“Let you!” His warm breath fanned her skin. “As though you need my permission to love me back when I love you so much it hurts.” His lips grazed her throat and she closed her eyes, looping her arms around his neck. “I’d watch you pack up a little extra food for someone down on his luck, or ooh and ahh over some drawing a little kid colored for you. I’ve seen your patience when people were mean to you, the way you still had a kind word the next time they came by for a meal. I think I’m jealous of that old mutt you feed out back behind the loading dock now and then—the way you speak to him all sweet and scratch behind his ears like he’s still worth something.” He sighed softly. “I barely wasted a wish hoping for something good, even though I wanted it. So when I found it – when I found you, Missy – how could I keep myself from loving you?”
He drew back from her, looking into her eyes, smiling at her like she was the rarest, most precious thing in the world. Then he tilted his head and dropped his lips to hers, making her knees go weak as he held her tightly against his body. When he finally leaned back, his eyes were heavy-lidded, like he was drunk. He grinned at her, shaking his head back and forth like she was amazing to him. That’s how he made her feel, too; by some miracle, Lucas Flynn made Missy Branson feel like she was amazing.
“Thank you for giving me Christmas, Kitten,” he continued. “For giving me your heart. Especially because I know you’re still worried about me leaving.” He tilted his head, looking into her eyes, searching them. “I want to give you your present, too. Is that okay?”
Missy smiled and nodded, taking Lucas’s hand and pulling him down next to her on the couch. He took the large square gift from the coffee table and put it on her lap. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a Christmas present from anyone but her mother. She grinned up at him before tearing away the paper to find…a book.
No, she realized as she turned it over, not a book but an album.
She flipped it open to the cover page. Neatly printed she read: For Missy, on our first Christmas. And on the opposite page: The Best Things About Billings.
When she looked up at him, he was beaming.
“I ran out of work so I could spend a couple hours at the library before they closed. I needed to use the computer there,” he explained.
He reached over and turned the page. On the left side was a picture of the largest theater in Billings.
“That’s the NOVA,” he explained. “They do Broadway shows and operas there.”
“I know it,” she whispered. “I recognize it from pictures.”
On the right side was a picture of a large glass building. “That’s the—”
“The Yellowstone Art Museum,” Missy finished, running her fingers over the pictures he’d printed of the building and various works of art on display there. She looked up at him and smiled, overwhelmed and trembling, her heart beating painfully in her chest.
Lucas turned the page, and she looked down to find a collage of microbreweries on the left.
“More microbreweries in Billings than anywhere else in Montana,” he teased, quoting her fun facts back to her.
On the opposite page was a photo of the Montana Zoo logo, with pictures of the animals, and beside it was a photocopy of a Help Wanted ad. Missy leaned closer to read it. She got to the words Zooschool before looking up at him. His brown eyes were gentle, encouraging, and infinitely loving.
“I called them to see if they were hiring, and well, they don’t need teachers right now. They need an aide, though, Missy. Someone who can help the little ones put on their snowsuits and use the restroom and help out the teacher. I talked to the head, uh, lady there. She was real nice. She said, uh, that they hadn’t found the right person yet.”
The page blurred before Missy as his words sank in.
“You could go to night school, too,” he hurried to add, “if you wanted to. You know, to learn how to be a teacher. You don’t have to settle for this. But you told me if you worked at the Zooschool you’d be happy for the rest of your life. That’s what you told me. And I want you to be happy for the rest of your life, Missy. That’s all I want.”
She bit her lip, speechless, her heart bursting with love for him as he turned the last page. There was a picture of him. Of Lucas Flynn, smiling back at her.
“And one more thing,” he said, as she flicked her swimming eyes up to capture his.
“I do want to leave Gardiner, that’s true,” Lucas admitted. “In a few weeks. A month tops. I want to move to Billings. But I won’t go”—he slid off the couch, dropping to one knee beside her, his heart beating furiously with the enormity of what he was about to do—“unless you agree to come with me.”
He pulled a small box out of his back pocket and opened it. Inside was a silver ring with a sparkling stone on top.
“It’s just a crystal,” he said, as she stared at it, covering her open mouth, tears coursing down her face. “Someday, when I can, I’ll replace it with something better. I’m a hard worker. I promise I’ll work hard for you, Kitten.”
“Oh, Lucas!” she sobbed.
He smiled at her, pulling one of her hands away from her mouth to hold it in his own as he poured out his heart to her.
“I love you, Missy Branson. I love what’s in your heart. I love what’s in your head. At some point soon, I’m going to love your body, too. But it’ll be because I love you. You. I’m not going anywhere unless you’re going with me, because you’re my destination. Wherever you are, I’m home.”
One trembling hand still covered her mouth as she flicked her eyes from the ring back to his face. To the ring and back again. Her eyes were wide and shocked, and he swallowed uncomfortably. Maybe he hadn’t been clear?
“Missy, I’m asking you to marry me. I—I know that we haven’t known each other all that long, but I bet lots of folks’ve started out with less’n you and me’ve got.” He searched her eyes, knowing in his heart that she was his best chance at happiness. “Way I see it, I even think – you and me? – we’re ahead of the pack. You see the good in me and I see the good in you. And I think that’s enough for a start because we’ll trip over ourselves to take care of each other. We’ve got the good and the loving in spades, Missy.”
She kept staring at him, unmoving except for the slight shaking of the hand over her lips and the tears rolling ceaselessly down her cheeks.
It was making him nervous that she hadn’t responded. He bit his bottom lip, then drew her hand away from her mouth, clasping it gently, captivated by the way it looked, so right, surrounded by his. A lot of good. A lot of loving. And a little hard work.
“We’ll build something good. We’ll work at it. I promise you I’ll work at it every day of my life.” He stopped talking and swallowed, wishing she would answer. His voice was hushed and wishful as he asked one last time. “What do you say? Take a chance on me?”
He heard a small sound, like a sob, come from the back of her throat.
Oh, my God, could I have possibly misjudged her feelings? Could she possibly say—?
“Yes! A hundred times, yes!”