21. Steph

CHAPTER 21

Steph

“What are you looking at?”

Stevie and Hutch were standing in my kitchen with their heads bent over someone’s phone. They both looked up when I spoke and judging by the grins they wore, it was something really juicy.

Hutch passed his phone to me.

Hollywood’s Homewrecker Sentenced to 15 years in prison without a chance of parole.

“Wow, that’s some headline,” I snickered.

“It should have been more time, but since she technically hadn’t been driving during the vehicular homicide, they couldn’t really get more time out of it. The fifteen is with all the other charges adding to her sentence.”

“As long as she does some time for the crap she caused, I don’t really care.”

The guys stared out into the backyard where there were enough peonies arranged to spell out: Will you marry me.

“Are you ever going to put the asshole out of his misery and accept his proposals?” Steve asked as Hutch pouted. “Maybe, one day,” I hedged. Truthfully, that display in the back yard wasn’t one of Ollie’s creations. It had been mine.

For the past two years, he had been asking me at least once per month if I would marry him yet. Every time, my answer was no. Hutch had also tried to ask me out, after seeing that I wasn’t going to jump right back into Ollie’s arms. I let him down as gently as I could. Even if Ollie and I never got back together, Hutch wasn’t someone that interested me romantically, especially since my brother told me enough stories about what his best friend got up to that I would never go there with him.

He had too many skeletons that might walk out of a closet at any given moment, some of them probably carrying his babies, since he wasn’t exactly choosy or as careful as he should have been. It had caused a rift in their friendship when Hutch realized why I turned him down, but they eventually got over their snit and patched things up.

“No offense, boys, but y’all need to go away now.” It was thirty minutes before Ollie was due to pick me up for our latest date. I’d made his favorite food for dinner and Den and Care were with Monica for the night.

It was only then that my brother took another look around at the set table, the display out back, and the complete lack of Ollie being involved. He smirked and then tapped Hutch on the shoulder.

“Come on man, I think we need to hit up Hannigan’s and celebrate the bitch getting 15 years.”

“You should come with us,” Hutch insisted as I shook my head. He wasn’t dumb. My brother’s best friend had already figured out what was going on. That’s why he had been pouting.

“I have plans that you are about to ruin and I will never forgive either of you if you stand in my way today.”

“Let’s go,” Steve said as he yanked Hutch’s arm and pulled him toward my front door. Once they were gone, I quickly moved around the house and lit all the candles I had out and then I placed the brand new wedding ring I purchased for Ollie under the dome plate cover that would hide it until we were ready.

Ten minutes later, I heard his Land Rover pull into the driveway. Two minutes after that, he gave three polite knocks before entering my house. He always did that because he insisted that until we married again, it was just my house and he was a guest there. We all but lived together again already. After bringing Carolina home, it was easier to have us both in the same place. For the first year, I insisted that he occupy the guest room.

He never complained and never pushed. After a year of dating, no sex, and Ollie going down on bended knee twelve times and getting shot down very publicly each and every one, we finally had our first intimate night together. It had been on the anniversary of our divorce and it seemed rather fitting, after all the excitement of our daughter’s first birthday, that we ended up sharing a bed and our bodies for the first time in nearly two years.

“Honey, I’m home!” Ollie called out. His breath hitched when he walked into the room and saw it all lit up. “What’s this?”

“Can’t I plan a special night for us?” I grinned at him as he smiled sweetly down at me. “You have spent the past two years planning dates for us. I wanted to give you the night off, so I planned one this time.”

“I’m okay with that.” He leaned down and kissed me as I let his spicy scent wrap me up like a hug. “It smells amazing.”

“It should. It’s your favorite.”

He grinned that time. “Prime rib?” I rolled my eyes. Ollie insisted prime rib was his favorite because it was what we ate the day I finally gave in and told him we could date after we got divorced.

“No. Your favorite, before you tried to swap it out for a memory.”

“It was a good memory, sweetheart.”

“Whatever. Remember the first time you tried to propose to me again?”

“In the hospital?”

“Nope. After our first real post-divorce date.”

“Yeah, we went to Waterman’s and…” He picked me up and spun me around. “Did you make Miso honey-glazed steak?”

I nodded and moved to the table to pick up my plate. “Don’t remove the dome on that plate or you don’t get any. Bring it out back with me.” I held my plate close to my chest and wandered out back knowing that Ollie would follow my directions. The minute he made his way outside I turned to see his reaction. The poor man damn near dropped the plate. I set mine down on the little bistro table that held the dinner I’d made for us.

Then I helped him hold up his plate. “Does that say what I think it does?” He asked me.

“Lift the dome, Ollie.”

He glanced back and forth between the question I’d spelled out in peonies on our lawn and my face. Then he pulled the dome cover off the plate he carried and saw the ring in the open box. I got down on my knee in front of him. “Will you…”

Ollie joined me on his knees. “I would marry you every day for the rest of my pathetic life, woman. Hell Yes! You’re mine. My woman. My fiancé. My soon-to-be wife.” I laughed as he mumbled what sounded like his thanks to God.

“Remember that first time you tried to propose?” I asked again.

“Yeah.”

“I really wanted to say yes, but I was scared. I’m tired of running scared, Ollie. I’m tired of not being a whole family. I’m tired of letting the past keep a wall between us. If you promise to love me the right way this time, then I want to marry you again today, tomorrow, the next day, it doesn’t matter when.”

“It’s only you for me, Steph.”

“Then it’s settled.” I pulled the ring off the plate. “I don’t really know what the etiquette is for a woman asking a man, but we can take this off and put it back on during a ceremony.”

“You can pretend to do that, but I’m never taking this off my finger,” he insisted.

“There’s just one more thing.”

“What? If I haven’t proved it to you yet, then I promise I will. You are the only woman I want in my life, in my heart, in my bed. Just you, Steph, until the day I die. I’ll keep you beyond that, too, if it’s possible.”

I stood and told him to wait there as I walked over to the table that held our dinner and another special surprise. “Remember the last time you tried to propose to me?” I picked up my dome covered plate as I asked.

He chuckled. “Yeah, it was a month ago and I bombed spectacularly.” I laughed along with him. “We were in the middle of the town square for the summer music fest and you looked so pretty in that swishy cream dress. The way it twisted and turned around your knees as we danced. The way those sexy as fuck cowgirl boots of yours looked and that beautiful smile on your face.” He waxed poetic about me that day even though I’d turned him down for the 24 th time that night. It wasn’t the first time I’d turned him down in front of our whole town. It was the first time I felt like the town was on his side hoping that I’d finally say, “Yes”.

“You got up on that stage with so much confidence and you told everyone how you’d lost the love of your life once and you wouldn’t stop trying to prove yourself worthy of her until your dying breath.”

“I meant it.”

“I hope so. Do you remember what else you said that night?”

“I said that once you agreed to marry me, I was going to fill your belly up with another baby and…” He stopped talking then and I couldn’t hold my grin back.

“No!” he jumped up from where he’d still been kneeled down on the lawn. “Are you serious?”

I nodded my head as Ollie came to pick me up. He swung me full circle one time and then set me down on my feet as I handed him the second dome-covered plate. He opened it up and beamed as he saw the positive pregnancy test. Then he opened the slightly larger than a ring-sized box that accompanied it. Inside was a mint green pacifier that had a gold engraving on it.

I have the best dad.

“I love you so fucking much,” he choked out and when his eyes came back up to meet mine there was a sheen of moisture coating them. “You made me the happiest man in the universe, sweetheart. I didn’t deserve another chance, but I will spend the rest of my life making sure you never regret it.