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Not like this.
“I wasn’t keeping it from you. I was just… I didn’t know what you would think.”
To that, his lips tipped up at one side. “Seem to remember an ass-chewing I once got about how people should ASK about things instead of assuming.” He paused, reaching over, giving my curled fist a little squeeze. “I think this is a good idea.”
I was pretty sure I misheard him.
Or I was having some sort of stroke or something.
“What?”
“I think it’s a good idea,” he told me again, scrolling through the pictures of the land, the house. “Needs a lot of work.”
“I know it’s kind of expen…”
“We have the money,” he cut me off.
That was true enough. We spent very little. And there had been many clients over the years. With me around, apparently, they didn’t find it quite as torturous as they used to, which meant they often felt comfortable staying longer than they used to. And we got paid accordingly.
The money piled up.
More than enough to buy the place with no debt, to fix it up, to build the greenhouses and the coops and such for all the animals.
And then still be comfortable.
“And it is still in the middle of the woods. There isn’t room enough yet, but we can add an extra room for clients. Quin would probably even insist of paying for that.”
“Two.”
“I’m sorry?” I asked, brows furrowing.
“Two rooms. One for clients…”
“And the other for?” I asked, needing to hear him say it, not wanting to assume, terrified we weren’t on the same page about it, and not wanting to expose that vulnerability if he wasn’t.
“Thinking we got to get on the family-having thing sooner rather than later.”
And there it was.
Just when I was sure my heart was simply too full, he went and made it overflow.
“Yeah?” I asked, blinking the tears out of my eyes.
“Yeah,” he agreed, giving me a strange smile, one I didn’t quite know how to interpret. Not even after all these years. “And I figure if we are gonna go out into the world,” he went on, reaching into his pocket, “I should maybe marry you,” he declared, making my heart seize.
I was too busy trying to process that idea, never having given it much thought since it was completely unnecessary. We belonged to each other. We didn’t need the paperwork to prove it.
But Ranger wanted to share paper with me.
He wanted the world to know we were together.
And, well, in processing all of that, it took me almost a full minute before I realized what he was holding in his hand.
A ring.
On a chain.
And not just any ring on a chain.
My ring on a chain.
My grandfather’s ring on a chain.
I figured it was lost forever, hadn’t given it much thought over the years, letting it go like I had needed to let go of the bracelet my mother had left me that had somehow fallen off when I had been running errands, never to be turned in and returned to me.
“Oh, my God. How… where,” I started, shaking my head as I took it in my hand, almost forgotten, but so familiar at the same time.
“He had it,” he explained. “I took it back.”
My gaze flew upward.
“He?” I asked, body stiffening. “As in he?”
“Yeah,” he admitted, looking guilty.
As he should.
“You had my ring for almost seven years, and you never thought to give it back to me?”
I guess we did keep secrets after all.
“I was gonna mail it back to you,” he told me, meaning when I was back in my old life when he had forced me out of his. “And I couldn’t make myself. Then there you were. It’s fucking ridiculous, but I saw it as a good luck charm,” he admitted, shaking his head at the sentimentality of that.
Sure, he was big, strong, tough, hardened, dark, and scary.
But he was also the biggest mush you could ever meet at times.
I mean only with me.
But that was all that mattered, wasn’t it?
Taking a breath, I opened the lobster clasp, pulling the ring off the chain, and reaching for Ranger’s left hand, sliding it onto his fourth finger, amazed when it fit.
My gaze moved up, finding his, somehow seeing it all right there, right then.
The future.
Everything.
In him.
With him.
“I guess my grandfather was a smart man,” I mused , running my finger over the band, touching Ranger’s skin in the process. “This really did bring me my very own perfect happily-ever-after.”
“It isn’t over yet,” he reminded me, hands slipping down, sinking into my butt.
And, well, we celebrated that night.
Three times.
The next morning, Ranger made the offer.
Ranger – 7 years
Nothing ever goes to plan when you are buying a house. It was some universal law or something.
The process was complicated by the cabin on the property that had, as ironic as this was, not been legally built.
