The Mechanics of Mistletoe - Liz Isaacson Page 0,68
a breath behind the music.
“I want to see it again,” she said. “Now that I know what I’m looking for.”
Bear kept tapping and sending texts, and Sammy wondered what he saw that she didn’t. The next song started, and he set his phone down. “Sammy, I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Okay,” she said, her eyes still tracking the lights on the lawn. The soldiers lit up right on time, the red, white, and yellow lights perfectly aligned with the music.
“It’s about kids,” he said. “You want children of your own, don’t you?”
Sammy blinked, the lights in her eyes ingrained on the backs of her eyelids. “Kids?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Kids. A family. A husband. Marriage.” He cleared his throat, a sound Sammy hadn’t heard from him in a while.
Sammy swung her head toward him, her movement feeling sluggish and slow. She looked at his profile being lit by the colored Christmas lights, and what he was asking hit her in the chest.
He wanted to know if she wanted to have his kids. A family with him. Him for a husband. To marry him.
He turned toward her, those blue eyes still as vibrant as ever, even without a lot of light. She saw her whole future with Bear Glover in a single moment of time, and it looked and felt incredible.
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“To which part?”
“To all of it,” she said. “Kids. A family. A husband. Marriage.”
He nodded and looked back at the house. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Me too.”
She squeezed his hand. “Are you thinking about having a marriage and a family with me?”
“Yes,” he said without looking at her.
“Me too,” she said. “I mean, with you not me. I’m thinking about those things with you, obviously.”
“And?” he asked. He swung his head toward her at the same time she refocused out the windshield.
She shrugged, aware of his gaze on her now. “And it’s nice. It’s…good. It’s real.”
“Real,” he said. “Does that mean it’s bad?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “Nothing is always good or always perfect, right?” She barely flicked a glance in his direction. “We’ll have hard times.” She settled into silence for a moment, her mind latching onto something that felt important.
“That’s why Heather and Patrick were in the car without Lincoln. They needed a few days without him to focus on them. They’d been going through a rough patch in their relationship, and they wanted to smooth it back out.”
She wasn’t even sure she’d realized that until this very moment.
“Real,” he said again, and she sensed him leaning toward her. She turned toward him and received his kiss, which was sweet and tender. “I think I’m in love with you,” he whispered when he pulled away.
“Mm.” Sammy kept her eyes closed as her heart pounded. She didn’t know how to say those words back to him, though she’d been steadily falling for him for months now. “Well, when you figure it out, cowboy, let me know.”
He chuckled and straightened. They sat in the truck for a while longer, the silence between them comfortable. Sammy wasn’t sure if he was watching the light show or thinking about their future, but it didn’t matter. She and Bear were together, and they’d taken a meaningful step forward that night.
“Bear?” she asked when he finally backed out and started down the road.
“Yeah?”
“I’d want to keep the shop open,” she said. “Would I have to give it up to have the husband and the family?”
“I don’t see why,” he said. “I thought I did a pretty stellar job with Link over the summer on the ranch. The kids would just stay here with me.”
She nodded, though they drove through absolute darkness now. “You did a great job with Link this past summer. Thank you for that, Bear.”
“Anytime.” When he said that, Sammy believed him, and an accompanying warmth filled her with love and gratitude for the goodness of Bear Glover.
A week later, she lay under a truck in the vehicle shed at Shiloh Ridge Ranch. She’d wanted to come a different day when Bear would be at the ranch, but her schedule had been packed for a while now. So she’d come today, while he was down in town at a ranch ownership meeting.
She sighed, and not only because she had bad news to deliver to Ranger and Bishop, the two Glovers waiting for her to pull herself out from underneath the truck. Since Link had started fourth grade, she didn’t get to see Bear every day.