Chapter Twenty-Nine
Three months later
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“I can’t believe this is the first weekend we’ve had off in almost a year.” Kolby poured them each a glass of wine as they sat at her breakfast bar.
He’d floated the idea of going out to eat, but Charity had nixed it saying, “We’re out every weekend. Let’s just stay in, order takeout, lie around in our jammies and chill.”
The idea sounded perfect to him. So, they were surrounded by a half dozen takeout boxes of their favorite Tai food.
“Has it really been a year since we had a weekend off?” Charity asked. She took a sip of her wine and hummed her response.
“Almost to the day. Want to take these into the living room and watch something?”
“No, let’s sit here and just talk for a bit. We’ve got the entire night to watch television.”
He was all for that. Especially since he had something important he wanted to discuss. Now, with the next two days to themselves, was the perfect time.
Kolby filled her plate from one of the boxed choices, then his own, asking, “Anything special you want to talk about?”
“No. Just anything not related to work and weddings.”
He nodded, deciding to let that slide for a bit.
“Tell me about your visit with your mama today.” She forked in a taste of her pork and noodles. “Was she on board with your idea?”
“Surprisingly so, yes. She figures the house is too big for her to continue maintaining. A small apartment in Heaven sounds perfect and easily manageable for her.”
“Plus, added benefit? She can be closer to you. Which, actually, benefits you both.”
He swiped at his mouth with a paper napkin. “Truth. I’ve already called a realtor, set up an appointment next week for him to come out and look at the house. Next step? Finding Mom an apartment. We both agree she doesn’t want to live with me.”
“About that.” Charity reached behind her and pulled her big work purse from the counter.
“I did a search this morning and found four places that look like they’d be perfect.
Rents are good, locations are great, and she’s ten minutes from you in either direction.
” She pulled a bunch of papers out of her bag and handed them to him.
Why her kindness and consideration continued to be a perpetual surprise was mind-blowing.
She wasn’t obligated to help him find a place, although he had been planning to ask for her help.
She knew better than he would, coming from a woman’s perspective, what would suit his mother best.
“Thanks.” He took the pages and leaned across the table to kiss her. "You didn’t need to do this.”
“Needing to and wanting to are two different beasts, as Granny Quinlan used to say. We can call the listing agents and go visit the places, if you want to. We can start this weekend since we’re,” she lifted her hands in the air, “free birds for a few days.”
Every day it amazed him to discover he loved her more, this unselfish act just another reason to.
“Apartment shopping wasn’t on my bingo card this weekend,” he said with a grin.
She had a mouthful of noodles, but around it asked, “What was? Is, I guess?” She swallowed and narrowed her eyes as she looked over at him.
“Oh, wait. Stupid question.” When she tossed him that signature eye roll, he was a goner.
“I know exactly what you want to do all weekend, and it doesn’t involve leaving the house. ”
With a laugh, he spooned more food onto their plates.
“Am I wrong?” Her brows flirted with her hairline.
“Yes and no.”
“It can’t be both.”
“Yeah, it can.” He slid his hand under the table to pat the front pocket of his jeans. “While you’re right, I’d love to spend the entire weekend with you, in bed,” his heart turned over when she blushed, “but there’s more to our relationship than just the physical side.”
Charity stared across the table, her hand trembling on the top of it, a sure sign she was nervous.
In the next beat, she cocked her head to the side and ran a heated glare down his face and chest, then back again. “Just who are you and what have you done with my boyfriend?”
He cringed at the word, hating it, because he could think of a much better one, and told her that.
“What? You want me to refer to you as my lover?” She tsked. “Yeah, that’s gonna go over real big with the folks back home. I can see my brothers spoilin’ for a fight and daddy getting’ all scowly at just the mention of the word an’ what it implies.”
He could, too. Which was why he’d decided it was time for action.
“Not the word I want to use, either.”
She wracked her brain for a few moments, her bottom lip tucked between her teeth, head still at an angle.
God. Would he ever tire of simply watching her? Assessing her emotions and how they played across her beautiful face?
Stupid question, because the answer was a resounding no.
“So, what, then? You want me to refer to you as my steady? My beau? My fella? Bae?” She grinned. “If my granny were here, she’d call you my young man. Which is ridiculous since you’re older than me.”
“While all of those are correct,” he stood and came around the corner of the bar to stand in front of her. Charity, a questioning quirk on her lips, stared up at him. “None of them is what I want you to call me.”
He dropped to one knee and reached for her hands. Both started to shake violently under his hold and he squeezed them, then brought them up to his lips.
“Wh- what are ya doin’?” Her voice, like her hands, trembled. Her bottom lip joined in and, for a moment, he feared she was going to pass out.
Just like he knew he’d never tire of looking at her every day, there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d ever stop being charmed when her Southern slipped through all her control.
He took a breath. He’d been dreaming of doing this for weeks, ever since the plane ride back from Gulches End.
Charity’s admission to her parents that she loved him was all he could think about on that long, lonely flight.
He needed to hear her say it, every day, for the rest of his life.
She loved him – him – with all his baggage and poor past decisions, with his carefree history with women, and even his live in the moment lifestyle.
Nothing had ever come close to making him feel so good, so alive, so damn worthy, as knowing she loved him.
The plan to seal their futures had hatched on the drive back to Heaven.
Getting her parents on board was the first step.
CarlieRae wouldn’t be a problem, but her father?
Well, he figured that would be a tougher nut to crack.
The multiple FaceTime calls he’d made, first telling them how he felt about their daughter, and then asking for permission to do what he was about to, had terrified him.
As predicted, her mother had cried happy tears.
Her father? Well, Rory scowled, stuttered, and grilled him like a flank steak about everything from his finances, his beliefs, and how he intended to take care of his little girl.
Luckily, Kolby had the perfect answer for each query.
His independent lifestyle meant he had no bills other than the normal monthly ones of rent, gas, etc.
He had no debt and had put away a tidy nest egg from all the side photography gigs he booked for Colleen’s brides.
When he mentioned the amount he had socked away, he’d seen – for the very first time – admiration in the man’s eyes.
At the end of the call, he’d convinced them he was worthy of their daughter and pledged he’d spend his lifetime making her happy.
“See that you do, boy,” Rory’d said, “’cuz if’en you don’t, you know what’all’l happen to you.”
Kolby had no doubt.
After several private and informative side calls with Carlie Rae about her daughter's preferences, Kolby now knew everything he needed to.
He dragged in another breath, held it for a beat, then smiled. Under his hold, Charity’s shaking suddenly stopped.
“I’ve been planning this moment in my mind for weeks,” he told her.
“Every scenario that I pictured in my mind just didn’t seem right.
Horse-drawn carriage under the moonlight?
Romantic, but not right. Fancy dinner out with maybe a hired musician playing close by?
Too intrusive.” He laughed. “I even envisioned getting stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel. Nothing seemed right, or good enough.”
He pulled her left hand up to his lips and kissed the knuckles. “Your mother is the one I have to thank for this.”
Charity swallowed. “Mama? What are you talkin’ ‘bout?”
“She was the one who told me to go with my heart and just simply put my cards on the table and play them. Although, it sounded more like ‘lay’em out and state yor case. My baby-girl will tell ya how she feels.” His butchered, over-the-top southern accent actually pulled a grin from her.
Kolby sighed. “I love you, Charity. I never thought I could love anyone, much less like this.”
“Like...what?”
“Like if I don’t wake up with you every morning, I can’t start my day.
If I’m not with you, I’m thinking about you, wishing I was next to you, had you in my arms. Like when I think of my future, something I never did before, I can’t imagine it not standing next to you, loving you, being with you.
You’re the best friend I never knew I needed and the woman I can’t see my life without. ”
He let go of one of her hands and slid it into his front pocket. Charity tracked his movement. His hand was a fist when he pulled it out again.
“I may not be the guy you envisioned spending your life with, but I want to be. I want to prove to you, every single day for the rest of our lives, what you mean to me. How much I love you. I want to be the man who deserves you. Who’ll take care of you, even though you don’t need anyone to do that,” he added when one of her eyebrows crawled up her forehead.
“I want to be the man who kisses you goodnight and then do it again when you wake up. And I want everyone to know that I belong to you, and you belong to me.”
He unfurled his fingers and lifted the ring he’d had made with CarlieRae’s recommendations.
“Oh, sweet Jesus and all the saints in heaven!” Charity’s eyes bugged so wide he worried for a fleeting moment if it would trigger a migraine.
“Does that mean you like it?” he asked, staring at her face, her attention zeroed in on the two carat square-cut diamond set in a platinum band.
“How...?” Her eyes filled with tears as her gaze tripped from the ring up to his face.
Understanding flowed through him. “Your mother. She talked me through it. I decided on the size, the stone, but she was the one who told me the cut and setting you like.”
He tugged on her left hand, poised the ring at her fourth finger, not pushing it on. Not yet.
“Charity Belle Quinlan,” he said, then watched her roll her eyes at the middle name, “In case I haven’t made myself clear, I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you.
” He cocked his head, a smirk teasing his lips.
“Now we can go on as we have, basically living together, like we’ve been doing these past weeks.
But somewhere down the road, I have a feeling your brothers and father would get wind of it, come up here, and you’d never see me alive again. ”
She nodded. “Truth.”
“So, to prevent my early demise, I’m asking, will you marry me and make an honest man of me in their eyes?”
The tears crested and spilled over onto her cheeks. He wanted to swipe at them but was afraid if he let go of her hand she just might bolt from the room.
Irrational? No doubt about it. But love made you all kinds of crazy.
“Well,” she said, then bit down on the inside of her cheek, “you getting...disappeared by Daddy and the boys would be mighty inconvenient for Colleen and the business. She’d have to go out and find a new photographer in a pinch and he or she might not have the critical eye you do.”
“Truth,” he said. Charity grinned at the repeated word.
She stilled her features. “Then there’s the situation with your mama. She’d need to find someone new to be her advocate with you potentially out of the picture and that would be a problem. No one’s gonna care for her or about her the way you do.”
“My mother is a concern, to be sure.”
More nodding.
“Then, well...there’s me.”
“What about you?” His hand still held the ring aloft and just beyond the tip of her finger.
Drawing in a heavy breath, she shook her head. “I don’t know how I’d live the rest of my days without you and ever find a reason to smile again.”
The worry sitting in the back of his mind disappeared. “So, is that a...?” He wiggled his eyebrows.
“Yes!” she exploded, and jumped up, wrapping her arms around his neck so tight she was cutting off the air to his lungs.
Kolby didn’t care one bit.
He wound his arms around her waist and held her up against him.
“I love you so much.” He sighed into her hair.
“I love you, too.” She pulled back to gaze at his face. “More than I ever thought it was possible to love someone else.”
He cupped her cheeks and kissed the mouth he saw in his dreams every single night. So sweet. So soft. And now his. Forever.
“Well then.” He eased back, resting on both his knees now, and tugged her left hand up again.
“This needs to find its forever home,” he said as he slid the ring onto her finger.
Once it was in place, he kissed it, then turned her hand and placed a kiss on her wrist, working his way up her arm until he couldn’t bear to be away from her mouth for another second.
When they came up for air, their foreheads rested against one another.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” he said, kissing the tip of her nose.
He tugged her up and placed her across his lap when he sat back down on his chair.
“Long engagement so you can have the wedding of your dreams. Or we can fly to Vegas tonight. Whatever you want, Charity, just as long as the end product is we get to spend the rest of our lives together.”
She settled against him and closed her eyes. “Well, you’re not getting any younger,” she said, earning her a pinch on her waist. Giggling, she turned to face him. “I want to get married at home, on the farm with all my family standing witness and your mama there, too. As soon as we can manage it.”
“Well, it’s lucky I happen to know an amazing wedding planner and her fabulous assistant who can work miracles and make fast happen.”
Charity grinned. “It pays to know people.”
“Truth.”
He kissed her again, and then they both forgot all about dinner, a movie, and everything else as they simply loved one another.