by A Western Family Christmas Christmas Eve; Season of Bounty; Cowboy Scrooge
“I know he doesn’t,” Justin said, stepping closer.
“You do?”
He nodded. “I read the letter more carefully. But Ivy, I wasn’t going to tell you that I was sorry,” he admitted. “I was going to tell you…” His face turned red and pained again, but before she could interrupt once more, he blurted out, “I was going to tell you that I love you and I want you to be my wife.”
Ivy felt faint. These were perhaps the last words she expected to come tumbling off his lips this morning. Or ever! “Your wife!”
He held her arms—heaven knows she needed propping up—and gently pulled her to him. “I know it’s a leap from Boston to Texas, and that I’ve been an old curmudgeon, but I’ve changed. I swear I have. I’ll try to make your life wonderful.”
Wonderful? She couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful than this very moment. She’d never been so happy. Except…
There was still a cloud hanging over them—the cloud of her past—and she couldn’t ignore it. If she did, it would surely come back to haunt them later. “But Justin,” she said, looking squarely into his eyes even as she felt tears rolling down her own, “there are things you don’t know about me.”
His expression was impossibly gentle. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does.” She gathered courage. “I was in prison, Justin.”
It was the first time she had spoken the words aloud.
She expected him to pull away from her, to recoil as she felt herself recoiling from her own admission, but he didn’t. He smiled, and lifted a hand to her cheek, where he rubbed away a tear. “So was I, before you came along.”
The tears came out full force now. She had never heard such loving words. “Oh, but—”
He put his hand over her lips, and then bent to place a kiss on her forehead. “Enough of that. Are you so mean that you could just leave me dangling here in suspense?”
She blink up at him, sniffing in confusion.
“What?”
He grinned. “You never answered my question. Will you marry me?”
“Oh!” For a moment, she instinctively tried to think of the thousands of reasons she should say no, but she couldn’t come up with even one. She was being handed the opportunity of a lifetime, a new beginning with a man she loved almost more than life itself. “Oh, yes! Yes, I will!”
The exclamation was rewarded with a kiss. She fell against him, so relieved and happy and full of joy that she was reeling from it. His mouth tasted hers briefly before he pulled back and whispered, “I don’t know if you remember, but we have an audience.”
She chuckled and glanced shyly at the wagon full of familiar faces beaming back at them—all except Wink, who was blowing his nose. Why, he was crying! Ivy, who was doing a little crying of her own, laughed in amazement.
“C’mon, Ivy!” Linus bellowed with a four-year-old’s impatience. “Let’s go!”
“Yeah, Ivy,” Joe Junior seconded, “aren’t you coming home with us?”
Sophie looked up at her hopefully and Ivy felt her heart fill to brimming with love. Today was Christmas, she remembered. A day when the children should have been loafing about playing with their new treasures. And here they were. For her. But Christmas was also a day commemorating a birth, and that’s how Ivy felt—as if she were a new person entering a new life, with love full in her heart.
She turned to Justin, feeling her insides warm as she looked into his brown eyes. “Well?”
He bent down and kissed her again. “Let’s go home,” he agreed.
Squeezing her hand, he led her to the crowded wagon that would take them all back to the ranch for the best and happiest Christmas day anyone at the Bar M could ever remember.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-5993-8
A WESTERN FAMILY CHRISTMAS
Copyright © 2001 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual titles as follows:
CHRISTMAS EVE
Copyright © 2001 by Millie Criswell
SEASON OF BOUNTY
Copyright © 2001 by Mary Myers
COWBOY SCROOGE
Copyright © 2001 by Elizabeth Bass
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