Chapter 14
VICTORIA
Everything happened so quickly, my head was spinning. It felt as though one minute I was chilling with a book on the couch, and the next, my dad and Whit were taking care of the bad guys so the sheriff could slap handcuffs on them before whisking them off to jail.
I was happy to have the dark cloud of danger lifted, but I was also sad that my time with Whit at his family’s cabin had come to an end.
And a little uncertain where we went from here since we hadn’t talked about the future in concrete terms yet, other than to say we both wanted our relationship to work.
I’d thought we would have more time to figure those details out, though.
I still didn’t know how things had escalated so quickly, but I figured someone would fill me in eventually. And I wasn’t even a tiny bit surprised to see my dad in the thick of the action. But for the first time in my life, he wasn’t the one I raced toward. Whit had that honor now.
“Are you okay?” I asked as I flung myself into his arms.
“I’m fine, baby,” he reassured me, stroking his hand down my back. “There wasn’t much for me to do. Your dad had the situation under control. Which is a good thing since you were supposed to wait inside until I came to get you.”
I lifted my phone and showed him the text my dad had sent, giving me the all clear.
“And for all my trouble, you’re the one she ran to,” my dad grumbled.
I pulled out of Whit’s hold to give my dad a hug, too. “I knew you’d be okay. You’re too ornery to get hurt.”
“Uh-huh. I see how it is.” He brushed a kiss against the top of my head. “How about you show me where you’ve been holed up all this time?”
“Sure.” I led him into the cabin and gave him a quick tour, cringing a little when I remembered the lack of sheets in the bedroom I’d used when we first came to the cabin.
It was almost as though my dad heard my inner thoughts when he asked, “What’ve the two of you been up to while I tracked down those scumbags?”
My cheeks turned bright red as I looked around the room, searching for an answer to my dad’s question but only seeing all of the different places Whit and I had sex. “Ah, I see.”
Whit cleared his throat. “Mr. Ashe, sir.”
“I thought I told you to call me Arthur.” My dad punctuated his correction with a point of his finger.
“You did,” Whit confirmed with a nod. “Sir—”
My dad didn’t let him get out whatever he’d been about to say. “You gonna make an honest woman out of my daughter?”
“Oh, dear lord.” I slapped my hand over my eyes and squeezed them shut. “Someone please tell me this isn’t happening.”
My dad chuckled. “C’mon, Victoria. It can’t come as any surprise to you that I’m gonna put Whit through the wringer. It’s a part of my job as your dad.”
“Nope. Nuh-uh.” I dropped my hand and propped it on my hip, opened my eyes to glare at him, and shook my head. “Whit gets a pass after rescuing me. Twice.”
“No can do, Tori.” My dad focused on Whit as he said, “You’ll never be good enough for my daughter.”
I groaned in disbelief, but Whit squeezed my hand and smiled at my dad. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, sir. But I’m going to spend the rest of my life doing whatever it takes to make sure she never regrets settling for me.”
“Okay, seriously, guys. You need to stop because I’m feeling a little emotional here, and I might start crying any minute.”
I thought my warning would scare Whit and my dad into behaving because they couldn’t stand my tears, but I was wrong. They carried on as if I hadn’t said a word.
“She has a knack for getting into trouble,” my dad warned. “If I give you my blessing, it’s with the expectation that you’ll keep me in the loop when necessary.”
Whit nodded. “You’re a good man to have at my back.”
“Well, then.” My dad grinned and held out his hand. “Welcome to the family, son.”
“Thank you, sir,” Whit replied as they shook hands, as though they’d just struck a deal...about our marriage...without any input from me.
Okay. Forget the tears. Now I was irritated with both of them.
“Ahem.” I waited until they both looked at me to continue. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Don’t torture the poor man,” my dad muttered. “Of course, you want to marry Whit. You’re head over heels in love with him.”
I narrowed my eyes at my dad. “Don’t you think that’s something I should’ve been the one to tell him?”
My dad heaved a deep sigh and shook his head. “It’s not my fault you’ve been slacking.”
“Are you sure you want to spend the rest of your life with me?” I jerked my thumb toward my dad. “Because he’s never going to stop sticking his nose in our business.”
“Seems like a fair trade to me.” Whit chuckled softly and pulled me close.
“My mom will never stop trying to teach you how to cook all my favorite dishes, and she’ll pester us for grandbabies until we give her one.
And that’ll probably only buy us a few months until she starts asking when we’re going to have another. ”
My hand dropped to my stomach, and I mumbled, “She might not have long to wait.”
I hadn’t spoken softly enough because my dad heard what I said and growled, “Don’t make me get one of my shotguns.”
Whit held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, I’m more than willing to marry her, pregnant or not.”
“The gun wouldn’t be for you.” My dad pointed at me. “It’d be for her since she hasn’t accepted your proposal yet.”
“How could I accept?” I huffed, stomping my foot on the ground. “He hasn’t even asked me yet.”
“Good point, baby.” Whit took my hands in his and dropped down on one knee.
“Hold up a second.” After all his finagling, I couldn’t believe my dad interrupted right when Whit was going to ask me to marry him. “It isn’t a true proposal unless you’ve got a ring.”
“I’ve already looked online.” I gasped, thrilled to learn that he’d already been thinking about marriage before my dad brought it up. “But I didn’t want to buy one off the internet. It seemed too impersonal for something she’s going to wear for the rest of our lives.”
My dad reached into his pocket and pulled out a diamond solitaire. “I was hoping you’d use this. It was her mother’s.”
“Oh, my gosh,” I whispered, tears streaming down my cheeks.
I hadn’t seen my mom’s engagement ring in fifteen years.
When we’d buried her, she’d only had her wedding band on her finger.
My dad must have been holding on to it all this time, waiting for me to find the man I was meant to be with, like he had with my mom.
“Thank you, sir.” Whit’s gaze stayed glued on my face as he reached out to take the ring from my dad. He didn’t break eye contact with me until he slipped the diamond solitaire onto the tip of my finger, his lips curving into a satisfied smile as he got a look at the three-carat stone.
“My dad didn’t mess around when he bought that.” My hand trembled in his grasp. “My mom said he picked the biggest one he could afford so that nobody would miss that she belonged to him.”
“I like how your dad thinks.”
I laughed softly. “Yeah, I figured you would.”
His broad chest expanded as he took a deep breath, and I knew our perfect moment had finally arrived. “Victoria Ashe. I love you so damn much, I can’t picture a future without you in it. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
“Yes,” I cried with a frantic nod. “I love you so much, too. And I can’t wait to marry you.”
It wasn’t until a week later that I discovered my fiancé had taken what I’d said literally...when he surprised me with my own wedding in the front yard of the cabin where we fell in love.