“It’s almost midnight,” he told her, checking his phone.
“Another year, all fresh and new to fill, coming right up,” she said.
“It’s going to be a good year,” he assured her. He’d made great strides in bringing the Flying W—and with the Coopers’ help, Thorn Hill, too—into becoming a provider of organic beef, and they were all reaping the benefits of carving out the niche for themselves. These days people were lining up to buy certified organic beef. They had increased the herds on both ranches, and the surplus they’d earned was allowing for all the building and renovating of homes on both sides.
“I think it’s going to be a spectacular year,” Tory said. “Because I’m going to spend it with you.”
Liam knew he was smiling. He was always smiling now that Tory was his wife. “Can’t wait to see our baby. Can’t wait to spend the year with you.”
“Me, neither.”
Tory was getting tired. The baby seemed to take it out of her in a way that law school and everything else didn’t, but she didn’t regret her decision to start her family in the slightest. When she’d set her sights on being a lawyer years ago, there had been several reasons for her choice. One, she wanted to set herself firmly apart from her father’s criminal ways and what she saw as her family’s troublemaking reputation. Two, she wanted respect. And three, after a childhood dominated by money problems, she wanted the steady paycheck she knew that kind of career would give her.
She’d been determined to have the kind of inner strength and moral compass that would allow her to champion clients and do her best for them amid the high-stress corporate world. When she changed her mind, and decided to join a family practice here in Chance Creek, at first she’d thought the work wouldn’t be nearly as complicated or challenging.
She’d been wrong.
Now she was glad she didn’t have to go it alone. If she had, she was sure she would have survived—thrived, even—because she loved a challenge. But she wouldn’t have been as good a lawyer as she was today without Liam by her side.
Liam had become her rock. Always there for her. Always a port in the storm when disputes between her clients and their adversaries got too heated or too heartbreaking. Every day he held her until she felt she had the strength to go on. At night he rubbed her feet as they unwound on the couch and watched a movie. He picked up the slack when she couldn’t get to the store or the post office. He found something fun to do on the weekends when she could easily have brought her work home and kept at it straight through them.
She knew that when their baby was born, a little boy they’d decided to name Wade, Liam would make it possible for her to have the best of both worlds, so she could keep up nearly two-thirds of the hours she normally worked at her practice and be home for the rest of the time with her son and any siblings they decided to have.
Tory leaned in against her husband and pressed a kiss to the side of his neck where it met his shoulder, the crisp fabric of his shirt cool against her cheek.
“I love you so much, Liam Turner,” she whispered.
“I love you, too. Forever and always,” he murmured back.
“Two minutes to midnight,” Jed said as he took his wife’s hand and led her carefully to the dance floor, carving out a space for them so they wouldn’t be jostled by the others swaying around them.
He would never admit it to another living soul, but the phrase his wife still brought him almost to tears every time he thought of it. He had wanted Virginia for his bride since the day he first noticed girls were… girls.
It pained him to think of all the harsh words that had passed between them in the years after they fought, before they found the way clear to marrying, but he’d accepted decades ago that their fighting had merely been an unusual—and lengthy—very lengthy—courtship. Virginia needed to be fought over, even if that meant he’d had to fight her for her own hand in marriage—for years and years.
And oh, their strange relationship had made for some very good times over those same years, despite all that fighting. Good times indeed, he thought with a private smile. Wouldn’t his great-nephews and nieces be surprised if they knew just how good?
Because even if he and Virginia had spent decades laboring under the false idea that the other had betrayed them, that hadn’t kept them from having a relationship of sorts anyway. A rather exciting relationship. If he was honest, during their early years, their feud was what made it possible to be together at all.
It wasn’t until that feud heated up and they’d begun to argue in earnest, flinging accusations and imprecations at each other every chance they got, that Jed realized there had been a fundamental flaw in their plan to marry back before Foster Crake had driven them apart.
Virginia was terrified of marriage.
She was raised by her old-fashioned parents to think that the day a woman wed was the day
