child—Matt’s child.
“Only if you do,” he hastened to assure her. “I just thought, we’ve already got two boys, it might be nice for Pippa to have a sister.”
It was the we that had her eyes filling with tears, the ease with which he’d spoken that one word that made her accept the truth of his feelings for her. He hadn’t put the ring on her finger to make them a family—they already were a family. The ring really was about his love and commitment to her.
“Why don’t we hold off any discussion about another baby until I’ve finished nursing this one,” Georgia suggested.
“That sounds fair,” he agreed.
“Besides, we have more important things to do right now if we’re going to move into your house after the wedding in three days.”
“I finished hanging the border in the twins’ room,” he told her. “Do you want to see it?”
“You’re just trying to get me upstairs, conveniently down the hall from your bedroom,” she guessed.
He smiled. “Am I that transparent?”
She framed his face in her hands so that she could look into his eyes and clearly see his love for her shining through.
“Yes, you are,” she said, and touched her lips to his.
“I love you, Georgia Reed.”
“And I love you, Matt Garrett,” she told him. “Now, let’s go check out that border.”
He took her hand and led her into the house that was no longer his own but the home they would share—just like their future—together.
Epilogue
The day of the wedding wasn’t very different from any other day that Matt had experienced since moving in next door to Georgia and her kids—which meant that it was pretty much chaos from beginning to end.
He knew it was his own fault, since he’d convinced his bride-to-be to let the twins spend the night at his house. He’d been confident that he could handle the routines of two little boys and get them ready for church the next day. Besides, he had backup in the form of Jack and Luke.
When the boys were fed and washed and dressed—and looking way too darn cute in their little tuxedos, despite the fact that Quinn kept complaining the shoes were too tight—they wanted to play. But all of their toys were next door, so he put cartoons on the TV. That occupied them for all of about thirty minutes, after which he finally agreed they could go outside with the puppies so long as they didn’t get dirty.
Both Quinn and Shane nodded their understanding of the rule, and Luke went outside with them to ensure they followed it. Unfortunately, no one could have anticipated that Finnigan would find “something stinky and dead” (as Quinn later described it) in the yard and decide it would make a tasty snack, but not so tasty that he didn’t later throw it up on Shane’s pants.
Luke—the expert on all kinds of puppy puke—brought them back inside for cleanup. It was shortly after that when Jack discovered Quinn’s shoes in the toilet of the downstairs bathroom. Apparently Mommy never let him put wet shoes on his feet for fear he’d catch “new-moan-ya,” so he’d stuffed them in the toilet to get them wet and unwearable.
When Matt rounded everyone up for a last inspection before they headed off to the church, he decided that the boys’ tuxedos didn’t look too bad with running shoes. Then he made the mistake of reminding the twins that they were going to walk down the aisle on either side of their mom to give her away. He said the words without thinking, and both Quinn and Shane
burst into tears, protesting that they didn’t want to give away their mommy, they wanted to keep her forever and ever.
By the time he dried their tears, clarified their role in the ceremony and confirmed that they were all going to be together forever and ever, his head was throbbing.
A grinning Luke handed him a glass of water and a couple of Tylenol. Jack followed that up with a tumbler of scotch.
But all the drama was forgotten as soon as he saw Georgia. Wearing a sheath-style dress of cream-colored lace and carrying a bouquet of red roses, she completely took his breath away.
It seemed to take forever for her to reach the front of the church—which might have been because Quinn and Shane were almost literally dragging their feet—but when the minister instructed them to join hands, Georgia’s were steady and warm. And in her eyes, he couldn’t see any evidence of lingering doubts, just love and joy shining in the beautiful blue depths.
But as a reminder, in case the vows hadn’t been enough, he whispered to her, “I love you, Mrs. Garrett.”
“I know,” she said. “I love you, too.”
And when his lips brushed over hers, he heard Quinn clearly announce, “We gived her away, but she’s still our mommy.”
As soft chuckles sounded from the gallery, Georgia drew back to look at him, silently questioning.
Matt could only shake his head. “Let’s just say that the only thing that got me through the last few hours on my own with those boys was the knowledge that, after today, I would always have you by my side.”
“Always,” she promised.
As Georgia and Matt made their way back down the aisle, they were flanked by Shane and Quinn with Pippa in her mother’s arms.
Now, officially, a family.
* * * * *
Don’t miss Jack Garrett’s story,
the next installment of Brenda Harlen’s new miniseries, THOSE ENGAGING GARRETTS!
Coming soon to Harlequin Special Edition!
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt of A Cold Creek Noel by RaeAnne Thayne!
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Chapter One
“Come on, Luke. Come on, buddy. Hang in there.”
Her wipers beat back the sleet and snow as Caidy Bowman drove through the streets of Pine Gulch, Idaho, on a stormy December afternoon. Only a few inches had fallen but the roads were still dangerous, slick as spit. For only a moment, she risked lifting one hand off the steering wheel of her truck and patting the furry shape whimpering on the seat beside her.
“We’re almost there. We’ll get you fixed up, I swear it. Just hang on, bud. A few more minutes. That’s all.”
The young border collie looked at her with a trust she didn’t deserve in his black eyes and she frowned, her guilt as bitter and salty as the solution the snowplows had put down on the roads.
Luke’s injuries were her fault. She should have been watching him. She knew the half-grown pup had a curious streak a mile wide—and a tendency not to listen to her when he had an itch to investigate something.
She was working on that obedience issue and they had made good strides the past few weeks, but one moment of inattention could be disastrous, as the past hour had amply demonstrated. She didn’t know if it was arrogance on her part, thinking her training of him was enough, or just irresponsibility. Either way, she should have kept him far away from Festus’s pen. The bull was ornery as a rattlesnake on a hot skillet and didn’t take kindly to curious young border collies nosing around his turf.
Alerted by Luke’s barking and then the bull’s angry snort, she had raced to old Festus’s pen just in time to watch Luke jig the wrong way and the bull stomp down hard on his haunches with a sickening crunch of bone.
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel and she cursed under her breath as the last light before the vet’s office turned yellow when she was still too far away to gun through it. She was almost tempted to keep going. Even if she were nabbed for running a red light by Pine Gulch’s finest, she could probably talk her way out of a ticket, considering her brother was the police chief and would certainly understand this was an emergency. If she were pulled over, though, it would mean an inevitable delay and she just didn’t have time for that.
The light finally changed and she took off fast, the back tires fishtailing on the icy road. She would just have to trust the salt bags she carried for traction in the bed of the pickup would do the job. Even the four-wheel drive of the truck was useless against black ice.
Finally, she reached the small square building that held the Pine Gulch Veterinary Clinic and pulled the pickup to the side doors where she knew it was only a short transfer inside to the treatment area.
She briefly considered carrying him in by herself, but it had taken the careful efforts of both her and her brother Ridge to slide a blanket under Luke and lift him into the seat of her pickup. They could bring out the stretcher and cart, she decided.
She rubbed Luke’s white neck. “I’m going to go get some help, okay? You just hold tight.”
He made a small whimper of pain and she bit down hard on her lip as her insides clenched with fear. She loved the little guy, even if he was nosy as a crow and even smarter, which was probably why his stubbornness was such a frustration.
He trusted her to take care of him and she refused to let him die.
She hurried to the front door, barely noticing the wind-driven sleet that gouged at her even under her Stetson.
Warm air washed over her when she opened the door, familiar with the scent of animals and antiseptic mixed in a stomach-churning sort of way with new paint.
“Hey, Caidy.” A woman in green scrubs rushed to the door. “You made good time from the River Bow.”
“Hi, Joni. I may have broken a few traffic laws, but this is an emergency.”
“After you called, I warned Ben you were on your way and what the situation was. He’s been getting ready for you. I’ll let him know you’ve arrived.”
Caidy waited, feeling the weight of each second ticking away. The new vet had only been in town a few weeks and already he had made changes to the clinic. Maybe she was just being contrary, but she had liked things better when Doc Harris ran the place. The whole reception area looked different. The cheerful yellow walls had been painted over with a boring white and the weathered, comfortable, old eighties-era couch and chairs were gone, replaced by modern benches covered in a slate vinyl that probably deflected anything a veterinarian’s patients could leak on it. A display of Christmas gifts appropriate for pets, including a massive stocking filled to the top with toys and a giant rawhide bone that looked as if it came from a dinosaur, hung in one corner.
Most significant, the reception area used to sit out in the open but it was now stuck behind a solid half wall topped with a glass partition.
It made sense to modernize from an efficiency point of view, but she had found the comfortably worn look of the office before more appealing.
Not that she cared about any of that right now, with Luke lying out in her truck, cold and hurt and probably afraid.
She shifted impatiently. Where was the man? Trimming his blasted nails? Only a few moments had passed but every second delay was too much. Just when she was about call out to Joni to see what was taking so long, the door into the treatment area opened and the new vet appeared.
“Whe
re’s the dog?” he asked abruptly, and she had only a vague impression of a frowning dark-haired man in blue scrubs.
“Still out in my truck.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Why? I can’t treat him out there.”
She wanted to take that giant rawhide bone out of that stocking and bean him with it. “Yes, I’m aware of that,” she said, fighting down her frustration. “I didn’t want to move him. I’m afraid something might be broken.”
“I thought he was gored.”
She wasn’t sure what, exactly, she had said in that frantic call to let Joni know she was on her way.
“He did end up on the business end of a bull at some point. I’m not sure if that was before or after that bull stepped on him.”
His mouth tightened. “A young dog has no business running wild in the same vicinity as a dangerous bull.”
His criticism stung far too close to her own guilt for comfort. “We’re a working ranch at the River Bow, Dr. Caldwell. Accidents like this can happen.”
“They shouldn’t,” he snapped before turning around and heading back through the treatment area. She followed him, heartily wishing for Doc Harris right now. The grizzled old vet had taken care of every dog she had ever owned, from her very first border collie and best friend, Sadie, whom she still had.
Doc Harris was her friend and mentor. If he had been here, he would have wrapped her in a warm hug that smelled of liniment and cherry Life Savers and promised her everything would be all right.
Dr. Ben Caldwell was nothing like Dr. Harris. He was abrasive and arrogant and she already heartily disliked him.
His eyes narrowed with surprise and displeasure when he saw she had followed him from the waiting room to the clinic area.
“This way is quicker,” she explained. “I’m parked by the side door. I thought it would be easier to transport him on the stretcher from there.”
He didn’t say anything, only charged through the side door she indicated. She trotted after him, wondering how the Pine Gulch animal kingdom would get along without the kindness and compassion Dr. Harris had been renowned for.
From Neighbors...to Newlyweds? Page 20