But she hadn’t counted on life throwing Liam at her.
None of her contingency plans included getting tangled up with Liam Wells. Worse, this was way beyond a teenage crush gone sour.
She got up and paced her living room, back and forth, back and forth. Even if Liam didn’t want to participate in raising the baby, he would still be part of it. Every time she looked at the baby, she would see him. She knew it as absolutely as she knew that the sky was blue. The baby didn’t even have to be born for her to know it. And it had been a huge mistake to let him come to her appointment with her. She’d tried to put some distance between them to protect her feelings, and then all she could think about as she lay on that crinkly paper was how nice it would be to have someone to share all this with.
Not just anybody. She wanted to share it with Liam.
And what was there to do about that? Being together had never been part of the deal. Besides, she hadn’t seen him in days. Maybe he’d gone back on the circuit early just to get away from the pressure of what they’d done. She went back to her laptop and tapped out a hasty search. Why did it bother her so much to not know where he was? The rodeo roster turned up nothing. Should she even be worried? Liam wasn’t her responsibility. And she wasn’t his. Mina buried her face in her hands.
Her phone buzzed on the desk next to her—an alarm. She cursed under her breath. A client had emailed with a request the night before about designing uniforms for an adventure sports business. They wanted to meet in person. Luckily, it was a local business. Unluckily, she wanted to stay on her computer and search for Liam until she found him. She tossed her phone in her bag and left. No sense in losing work because she was sulking over Liam Wells.
Her car’s GPS took her out of town, to the edge of the nearby national forest. The location itself turned out to be a lodge. Mina craned her neck to look out of the window. She couldn’t see anybody.
The lodge was a wide building, made up of logs stained dark. It reminded her of a bigger version of Liam’s cabin. Someone had painted the shutters on the windows a cheery red. Honestly, it looked nice—but it also didn’t make any sense. An adventure business? And where was the client? Did she have the wrong place in the middle of nowhere?
Mina kept her cell in hand and approached the front door. “Hello?” She put her hand up to knock, but the gentle force caused the door to swing open. It hadn’t been fully closed.
She blinked into the dim light, something taking shape before her eyes. A reception area, with a long desk. Covered in…flowers? With lanterns? What was this? Mina took one tentative step inside, her heart going crazy with anxiety and anticipation. “Hello? Is anybody here?”
“Coming,” called a distant voice, and her heart did a double flip. It sounded like Liam. It couldn’t be Liam.
It was Liam.
He came down the stairs of the lodge, brushing his hands together. “Hi,” he said, and in that single word she heard their entire past together. The day that he’d been thrown from the horse. The nights they spent at his cabin. The hike in the woods. All of it.
“Liam, what is this? What’s going on?” The flowers filled her heart with a wild and strange joy. “Tell me right now.”
He came to her, his footsteps soft on the wooden floor. His eyes snagged on hers and pulled her in, the way they always did, even when she wanted to resist. “I used all my savings and prize money from the rodeo to put down a deposit on this building.”
“Why?” Her heart demanded attention with a series of loud thuds. “Why would you do that?”
“I’m going to start a business leading adventure trips into the mountains.” A smile played over Liam’s lips. She wanted to put her hands on his face and kiss him. But not yet, not yet. “Backpacking. Rock climbing. Wildlife spotting. All of that.”
“That’s…that’s not the rodeo circuit,” she said.
“I agree.” Liam nodded solemnly. “It’s time for me to stop equating my identity with risk. With the rodeo. I’m going to be a father soon, and it’s time I put down roots. I can’t think of a better place to do that than right here.” Liam took her hands. “I want to make my future child proud of me. I want you to be proud of me.”
“I—” The words were a jumbled mess in her mind. She took a look around the lodge’s main room, which was all dark wood and matching paint. It didn’t look like the kind of place Liam would want to stay forever. “I want to believe you, but how do I know you won’t get bored?” She swallowed a painful lump in her throat. “How do I know you won’t take off to find something more exciting?”
“That’s not going to happen.” Liam looked into her eyes, took a deep breath, and got down on one knee. “Mina, the most exciting parts of my life are about to happen—with you and the baby. I love you. I’ve never fallen harder for another woman in all my life. And I want to spend the rest of my life showing you exactly how much you mean to me. How much you both mean to me. You mean everything. Absolutely everything.” He slipped a small velvet box from one of his pockets and popped it open with one hand. “Will you marry me?”
”Yes,” she breathed. “Yes, yes, yes.”
Liam slipped the ring on her
