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“And don’t forget to tell her we love her, Daddy!” Joey chimes in again. This time, her voice isn’t even close to a whisper.
Rhett sighs, but also, he smiles and glances over his shoulder to say, “I’m gettin’ to that, baby. Give a man a minute to tell the woman of his dreams he’s in love with her.”
My lungs spasm with a hiccuping breath.
He’s in love with me?
Rhett’s mesmerizing eyes lock with mine again, and he lifts my hand to his chest, holding it against his heart. “Leah Levee, I’m in love with you. The day you left, I went to your cabin to try to make shit right with you. To try to figure out a way to make the long-distance work because I couldn’t picture a future without you in it. But when I got there, you were gone, and I felt like my heart got torn out of my chest.”
God. That’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen. My heart clenches inside my chest over the mere idea that I put him through that. Even though I’ve been living in my own kind of hell here, I still never wanted to make him feel bad.
“I’m so sorry, Rhett. I-I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye to you and Joey,” I say on a rush, but he calms me by tenderly gripping the hand he’s still holding against his heart.
“I know, darlin’. I know. Which is why I’m here,” he says and proceeds to get down on one knee. His good knee. “On my fuckin’ knees, asking you to come home. Asking you to spend your life with me on the ranch. Leah, I’m asking you to marry me. Be my wife. Be the mama Joey’s never had. The one you’ve been to her all along. You’re our family, and we want to keep you forever.”
Several tears seep from my eyes.
“Don’t forget about Ernie!” Joey whispers, and Rhett smirks at me.
“Ernie misses and loves you too, by the way.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. This man, the one whom I love so, so much, came all the way here to profess his love to me—with glitter. And his little girl, the one I’ve grown to love and adore like my own child, is standing right behind him with the biggest smile on her face. Her head nods and her eyes are wide, imploring me to say yes.
But no imploring is needed.
“Rhett,” I say, and my voice shakes with emotion. “I love you. With everything inside of me, I love you.”
He smiles up at me. “Are you sayin’ what I’m thinkin’ and fuckin’ hopin’ you’re sayin’?”
I nod, and more tears stream down my cheeks. “I’m saying yes, Rhett. I want to marry you. I want to be your wife. I want to be Joey’s mama. And I want to come home.”
He pulls a small black box out of his pocket and opens it up to reveal a ring inside. And he slides that ring down my finger. I’m pretty sure it’s vintage and beautiful, but I don’t have to really look at it because Rhett gets back on his feet and pulls me into his arms.
“I love you, darlin’.”
Lips to mine, he kisses me the way only Rhett knows how to kiss.
How my future husband knows how to kiss.
“Yippee!” Joey shouts from behind us before barreling into us at full speed and wrapping her arms around our legs. “This is the second-best day of my life!”
Rhett chuckles, pulling away from the kiss and glancing down at his daughter. “The second-best day?”
She rolls her pretty eyes. “Daddy, you know the day I became a mama to Ernie was the most special, best day of my life.”
“Well,” I say and reach out to pull Joey closer to us. “I can say with certainty this is the very best day of my life.”
“It is?” Joey replies, smiling up at me.
“Are you kidding me?” I respond. “I get to marry the best, most handsome cowboy in the whole world, and I get to call the prettiest, most special girl my daughter.”
Joey wraps both of her arms around my waist and buries her face into my stomach. “I love you, Leah. So, so much.”
I kneel down and meet her eyes. “I love you too, Jo-Jo.”
And Rhett just stands there, looking down at the two of us like a man whose entire world stands right before him.
I know this because that’s exactly how I’m looking right back at the two of them.
My future husband. My daughter. My family. My home.
Shaw Springs Ranch, One Year Later…
August 20th
Leah
I bolt upright in the bed and glance left and right with wild, panicked eyes. The sound of gunfire in my dreams sounded entirely too realistic, and my heart races inside my chest.
Rhett sits up in the bed next to me, rubbing at his eyes with the long fingers of his incredibly sexy hands. He’s still as beautiful now as the day I met him—if not more so, since I’m now privy to all the intimate details of his body I wasn’t back then.
