“You were seeing someone else. One of the professors. Ros told me.”
He looked pained. “You think she wanted to share her best friend with the stepbrother she couldn’t stand?”
“I never told her about us!”
“I did.”
“What?”
He scrubbed his hand down his face. When his gaze met hers again, his eyes were steady. “I know there’s no point trying to whitewash my own behavior. I knew you wanted to join Martin’s firm more than anything. Ros knew it, too, and she liked tossing that fact at me just because she knew how much it stung. So I told her about us just so she’d shut up.”
“She never said anything to me.”
“She wouldn’t, would she?”
“So she lied to me about the professor?”
“It wasn’t a lie. It was just information that was a couple years too old. And don’t be mad at her for being foolish. We were all foolish then.”
She was trembling. “You had an affair with one of the professors while you were still in school.”
“Does it matter now? It was a long time ago. Before I fell in love with you.”
She pressed the book harder against her breast, feeling his words quaking inside her. “I fell in love with you, too,” she whispered.
“And now? Because you didn’t let me finish again. I still want you to be my wife, Nell.” He flicked his finger against the envelope lying on the couch beside her. “Regardless of what that says. I’m sick of pretending. Sick of waiting.” He pressed his lips for a moment to the back of her hand that he still held. “Everything that’s happened since you danced on that bar in Cheyenne and landed in my arms has made me face that fact. I want you as my partner. As my lover. And maybe—” His jaw canted for a moment.
When he spoke again, his voice was husky. “And maybe one day you will be pregnant. Because you want to have my child as much I do.”
There was a river of tears running down her face and she couldn’t do a thing to stop it. She decided that was just what had to happen when a heart was too full.
She stood, still clasping Monty Meets Mary with one hand and Archer with her other. “Come.” She pulled him into her spare bedroom and carefully slid the book into place on the shelf next to number nine. “This is number eleven.” She pulled it out and placed it in his hands. “Monty Marries Mary.” She kissed him slowly. “Yes. I want you to be my husband.”
He started to reach for her but she shook her head. “Wait.” She pulled out the last of her mother’s books. “This is number twelve,” she said huskily. “The final story.” She slowly placed it in his hands, feeling herself sinking into his green gaze. “Monty and Mary Have a Baby.”
His pupils dilated a little. “You want to have a baby?” He sounded disbelieving. “With me?”
She leaned into him and brushed her lips against his. “What I’m trying to tell you is that I am having your baby. With you.”
His head jerked up.
His eyes searched hers. A sparkle suddenly glinted somewhere deep inside. “Really?”
She threaded her fingers through his and pressed them against her abdomen. “Really.”
He dropped right then and there onto his knees and pressed his mouth against their joined hands. “I wish I had a diamond ring,” he said fervently. No hint of disbelief anymore? “It would feel more official with a ring.”
She suddenly felt like laughing. Because that’s something a person also did when their heart was so full.
She threaded her fingers through his hair and kissed his forehead. His cheeks. His mouth. She had a vague thought about the workshop that they were still going to need to give. About the contents of the letter from the bar association. About Ros and how they were going to have to find some way to be there for her, too, because she was going to need them.
But for now, for at least these few minutes, and for the rest of their lives, they had this.
“You brought me Monty Meets Mary,” she whispered. “And that, my impossible, beautiful Archer, is dearer to me than any diamond in the entire world.”
If you loved Nell and Archer, don’t miss the next Return to the Double-C story,
Something About the Season
by New York Times bestselling author Allison Leigh
Coming November 2020
Exclusively from Harlequin Special Edition.
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Marine’s Road Home by Brenda Harlen.
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The Marine’s Road Home
by Brenda Harlen
Chapter One
Everyone had a story to tell.
Skylar Gilmore knew it was true, even if a lot of those stories weren’t exactly page turners. Still, she was always willing to listen and fascinated by the characters telling the tales at Diggers’ Bar & Grill.
From her position behind the polished walnut bar, she heard the accounts of regulars, less frequent customers and even the occasional tourist. To each, she offered a sympathetic ear without censure or judgment. After all, it wasn’t her job to counsel—at least not here.
And so it was that she knew Chase Hampton intended to propose to Megan Carmichael before he’d even bought the ring, and that Erica Rainville had decided to leave her husband of twelve years—not because he was having an affair with his secretary but because she was, and also that Bobby Tanner and Holly Kowalski had postponed their wedding plans because they were unable to agree on when—or even if—they’d have kids.
Bobby had been in the bar again tonight, lamenting the apparent impasse with his fiancée. Six years older
