“No, silly.” He twined his hands with hers. “I am offering you something else. Me.”

She shook her head, speechless, the emotion threatening to overwhelm her.

He knelt there for a second, teasing her. “What, no crying?”

She felt her expression explode into a joyous smile—her heart brimmed with it. As always, Eddie’s easy good humor sent a warm and happy calm spreading through her chest. “Give it a second. The waterworks are on their way.” Deciding it was her turn to get playful, she peered down at him. “But I’ve yet to hear a question.”

“I’ve known you all my life, Laura Bailey.” He held tightly to her hands, growing more serious than she’d ever seen him. “And I do believe I’ve loved you from the start. So what do you say? Make me an honest man? Marry me?”

“You’re already an honest man, Eddie. The best I’ve ever known. And yes, I’ll marry you. I do believe I’ve been yours all along.”

Thirty-eight

Laura pulled into the ranch driveway, and something in her shoulders released. Tension had a way of fading like that whenever her fiancé was nearby. It’d been a couple of months since she’d decided to stay—really stay—once and for all, and she was grateful every hour of every day that Eddie Jessup was the sort of man who didn’t give up.

It was a gorgeous fall afternoon, the sort of day when the sky was wide and blue, but the air was crisp enough to cool the sun on her shoulders. When she turned off the car, she could hear the classic rock station blasting through her closed windows. She had to smile—it was just that sort of scene, the kind that gave an easy, grinning, sunshine feeling. Like a deep breath in.

Like her man.

The Fairview project might’ve been canceled, but the work hadn’t stopped. Eddie continued to renovate the ranch house, only rather than turning it into a resort, it would host his camp for at-risk kids. That’d been his stipulation for not talking to the press about Fox and his antics. The man had known about the nesting area, but it’d been news to the Fairview board of directors, and they weren’t too pleased about being associated with razing threatened wildlife.

Fox was fired, Fairview made a sizable donation to Eddie’s new nonprofit, and as long as construction remained several hundred feet from the habitat, they were good to go.

Eddie had a whole crew of volunteers to help him, too. It seemed to her like the place was crawling with Jessups, but notably, Rob Haskell was also helping out, and he often brought Luke, his and Helen’s eldest. They were at the stage in construction that was all final finish work, like painting and installing fixtures, and it was really any day now they’d be done.

She opened her car door, and their new puppy, Buck, sprang out. “Go get him,” she called. After weeks of cajoling, Eddie had finally dragged her to the pound in Silver City, but she’d been the one who fell in love the moment she saw the rescue pup, a husky mix he liked to call a malamutt.

As Buck bounded toward Eddie’s voice, she pulled their lunch from the trunk—a basket of cold fried chicken that Sorrow had helped her assemble from the day’s tavern special. She’d stashed it in the back, having learned the hard way not to leave food unattended for longer than two seconds around the dog, and this would’ve been more temptation than the little guy could’ve handled.

At the sound of eager barking, Eddie came out onto the porch, and the instant he saw her, a smile burst onto his face. “Hey, gorgeous.” He leaned down to scruff Buck’s head but didn’t take his eyes from her. “I’m happy winter’s coming, but I swear, I miss seeing you tromp around here in your short shorts.”

“Hey, are you saying you don’t like my jeans?” She twisted backward to get a better look at herself.

“Not at all. I’m saying I like your legs.” He came up to her and stole a kiss that robbed her reply, which she quickly forgot, anyway.

She let herself snuggle into him instead, kissing him back, inhaling the scent of Eddie and fresh air and cut wood. “Mm-hm.”

When they parted, he said, “Though I much prefer them naked.”

“What?” she asked, a little dazed.

“Your legs. I prefer them naked. And this, too.” He swept aside her hair to kiss her neck. “And this.” He slid his hand up her shirt, and his hand was warm and strong on her belly. “All of it, actually. I can’t get enough of you, but we need to do something about all these troublesome clothes.” He tugged at her waistband.

“Hey,” she scolded, “someone will see.”

He walked backward, pulling her around the side of the house. “That’s what wraparound porches are for, darlin’.”

He began to kiss her neck, but as he shifted, she glimpsed a suspicious something over his shoulder. She slid a hand between them, planting it on his chest. “Eddie, what is that?” She nodded at a pile of lumber in the yard.

“That.” He looked like a kid who’d just stolen some candy. “That…is a stack of two-by-fours.”

She wandered to the edge of the porch to get a closer look. A shadow caught her eye, and she glanced up to find that the bones of a strange new structure had appeared in one of the trees. “And what is that?”

He raised his brows, giving her an innocent grin. “Tree house?” He wrapped an arm around her and gave her shoulder a little jiggle. “Aw, come on, Laura. Kids need tree houses.”

“And you need money. We need more donations before you can be building deluxe tree houses.” She peered closer at it. “Is that going to be two stories?” He really was too much.

“But you got us all that furniture,” he said, referring to a donation she’d solicited from a major chain store in Reno—enough metal bunk beds to sleep twenty kids. “It gave me the idea that maybe we could talk to Up Country about them paying the tax on the lumber.”

“Okay,” she conceded. “That is a good idea. I’ll talk to Tom.” She gave him a loving bump with her shoulder. “In the meantime, you need to stop being such a softie.”

He took advantage and snagged her close. “And you need to stop being so irresistible.”

She sank into him, and he was half a second away from convincing her that wraparound porches just might in fact be private enough, when a crinkling sound called their attention. It was Buck, trying to nose open their lunch basket.

Eddie groaned. “I’m thwarted at every turn.”

“Hey”—she plucked up the basket—“get out of there, sneaky.”

“I warned you, Buck Larsen probably doesn’t make the best namesake for a dog. He wasn’t exactly the most trustworthy guy.”

She grinned. “Is this where you make a joke about saloon bitches?” Eddie burst out laughing, and she added, “I love when I can make you do that.” She took his hand. “Come on. Let’s go eat.”

They made their way to their favorite picnic spot, beneath the old beech that housed all those owl nests. After they finished, she leaned against him, feeling sated.

Even Buck had gotten his fill of chicken scraps and was napping in a patch of sunlight. She watched as the pup twitched and yipped in his sleep, dreaming puppy dreams.

Eddie followed her line of sight. “Look at those giant paws. He’s going to be a monster.”

“You’re going to need to build us a tree house just to fit him.” She and Eddie were still moving the last of her stuff into his cabin, and even though she didn’t own much, they were already running out of room.

“Hey, I cleared a spot for that treadmill of yours.”

“Elliptical.” She corrected him so much about the thing, it’d become a joke between them.

“It’s jammed against the western window, but it fits.” He sighed contentedly, leaning against a tree. “But you’re right. We’ll need to build another place soon. To fit all of our kids.”

Laughing, she jostled him with an elbow. “Easy, cowboy. How about one construction project at a time?”

Then she sighed, too, looking up at the canopy of pine boughs overhead. Not too long ago, she’d thought she was saying good-bye to those trees, and yet here she was.

They sat for a while, just sharing the quiet, listening to the woods. Being there. Being together.

After a while, Eddie stretched and inhaled deeply. “I love how fall smells. Do you smell it?”

She nodded. “I love it, too. I was worried I wouldn’t be back for it.”

He turned to look at her, asking her earnestly, “Are you happy being here? Being back for good?”

“I’m with you, Eddie. It’s the only place I want to be.” She turned her gaze from him, taking in the land around them. Several yards down, the creek babbled happily, shaded by pines. Winter songbirds chirped and hopped among the branches. A copse of aspen stood out—they were well downstream on the far bank, but their golden autumn leaves popped from the landscape. She felt connected. Contented. Loved.

“I’m with you, Eddie. I love you. And it’s all good.”