Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
“Well…I brought a little something with us.”
I took a step back. “Up here?” With a quick look around, I frowned. “You want to have sex up here? I mean, I’m healed, but I was hoping for a nice soft bed the first time back in the saddle.”
“No!” she said, laughing. “I brought up a speaker. And if you’d like, I think we could work something out for a little bit of fun up here.”
“Ahh,” I replied, grinning like a fool. My dick was already rock hard, almost painfully so. “So you brought me up here not to see the beautiful fall colors, but to have your wicked way with me out in the open.”
Lily looked around. “I wouldn’t say this was out in the open.”
“It’s not our bedroom.”
Wrapping her arms around my neck, she stretched up and kissed me. “I’ve been aching for you, Maverick.”
A low growl came from the back of my throat.
Then she stepped away and I instantly missed her touch.
“You tease.”
Laughing, she grabbed her bag and took out a small Bose speaker, set it up on a rock, then pulled her phone from her pocket.
“I wanted to dance to a specific song.”
My heart picked up its rhythm as I was suddenly overcome with an emotion I had yet to experience with Lily. I felt nervous, excited, and anxious, all rolled up into one overwhelming feeling. I’d begun to realize…that’s what love was. A mix of emotions that left me feeling higher than ever before and still slightly nervous.
She held her hand out for mine. I took it and drew her body flush against me. Wrapping her arms around my neck, she looked up at me. “If I could have written a song for the way I feel about you, this song would be it. It says exactly what I feel, Maverick.”
Tapping her phone, she pushed it into her back pocket and then wrapped her arms back around my neck as the beginning of a song played.
“It’s called ‘I Choose You’ by Amanda Jordan.”
Lily rested her head on my chest, and we slowly danced on the hilltop overlooking the ranch while I listened to the words of the song.
The chorus played, and my eyes filled with tears as the words that were sung were about being loved and cherished. I pressed my mouth to the top of her head and kissed her while pulling her even closer.
The second verse sent me over the ledge, heartfelt lyrics about no longer being alone, and I let my tears flow freely as we slowly danced. When the bridge came, and the words were about changing her last name, I cried harder and cupped her face in my hands. She was crying, too, and I leaned down and kissed the tears away, then drew her in and wrapped my arms around her once more.
She sang the last chorus as she held me tightly.
“I love you so much, Lily.”
Drawing back and looking into my eyes, she softly said, “I’ll always choose you. I’ll always love you. I’ll always be yours, Maverick.”
I claimed her mouth with mine and kissed her slow and sweet, while she returned the kiss the same way. When we broke apart to take in a breath, I could feel my heart hammering in my chest.
Lily looked up at me with the sweetest smile I’d ever seen, and let out a bubble of laughter. “My heart is pounding like never before,” she said, reading my mind.
“Mine is too. And I think I can take care of that thing the song mentioned…the only thing that needs changing.”
Her brows drew down in the cutest way as her mind went through the song to discover what I was talking about.
With a deep breath, I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a jewelry box I’d been carrying around with me for weeks—and sank down to one knee. Lily stared at me in shock.
“When I turned eighteen, this lawyer tracked me down. Don’t ask me how he found me, but he did. He gave me a box of things that Mindy and Justin had left for me. He was instructed not to give it to me until then. They’d even left a trust fund for me. There isn’t a whole lot of money in it, but I haven’t touched a dime, so…it’s enough if you wanted to build a house. Also in the box were Mindy and Justin’s wedding rings.”
I looked down at the small blue box in my shaking hand. “I tucked them away, thinking I’d never give Mindy’s ring to anyone. But since I got home from the hospital, I’ve been carrying it around with me, waiting for the right time.”
Lily covered her mouth with a hand as she started to cry once again.
“I think this is the perfect time to ask you, Lily Hope Shaw, to be my forever. My partner, my lover, the mother to our kids, and my best friend.”