Page 48 of His Texas Claim

I went still. Felt my whole body pause under his hands before my brain caught up to what he'd said.

"Stetson—"

"Not askin' because of the baby." His voice came out low, unsteady in a way I'd never heard from him. "Askin' because I've never wanted anything the way I want you. Every damn day since I found you stuck in the mud out at Holt Creek."

I reached up, framed his face in both hands, still trying to catch my breath.

"That's the least romantic proposal in the history of proposals," I said, and I felt myself smiling against his mouth even as I said it.

"Never claimed to be romantic."

"I know." I ran my thumb along his cheekbone. "That's what makes it work."

"That a yes?"

“That’s a fuck yes.”

“Even without a ring?”

I pried one hand off him to knock on the desk. “I’m an academic. Desk is better.”

"Gonna hold you to sayin' that."

"Hold me to whatever you want. I already said yes."

He huffed something that was almost a laugh, pulled back just far enough to look at me properly—desk beneath me, ultrasound photo somewhere on the floor where it had slipped from my jacket pocket, both of us still a mess in every sense of the word.

"Love you," he said. "Ridiculous, mud-covered, bossy as hell. Love you anyway."

"Love you too, cowboy. Ring or no ring."

Epilogue

STETSON

The shower was, naturally, frog-themed.

We had the whole shindig just a month out from when our kid—a son—was due to be born. Bryn hadn’t wanted to do it any sooner, hadn’t wanted to jinx it. So we waited…and it just so happened the whole family came home for it.

Dakota, the youngest of my cousins, back from touring on the rodeo circuit.

Sawyer and Daniela, taking time off from shooting movies.

And all the usual suspects…Aunt Peggy and Uncle Adam, my mama Marlena; Gage and Millie and their growing horde of kids; Wyatt and Haven, Willa and Forrest. Even Sawyer and Forrest’s brother Emmett came out for the whole thing, usually absentee if there was any lineman work to be had.

So I found myself over at the main house, surrounded by frogs and flowers, sunshine and rainbows.

I wasn't much for parties, but this one I could stomach — mostly because half of it was just watching Bryn hold court in the middle of Peggy's living room, one hand on her belly, the other pointing out yet another detail on a frog-shaped cake somebody had special-ordered from a bakery in Fredericksburg.

"That's a chirping frog," she was telling Emmett, dead serious. "Not a bullfrog. There's a difference."

"Looks like a frog to me."

"That's the problem with most people."

Bea had appointed herself official present-opener, tearing through wrapping paper with the same single-minded focus she brought to everything, holding up a tiny onesie printed with cartoon frogs for the whole room to admire.

"Uncle Stetson, look! It matches you!"