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“Yes, and Arya’s like a daughter to me, and Eloise is like granddaughter. I need to make sure that—”
“Mom, I want to marry Arya. I want to have lots of babies.”
“You do?” Arya looked over at me in surprise. “You never said that.”
“I mean, I thought that was obvious,” I replied.
“How was that obvious?”
“Because I told you I love you and I want to be with you.”
“Yeah, but that—”
“Oh, Arya.” My mom started laughing. “You will soon realize that my sons are men of few words, just like their father. They always assume you know exactly what they’re thinking. But as I say to Ranger all the time, and as I’ll say to you now, Chet, we can’t read your mind, no matter how much you think we can.”
“Okay.” I looked at Arya and ran my hands through my hair. “I hope I haven’t been too forward. I thought we were sort of on the same page there.”
“You told me that you loved me and that you wanted to date me. You didn’t tell me that you wanted to marry me and have kids with me.”
“Is that going to be a problem?” I raise an eyebrow. “Is that not something you want as well?”
“Well, I’d love to get married and have kids,” she said, “but I kind of thought I would be dating the person I was going to marry for a while.”
“Yeah. Well, it’s not like we’re going to get married right away.”
Arya’s expression was doubtful. “I mean, is this real?”
“What are you talking about? What do you mean is this real?”
She looked over at my mother guiltily and sighed.
“What is it?” Amelia said. “What’s wrong, Arya?”
“Well, I know you put that ad in a newspaper looking for a husband for Chet, and ever since that, Chet’s been upset. Chet, you have to admit you’re the one that said that you wanted me to be your fake fiancée just a couple of days ago. Now you’re telling me you want me to be your real fiancée. I can’t keep up. Are you saying this because you really do have feelings for me and you really do want this, or are you saying this because you want your mom to get off your back?”
“Oh, shit,” I groaned. “I guess I asked for this one.”
“What are you talking about?” Mom’s eyebrows drew together. “Fake fiancée, really, Chet? You were going to pretend to be engaged just so—”
“Mom, you put an ad in the newspaper advertising for a wife for me.”
Mom smiled and looked at my dad. “Well, I wasn’t really advertising for a wife for you.”
“What do you think an ad in the paper with my face and a caption that says, ‘Want to marry a cowboy?’ is going to suggest to pretty much everyone in Montana and Wyoming and Idaho and—”
“I know, son, but you know that I always do things for a reason.”
“You should know that by now,” my dad chimed in.
“So then what was your reason?”
My mom looked at me and then looked at Arya. “What do you think, son? Look who’s been here under your nose for the longest time.”
“I wouldn’t say the longest time, Mom.”
“Long enough. You’ve known from the first moment you laid eyes on her that Arya was something special. I’ve seen the bond that you have with her and the bond you have with Eloise. And Arya, let me tell you now, Chet has never been interested in kids. So when I saw that he was spending time with Eloise going out of his way to make you guys happy and to feel safe, I knew he was in love with you. I just needed him to figure this out by himself.”
“Mom, seriously?” I huffed. “You put an ad in the newspaper just so I could figure out that I was in love with Arya?”
