Chapter 38 Hope
Hope
The day after we go into town and I make a new friend, we’re hit by an early summer heat wave. Luna makes sure we never run out of popsicles and lemonade, because they are the best things ever after a morning spent picking vegetables.
They’re both also lovely treats that soothe my morning sickness, and for a few weeks, it’s easy to just pretend that I’m not pregnant during the day.
After another week of cuddles, Bellamy moves back to the room across the hall where we stayed when we first moved to the ranch.
That makes it easier to sink into my pregnancy being a delicious little secret between Zane and me. My belly starts to poke out more, just a little, at the end of the day. My breasts get heavier and more sensitive.
And Zane is so good to me.
Every night.
Sometimes soft, sometimes hard. Almost always fun. Once in a while, weirdly emotional, and I break down crying. Zane is rock steady and makes me feel loved. Safe.
I keep going to therapy.
June slides into the first week of July. Another heat wave hits, and my belly threatens to really pop.
Every night, we talk about if the next day will be the day we tell his mom.
Every morning, I put on one of Zane’s big t-shirts, and we make it through another day of pretending that we aren’t going to have a baby by Christmas.
Popsicles return to our daily routine. A little bit of family time at regular breaks—although it’s hard for my thoughts to not turn private and dirty when I stare at Zane’s mouth as he laughs and licks a yellow popsicle and grins again, all sticky with sweat from an afternoon of baling hay.
He came in search of lemonade. But he also came to look at me and let me look right back, to give me attention because he knows I like it.
The popsicles are mostly for Bellamy, who often needs an afternoon bribe to not wander too far from the greenhouses.
But when he shows up and she’s just pulled a cherry popsicle from the freezer, his eyes light up. “You got any more of those in there, Bella?”
“No,” she lies brazenly.
He raises his eyebrows at her. He’s getting good at that. I don’t have to intervene at all. “Bellamy, please share.”
“Okay…but you can’t have the pink ones.” She scowls at him. “They’re mine.”
He winks and leans against the counter, right next to the ladder stool she climbs on when I’m working in here. “No problem. Give me any other colour.”
“I don’t like yellow ones. They make my face pucker.” She shoves a lemon popsicle at him. “You can have this one.”
“Is it banana?”
She giggles. “No. It’s lemon.”
“Banana popsicles used to be a thing. Are they not a thing anymore?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you know? Did you buy these?”
Her giggle gets louder. “No! I don’t have any money.”
“Why not? Do you need a job? I’ll pay you to muck out the horse stalls.”
She climbs up next to him. “What does muck out mean?”
“Have you ever noticed that the animals poop in the barn?”
“Yeah. That’s gross.”
“It sure is. Well, we’re the dumb humans who clean up after them. Muck out means to pull out all the straw and poop.”
“I don’t want that job.” She gives him a stern look. “Ever.”
“You’re a city girl, just like your mama.”
“She’s never lived a day in her life in the city,” I murmur, smiling.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s in her blood. She’s a princess. And that’s all right. Leave the stall mucking to me, I suppose. And I’ll buy you popsicles, too.”
“But not banana.”
“Nope. Just pink popsicles for a perfect princess.”
She likes that so much. She kicks her feet, and they happily finish their popsicles together before she goes running off to the chicken coop to tell Luna all about banana popsicles.
“Don’t encourage her to be a princess,” I murmur after he gives me a lemony kiss.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want her to be spoiled.”
“That is going to be hard. I want her to be incredibly spoiled. We should argue about this all night. Once I finish baling.”
“Go.” I push him in the direction of the field. “And then come back.”
“Always.”
The heat breaks again, as quickly as it spiked. Summers in Alberta are funny that way. And then the first raspberries are ready to pick.
“We can add check raspberry bush to our daily tasks,” Luna says. “Just to see if we have any to harvest. Or to eat for a second breakfast. And you know, if you pick some of the leaves and dry them, they make an excellent tea for pregnant women.”
She says it as an aside. She doesn’t look at me as she says it, or after.
But it sends a jolt up my spine anyway.
“I think your mother knows,” I tell Zane that night.
“Really?” He seems unbothered. “She’s going to be so happy, I promise.”
“I want to believe you. I do believe you, of course,” I hasten to add.
“She’s your mom and she’s always loved you and your brothers through a lot of ups and downs.
But if Bellamy told me that she’d taken up with someone quickly, I’d be concerned.
If I then found out that person was already pregnant? ”
“Okay, when you say it like that…” He catches my fingers in his and pulls them to his mouth, kissing my knuckles. “We’ll tell her tomorrow. And if she already figured it out, then she’s waiting for us to share in our time, and that’s a good sign.”
But in the morning, Luna is a whirlwind, unable to be pinned down for a conversation. And then she starts a big painting project with Bellamy that looks incredibly messy.
My daughter is thrilled.
And so is Zane, who suggests we sneak away for a lunch date.
“I got you something,” he says before I excuse myself to get dressed.
I follow him to the library, where a boot box is sitting on his desk. This box is much nicer than the bag he pulled rubber boots out of.
He lifts the lid off, and inside are brown leather boots with pretty detailing all over them. “For a very special city girl who might want to dress up for a barn dance. Or a small town lunch at The Friendly Table. Just as much fun.”
“This feels like a very specific outfit request.”
“I can't say I hate the idea of you in a pretty skirt and those boots, City Girl. I don’t hate that at all.”
I never wanted to be a country girl. But as I look at the gleaming leather boots, I’m painfully aware of how much I want to be his country girl.
Zane Kincaid worked some kind of magic on my heart to get me in cowboy boots and a flirty little sundress.
My heart in my throat, I nod. “Tell me more.”
“You like my kisses.”
“Mmm.”
“I could kiss you all over. Kiss your pretty knees. Put these boots over my shoulders and kiss your thighs.”
Whew, this man. I fan my face. “That’s the most country thing you’ve ever said.”
“I’m a country boy through and through.”
“My cowboy.” I grab the front of his shirt and kiss him.
“Your cowboy. I told you, I want to take you to the Raspberry Jamboree.”
“That’s even more country.”
He spins me around. “Go find something pretty that goes with these, and then we’ll sneak out while Bellamy has her hands full.”
In the sundress, I think the belly is a little too obvious.
But when I put on my favourite white linen skirt and slide my feet into the boots, which are a perfect fit, there’s just enough of a heel that my body shifts, and the belly disappears. I top it with a soft suede shirt that matches the boots and the pink dots high on my cheeks.
I look as country as I can get.
Taking a deep breath, I race downstairs to Zane.
He’s waiting at the bottom, and when he sees me, his eyes light up. He changed, too, into clean, fitted jeans and a blue button-down shirt.
“Shall we?” He gives me his arm.
We take his truck, which he’s cleaned out, and something about it feels genuinely special even though it’s just a quick lunch at Mercy’s diner.
Except when we get to town, Zane doesn’t go to The Friendly Table. He turns right and heads toward the waterfall.
“What about lunch?”
He grins. “I packed us a picnic.”
“Clean truck, picnic lunch, romantic destination…” I tick them off on my fingers. “Someone wants to get lucky.”
“I’m already lucky.” He parks, then gestures for me to wait. “I’ll come around and help you down.”
Like I don’t jump out of his truck every day now.
But it’s nice to have him help me down, my skirt sliding against him, his hands strong and warm through my thin suede shirt.
We walk hand in hand into the canyon. It’s different without Bellamy. We can move faster, but also take our time appreciating the quiet shift from the outside world to this lovely hidden escape.
Instead of taking me down to the base of the waterfall this time, Zane points me up a different path, and we climb up to a ledge overlooking it.
The perfect private picnic spot.
He spreads out a blanket he’d tucked into the top of his small picnic basket.
Once we’re sitting, he shows me everything he brought with him. Bottled sparkling water, very fancy. Sandwiches. Fruit. A tiny cheese board. And a box of chocolates for dessert.
“This is all incredible.” I crawl over to him on my knees. “Thank you.”
And then we’re making out, giggling together about the picnic needing our attention, but we need to kiss a little more. Just a little more. Until I’m fully flushed and Zane thinks that’s a great excuse to unbutton my shirt, revealing my thin tank top under it.
“My beautiful girl,” he says when he slides it off me. “Here, hang this up on that tree so it doesn’t get wrinkled.”
It doesn’t really matter, but I get up anyway and hang my shirt over a branch.
When I turn around, Zane’s on one knee, a ring box in his hand.
“There was one other thing I put in the picnic basket that I need to show you before we eat,” he says, his voice catching.
Slowly, he opens the velvet box and reveals an ornate vintage-looking ring. Not a wear-every-day kind of ring, but one so fancy that when you put it on, it would make your hand feel heavy.
The kind of ring that isn’t easy to find, especially from a ranch in the Foothills.
“You make me so happy, Hope. I didn’t know what I was missing in my life until I saw your car pulled over on the side of the road.
And I didn’t know what this feeling in my chest was.
I felt it right away, and couldn’t name it.
But it didn’t take me long to figure out that it was a unique kind of recognition.
I took one look at you and knew you were mine.
I think I knew, from the very first second, that you were meant to be my wife.
I wanted to say it so many times before now, but I also never want to rush you, sweetheart.
Do you know how hard it is to look at you a hundred times a day and think, marry me, but not say that out loud? ”
“Yes.”
“It’s so hard.”
“No, I mean yes.”
“I haven’t asked you yet.”
“Okay.”
He grins. “Marry me, Hope. Marry me next week. Marry me next month, or this Christmas right after our baby arrives. Let me claim this baby as ours, in every way. Marry me, and let me raise Bellamy as a ranch kid who can do anything she sets her mind to. Marry me, and if you want to go back to school in the city, I’ll support that dream with everything that I have.
Everything that is mine is yours, and I want all that is yours to be mine, as soon as possible. ”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes to all of that. Yes to everything. Yes to you, my cowboy.” I lean over, laughing and crying now, and I kiss him, cupping his freshly shaved jaw. “Does your mother know? Was the art project a big ruse?”
“The biggest ruse, yes. She knows. She knows about the baby, and she knows how much I love you. And she’s happy for us.”
He slides the ring on my finger. Like the boots, it’s a perfect fit.
I’m still processing it all. I start laughing as it sparkles as brightly as the waterfall below us. “You want to raise Bellamy to be a ranch kid?”
“One of these days she’s gonna pick up a chicken and teach it who’s boss, and it’s going to be the best day of her life.”
“Oh Zane… That was the day we stopped at the top of the road, and you pulled over behind us.”
“That was just the beginning, gorgeous. That was just the beginning.”