Total pages in book: 35
Estimated words: 33209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 166(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 166(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
For his part, Agan stood there looking just as gorgeous as the first time I’d seen him.
“What are you doing here?” My eyes burned.
“I think you know why I’m here.”
I marched over to him and shoved at his chest. “You don’t get to come here when you have a fiancée. You have no right to be here and upset my life.”
Gently, he caught my wrist to stop me from beating on him. “I don’t have a fiancée.”
“But the news—”
“You believe everything you hear on the news?”
“They had pictures.”
He leaned down and pressed his forehead to mine. “Pictures of a woman my father wants me to marry. I told him before I took you on the trip it was never going to happen.”
I stilled. “Why?”
“Because I was already in love with someone else.”
My world spun on its axis, especially when he took my hand. His touch still sent butterflies racing in my stomach. “When I woke in that hospital, I would have killed my way back to you, especially when I found out they left you on that beach.”
“You didn’t call,” I said, my emotions in a whirlwind.
“My phone went down with the ship, and I had no way of getting another, at least not right away. Then when I got my new phone, I didn’t have any contacts. You aren’t easily found on the web.” He chuckled a little as I was still gathering my thoughts. “I couldn’t get back here, so I sent my sister under the pretext of finishing up Dad’s business stuff. She was supposed to get you my new number.”
“She did,” I said, but nothing more. I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt with him being so close, muddling my thoughts.
He nodded. “I guess I expected you wouldn’t be happy. I’m here in person to give you my side of things.”
“And what? Am I supposed to jump in your arms?” It mattered not that he still held my hand.
“No. I hoped maybe you felt the same.” He licked his lips and dropped to one knee. “Even if you don’t, I want you to understand how in love I am with you. I gave up my job with my father’s company and claim to the throne for you.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“It was worth it. It’s what I wished for when we saw the shooting star. I’ll never have any regrets.”
It was as if those were the words my heart needed to hear to mend itself. I broke and fell to my knees and pressed my lips to his. “I love you too,” I murmured against his mouth as salty tears streamed down my cheeks.
“I love every piece of you,” he said. “Just the way you are.”
“I love every piece of you… just the way you are,” I echoed.
“Marry me, Haley. Make me the luckiest guy on earth and be my wife.”
I flashed him a cheeky grin. “I could do that.”
He pulled out a box and opened it. The sparkle on the ring nearly blinded me. “Do you like it?”
“I like you. You could have given me a plastic ring and my answer still would be yes. And you should know, I’m pregnant.”
His hand stilled with the ring in it. “I’m going to be a father?”
“We are having a baby.”
He leaned in and kissed me and then took the ring and slid it on my finger before lifting me up and sitting in the swing with me on his lap. I unzipped his fly and freed his beautiful cock. I slowly slid down his length and together we were one. Always and forever.
SEVENTEEN
After
Nervously, I wiped my hands on my jeans and paced the length of the car on the sidewalk a few more times before I had the courage to go inside.
The diner was mostly empty and far different from the one I’d worked the last several years in. But then everything was different in Mason Creek.
There was only one booth with a single male sitting there with his back to me. I approached slowly, afraid and curious all the same.
“Tim,” I said when I reached him.
When he looked up from his menu, the breath was stolen from me. I knew who this man was without any test.
“Haley,” he said. I bobbed my head, and he held out his hand to indicate the seat across from him. I sat. “You look—”
“Like you,” I said, “especially around the eyes.”
“I was going to say your mom, but yes. You have my eyes. If I had any doubts, I don’t anymore.”
“You didn’t know about me?”
He shook his head. “When things went south in Mountainside, I went home. I married the girl I’d been seeing off and on.” I nodded. “You should know you have two brothers. They’ll be so excited to see you.”
I had brothers. Something to wrap my mind around. I’d grown up with only Mom and if not for Avery and her parents, I wouldn’t have had any family. Now my family was bursting at the seams. I wiped at my eyes. “And your wife?”