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“Look. It wobbles.”
She placed a little bit of weight on the table. I watched as it rocked from side to side a little bit. It wasn’t anything a well-placed shim couldn’t fix, in my opinion. However, I looked at her to see what she wanted to do.
“What do you want to do?”
I asked mainly just to see if she had ideas of what to do. If she came up with a shim, then it wasn’t a large problem. If she came up with something else, I’d love to hear the explanation. This had less to do with trying to keep her busy and more to do with just wanting the best for the guests here at the lodge.
Just because I had an idea that would work didn’t always make it the best solution. Laurel had taught me that.
“I think we just need to stick something under it to stabilize it, but if you have any other ideas, I’d be willing to listen. I like this table too much to get rid of it,” she said.
I laughed a little.
“All right. We shim it,” I said. Being on the same page was a beautiful thing.
As I was talking to her, I caught a glimpse of Rick coming towards the door over her shoulder. He held an Australian shepherd puppy in his hands, though he let it down to let it walk on its little leash once it was in the lodge.
The happy yip made Laurel turn around. The sound that came out of her mouth the moment she saw it could only be described as a squeal of excitement.
“Puppy!” She walked over to Rick, but the puppy had a mind of its own and half-dragged Rick to meet Laurel in the middle of the entranceway.
“Well… that works too,” Rick said with a soft laugh.
“Happy birthday, Laurel,” I said. “The puppy’s yours.”
She turned to look at me, her eyes wide, as she continued to give the puppy some pets along its back. The puppy looked like it was in heaven, as its tail was wagging about a mile a minute as she continued to pet it.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. Really,” I said. She’d told me a few months ago that she’d always wanted a dog. And I’d always thought that the lodge could use a pet.
“Shelter said it’s a girl puppy,” Rick piped up. “But she doesn’t have a name yet. The staff hadn’t been able to agree on a name and thought you might like to name her.”
“Stella,” Laurel said confidently. Laurel turned her attention back to the little pup in front of her, who then let her get close enough to see the collar. “I’ll name her Stella. Who’s a good girl? Who’s a good girl?”
I looked up at Rick briefly. He nodded. The other surprise was there.
However, before looking at the collar, Laurel picked Stella up. That was even better. Much better than trying to propose to Laurel when she was sitting on the floor, at least.
“Huh… oh! There’s already a tag on here… huh… that’s odd,” she said. “It already says, Delaney…”
She took one hand to fidget with the tag, and that’s when I got down on one knee. Over the last few months, Laurel had shared everything that had gone wrong with Mr. Wilson’s second proposal with me, and I had listened.
The ring she pulled off the collar, as it had only been taped on at the last second, had a ruby as the centerpiece of the ring. It was a gorgeous emerald cut stone, with two smaller emerald cut diamonds on the sides. It was a simple piece, but it matched Laurel’s taste. Mark had always ignored what she wanted.
I didn’t want to do that to her.
She turned to look at me.
“Laurel Pennington, I know we’ve only been dating for a few months, but I have grown to love you so much. I never want to leave you alone in life, and I would love to have you by my side for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?”
To be able to trust her enough that I felt that I could propose to her was a big step for me. Over the last few months since Mr. Wilson’s stay here, she had started opening up to me in ways she had never expected. I suspected it was because she could trust me. And far more than her ex. I only wanted to be able to keep that up the rest of our lives, because if she couldn’t trust her life partner, then there was no chance she’d be able to trust a lot of others who needed to be trusted when the time was right.
Laurel stood in shock for a moment before she started laughing. I could tell that it was a laugh of delight, not one of derision, because of the way her nose crinkled as she laughed. There was also something sparkling in her laugh, like sleigh bells in the snow.
She set Stella on the floor, keeping a tight hold on the leash. She dropped down to my height as she handed me the ring.
“Then you do the honors and put the ring on my finger,” she said. “This is just too cute, Luke. It’s… it’s the perfect proposal and birthday present all in one.”
