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“We made your favorite cookies, because Missy told me that she’d done that once when you were mad at her, and you forgave her.” He pressed his fingers to the table, his attention on them. “I was hoping for the same thing. That you’d forgive me for anything and everything, and that we could somehow try again.”

The brim of his cowboy hat kept most of his face concealed, and he finally lifted his chin enough for their eyes to meet. “I sure do like you, Emma. Nate thinks it’s because I’ve been in prison for a while and don’t know many women.” He shook his head. “I know one-hundred percent that it’s not that.” He reached up and touched his chest where his heart beat inside. “I feel things for you. I started to fall in love with you. I know I’m a bit of a bull sometimes, and I’m overprotective, and I’m not perfect.”

Emma’s eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head.

“I know I’m going to mess up again,” he said quietly, dropping that chin again. “Because I’ve never felt like this about anyone before, and it’s all uncharted territory for me. But I was kinda hoping you’d started to fall for me too, and that if you had, we could—I don’t know.” He shrugged and shifted his feet. “Try again.”

Emma wanted that with her whole heart and soul. Before she could contain her emotion enough to answer in a voice that wasn’t broken and cracked with tears, she heard a strange sound. A snuffling, rooting sound. A…piggish sound.

“Oh, no,” Ted said, taking a couple of steps into the living room. He bent and scooped something into his arms and came back. “And I got you that little pig you wanted.” He held the most perfect pink and brown piglet Emma had ever seen. “I didn’t name her,” he added. “I figured you could go with Petunia or change your mind.”

He looked at her fully now, everything laid out between them. “I honestly don’t care about what you did or didn’t do a decade ago. Missy is a pretty special kid, and I understand—”

“Okay, enough,” Emma said, because she couldn’t stand to listen to him tell her how right she was again. She wasn’t right, and she knew it.

She pressed her palms together, her nerves screaming through her. He’d said all the right things and delivered them perfectly too. She didn’t have a speech prepared, and she was messing everything up right now.

“I started to fall in love with you too,” she said, her emotion staining and seeping into every word. “Let’s try again, okay, Teddy? Please?”

Ted put the piglet down and stepped over to her, taking her into his arms effortlessly. “As many times as we need to, okay, sweetheart?”

She nodded as the tears spilled down her face. She pressed her eyes closed, and Ted’s gentle, warm hands brushed the tears away. “I like it when you call me Teddy,” he said, his voice a husky whisper. “I’m going to kiss you now, and then you’ll have to name your piglet.”

Emma half-laughed and half-cried, and she positively melted into Ted’s kiss the moment his mouth met hers.

She felt unworthy and in complete awe that everything she wanted in her life was happening. Her daughter home with her. Ted Burrows in her house, kissing her with such tenderness and such passion that even if he hadn’t said he was falling in love with her, she’d have known.

* * *

“Come on, Petunia,”she said to the little pig who’d wandered away from her. She’d grown to about fifteen pounds in the past couple of months, and Ted had told her there was no such thing as a true teacup piglet. Not only that, but pigs grew for the first three or four years of their lives, and he couldn’t predict how big Petunia would get.

But she had been bred to be smaller, and to be an indoor pet. She’d been a pest in the beginning, always trying to root for something under the rug in the bathroom and always squealing for food whenever Emma or Missy ate. But they’d trained her religiously, and now she was pretty much the perfect version of the pet pig Emma had always wanted.

She came trotting over to Emma, who walked down the road toward the stables. Missy would be finished with her riding lesson soon, and Ted was off with his parole officer for the last time.

The last time.

Emma couldn’t imagine what he was feeling, and he hadn’t been able to adequately describe what being free felt like for him.

“It hasn’t happened yet,” he’d said when she’d asked him last night. They’d been sitting on the front steps of the cabin while Missy romped around with Petunia and theAmerican Idoldogs.

“Tomorrow, though,” Emma said. “How do you think you’re going to feel?”

“Don’t know,” he’d said. And he’d not said much else. She knew he was deep in his thoughts, as they’d spent a lot of time together over the past eight weeks. The three of them. Him, her, and Missy.

He’d said he wanted to go to the beach when he got released, and Emma had been planning that trip for a month now. She had everything ready—she just needed Ted to be the free man he wanted to be.

When Ted stopped talking, it meant he was thinking really hard. Trying to figure something out. He’d gone with Nate to clean out Nate’s brother’s house, and both times, they’d both come back quiet and reflective. She’d taken Connor for Nate, as he and Missy were the only children on the ranch, and though they were five years apart, they got along great.

And apparently, whenever Ted wasn’t around, Emma was a good enough substitute for his four dogs, so she never went anywhere by herself anymore. She always had Petunia with her, and usually Randy, Simon, Paula, and Ryan too. Missy too, if she wasn’t at school.

Emma couldn’t believe how much her life had changed in the past three and a half months, and as she approached the stables, she tipped her head back and looked up into the heavens. “Thank you, Lord.”

God really was good, and Emma wanted Him to know she knew it, appreciated it, and would do whatever He wanted her to.

Ted usually took care of the horses after riding lessons, and she saw him when she picked up Missy. He’d work for a couple more hours, and then he came over to the cabin for the evening. Their routine had been nice and normal for a while now, and she glanced around the corrals, expecting to see him.

When she didn’t, her anxiety picked up steam. He wasn’t done with his parole officer yet, and she wondered how long it took to tell him he was officially released from the Bureau of Prisons. She’d wondered if he’d have to keep meeting with Martin after his release, but Ted knew the law, and he said he wouldn’t.

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