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Swallowing hard, I held my breath as I waited for him to drop a bomb on me. “What don’t you want?” I asked.
“This life.”
“This life?” I repeated, as a question.
“I mean, I want this life with you, but the planned life I had laid out so carefully? I don’t want it anymore. I don’t want to run for mayor.”
My jaw dropped. “What do you mean? Tripp, you’ve always wanted to get into politics.”
He shook his head. “No, the twenty-one-year-old who thought he had it all figured out wanted that. I’m thirty-one now, Harley, and what I want is sitting in front of me. You’ve always been my dream. The one thing that stayed constant. I think I kept on with my agenda after you left because it was the only thing I knew to do. Stay the course.”
“And you don’t want to stay the course anymore?”
The corners of his mouth lifted into a wide smile. “No. I want to shake things up, and I know exactly how to do it. I had the beginning of the idea earlier, and then in my office today, the rest of it hit me.”
“What hit you?” I asked.
He got up and moved to sit next to me. “Just listen to me and let me get this all out before you say anything, okay?”
I nodded.
“There’s some land outside of town, not very far, that my father owns. Steed takes care of the taxes and manages the place. The only thing on there is a barn from on old ranch back in the day. I talked to Steed earlier to see if he thought my father would be interested in selling it to me. We didn’t get a chance for me to tell him why because of the whole Hemi disaster.”
The intense way my heart was beating had me both nervous and excited. I had no idea what he was about to say, but I couldn’t wait to find out.
“Here’s what I’m thinking. You let Gerald buy you out. We take that money and build a new vet clinic on the land.”
“What?” I gasped, my eyes nearly popping out of my head. “Tripp, I don’t have enough money to start a vet clinic from the ground up.”
“You have a good portion of money to get it started. You just need an investor.”
“An investor? And who is that going to be?”
“Me. Because there’s something in this for me as well.”
The room started to spin, and I stood up, trying to let all of his words settle. “Wait. You want me to build a new vet clinic, let you invest in it, and there’s also something in it for you? What could there possibly be in it for you?”
“A new office.”
I stared at him like he was insane. “You have an office.”
Tripp stood and made his way over to me. “Earlier when we were in my office, and I told you I wanted to make love to you. I saw it in your eyes. The idea of us being together in there made you feel physically ill.”
“Tripp, I—”
“Let me finish.”
Snapping my mouth shut, I motioned for him to go on.
“We’ve only been together for a few weeks, but I already know if you let me, I’d marry you today, Harley.”
I gasped and covered my mouth with my hand.
“I want to marry you. I want to have babies…as many as you want. I want to help you make your dreams come true and call me selfish, but I want to be minutes from your office so I can fuck you anytime I want to. And I sure as hell don’t want to be mayor. People getting into our business and telling me what I can and can’t do? No. That’s not for me. Not anymore.”
Tears filled my eyes as my hand dropped to my side.
“Tripp,” I whispered. “Did you say you want to marry me?”
He tossed his head back and let out a roar of laughter. “Is that all you heard, Lee?”
Shaking my head frantically, I replied, “No! I heard it all, but that part stuck out. That and the part about babies.”
Tripp took my hands in his. “We can do this. You and me…together.”
I didn’t need time to think about any of it. It all felt right. “Do you think we can make it all work?”
“I do. It’s fifty acres of land. If you wanted to, we could even build a house on it.”
Chewing my lip, I glanced around the living room. “But I love this house. It feels like…home.”
Tripp’s eyes felt like they were burning into my soul. He crashed his mouth to mine and picked me up. Walking us into the bedroom, he gently laid me on the bed. “Are we doing this?” he asked.
I nodded, my chest rising and falling with each breath.
“Will you marry me, Harley Carbajal, and let me try to knock you up while building a new vet clinic and a law office?”
