Page 97 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

She goes still against my chest, and for one second I think I've moved too fast, said it wrong, ruined the easy weight of the whole night with a question I should've saved.

"Rafe Montgomery." She props herself up on one elbow, looking down at me, and her eyes are wet, and she's smiling anyway, the kind of smile that undoes a man faster than tears alone ever could. "Did you just propose to me lying in bed with no ring and no plan."

"That's not a proposal."

"It sounded like one."

"It's a preview." I brush a strand of hair back from her face, and my hand isn't quite steady, and I don't bother hiding it, because there's nothing left in this room worth hiding anymore. "I've got a ring. I've had it since the day after I showed you that treehouse. I'm not asking you the real question tonight, because you deserve better than pillow talk and no plan behind it. I just couldn't hold that one in any longer."

"So ask me properly next time."

"I intend to."

"Ask me properly, Montgomery," Jenna says, laughing through tears, her palm settling warm against my jaw like she needs to feel me smile to believe it. "Don't you dare do it halfway."

I grin, actually grin, none of the old grimace left in it, nothing careful or braced or waiting for the ground to shift under either one of us. "I intend to," I say again, and this time I mean it as a promise instead of a preview, and she pulls me back down against her like she believes every word of it, because neither one of us has a single reason left not to.

49

JENNA

The twins have been acting strange for exactly a week, and I've been too distracted trying to figure out why to notice how obvious they're being about it.

"Eli, why are you standing by the front door like that?"

"Perimeter security." He says it with a straight face, arms crossed, positioned squarely between me and the driveway like he's guarding something more valuable than a welcome mat. "Rafe put me in charge."

"In charge of what?"

"Can't say. Classified." He glances over his shoulder at Josie, who's clutching something small and square wrapped in three separate paper towels like it might otherwise escape, and immediately looks like he regrets bringing her into this conversation at all. "Josie, stop holding it like that. You're going to give it away."

"I'm not giving anything away. I'm protecting it."

"You're protecting it like it's radioactive."

"It's important."

"I know. That's why I told you to stop holding it weird." Eli turns back to me with the particular exasperation of an eight-year-old carrying far more responsibility than his age should allow. "Nothing's happening. Ignore her."

"I'm literally right here."

"That's the problem."

I let it go. Partly because pressing two eight-year-olds sworn to secrecy is a losing battle, and partly because I have a fairly good guess what this is actually about, something I've been carrying around quietly since a night in this same house when a man told me he had a ring and asked me to let him do this properly. I haven't let myself get ahead of it. I've just felt the shape of it circling closer for days, the way you feel weather changing before the sky actually does anything about it.

Maggie gives me a strange, delighted look at pickup that afternoon, the kind that says she knows something I don't. When I ask her about it straight out, she just presses her lips together and mimes zipping them shut. Coming from a woman who's never once in her life kept a piece of gossip to herself, that tells me everything I need to know about how big this actually is.

"You could just tell me."

"I absolutely could not. I was practically sworn in under oath." She hugs me quick before herding her own two toward the car, grinning the whole way. "You're going to want good shoes tomorrow. That's the only hint I'm allowed to give you."

Rafe calls that evening, casual in a way that doesn't fool me for one second.

"Free tomorrow afternoon?"

"Depends what for."

"Does it matter?"