Page 58 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

It felt like home.

I fell asleep with Chloe in my arms and the forest settling into night around us, and for the first time in seven years, I did not dream about the road in Kandahar.

I dreamed about tomorrow.

21

CHLOE

Iwoke up to someone showering my face with kisses.

Small ones. Soft ones. On my forehead. My eyelids. The tip of my nose. The corner of my mouth. Each one deliberate and warm and placed with a kind of patient precision that could only belong to one person.

“It is too early,” I mumbled, burying my face into the pillow.

He kissed my temple. Then the spot behind my ear. Then the curve of my neck, and that one sent a shiver down my spine that made my toes curl under the blanket.

“Get up,” Sawyer said. His voice was low and rough with morning, the kind of gravelly sound that had no business being that attractive before sunrise.

“No.”

“Chloe.”

“The sun is not even up.”

“The sun is up. You are not.”

I cracked one eye open. He was propped on his elbow beside me, already dressed, his hair damp from a shower I had apparently slept through. He looked impossibly awake. Alert. Almost energized in a way that was deeply unfair for a man who claimed to hate mornings.

“Why are you dressed?” I asked.

“We are going to the sawmill,” he said. “I am introducing my daughter to my crew. And my future wife.”

Both eyes opened. I pushed up on my elbows and stared at him.

“When did I become your future wife?”

He looked at me with that steady, certain gaze that always made my stomach flip. No hesitation. No humor. Just a man stating a fact the way he would state that the sky was blue or that wood needed to be dried before you could build with it.

“I am not pursuing you for nothing, Chloe. I want you both. In the future. All of it.”

My heart did something violent and wonderful inside my chest. A twist. A lurch. The kind of sensation that made my eyes sting and my throat tighten, because this man, this stubborn, grumpy, impossibly serious man, had just told me he wanted forever before I had even brushed my teeth.

“Too sweet,” I said, because if I said anything else I was going to cry and it was too early for that. “Get up before our daughter wakes up and catches you being romantic.”

He almost smiled. Almost. The ghost of it was there at the corner of his mouth, and then he was pulling the blanket off me and I was yelping at the cold and stumbling toward the bathroom while he stood in the doorway looking satisfied with himself.

We got Emma ready. She was thrilled about the sawmill in the way that only a six-year-old could be thrilled about a place full of heavy machinery and sawdust. She put on her boots, her purple jacket, and insisted on bringing Sir Chomps-a-Lot because he had never seen a real sawmill before and it would be educational for him.

The drive was short. Emma sat in the back of Sawyer’s truck with her face pressed against the window, watching the trees blur past, narrating the journey to her dinosaur. Sawyer drove with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on my thigh, and the weight of his palm, warm and steady, made me feel something I had not felt in a very long time. Safe. Claimed. Like I belonged exactly where I was.

The sawmill was already alive when we arrived. The crew was there, a dozen men in work boots and flannel, hauling timber and running machines and moving with the kind of practiced efficiency that came from working under someone who demanded precision. They looked up when Sawyer’s truck pulled in, and I watched their faces change. Surprise first. Then curiosity. Then, when Emma climbed out of the truck and stood beside Sawyer with her green eyes and her purple jacket, something that looked a lot like understanding.

“Everyone,” Sawyer said. He did not raise his voice, but the entire mill went quiet. That was the kind of authority he carried. He did not need to shout. He just had to speak. “This is Emma. My daughter.”

The silence lasted about two seconds. Then the men erupted. Smiles. Whistles. A few of them clapping, one of them shouting something about hell freezing over. Emma waved like a beauty queen on a parade float, completely unintimidated by the attention, and I watched Sawyer watch her with a look on his face that I wanted to photograph and keep forever.

“And this is Chloe,” he added, his hand finding the small of my back. “My future wife.”