Page 53 of The Cowboy's Secret Babies

Next to her, Matilda squeezed her harder and Rosie found that it was suddenly hard to breathe. She told herself it was all the eyes on her, but she was used to that. The only pair of eyes she really cared about were Ryder’s.

He stared straight at her, as if they were all alone in this grand old room her brother—and probably her cousins, to give them their due—had made pretty again.

“I loved you then, Rosie,” Ryder said, right there where everyone could hear him. And whereshecould hear him too. “I love you now. I looked at you and I never wanted to look away. Then we went ahead and made the two most perfect baby boys in the entire world.”

He looked down at his sons, still there at his feet, and they both cheered too. Likely because the people around them did the same, and Rosie thought that it was the cutest thing she’d ever seen.

She wanted to cry. Or maybe she was crying.

“Things didn’t move in a straight line for us,” Ryder told the crowd. “It’s my observation that the best things never do. And I imagine some of you spent the years while things were twisted coming to some conclusions on your own. I can’t blame you.” But his tone suggested that, really, he could. And did. “So let me make sure we’re all on the same page. I’m the one who had to convince Rosie to marry me. And when she finally, graciously consented, we decided that it made the most sense to take this thing that was a little too public and keep it private. Something that was just ours, since even that magical night in Austin is a story people tell these days, and not always in the way I would. So let me do it now.” He looked at Rosie again. “We were both there, so we know. It was unexpected. It was beautiful. It was love, and I messed it up, because that’s what foolish men do. Rosie came back here and when I moved home too, I went after Rosie.”

By this point, Ryder’s gaze was on the Sheens in the corner, and he didn’t pretend otherwise. By the same token, Rosie stopped pretending she was doing anything but sobbing, her hands over her mouth.

“As some of you may have noticed,” Ryder said, with a hint of that grin when he looked back at the crowd, then back at the twins, “Rosie and I managed this level of perfection outside of marriage. Just imagine what we’ll do now.”

He left the mic with the band, and cut his way through the crowd again. He walked straight to Rosie, inclined his head at Matilda and Sara Jane on one side, his family on the other. Then he pulled Rosie into his arms.

Then, just for her—although he clearly didn’t care if everyone else heard him—he bent closer to her and fixed her with that beautiful gaze of his.

“I love you,” he said, very distinctly, just in case she’d decided to believe she’d mistaken what he’d said into that mic. “I appreciate you setting me free, but I’m not going anywhere.”

“Ryder…” she whispered, and she was sure her mascara had to be all over her face, but for once she didn’t care. “Ryder, I—”

He reached over and put his fingers over her mouth, and it made her breath hitch.

“I’ve got a few years to make up for, to start,” he said. “And I like the team that you and I have built. You’re already a good parent and I think I can be too, one day, and together?”

“You’re agreatparent,” she told his fiercely, fully aware that it was the greatest compliment she could give anyone, but especially him—because the only parenting he was doing was of her boys.Theirboys.

“All I want is a shot at forever, and I don’t care what that looks like,” Ryder said in that low, intense, gorgeous voice of his. “Rosie, baby, you have to know by now that all I really care about is that I get that forever with you.”

Chapter Twelve

Rosie was crying,but Ryder got the feeling that it was for the right reasons.

She confirmed it, going up on her toes and pressing her mouth to his. “It’s you and me,” she told him, with a rough sort of certainty in her voice that made everything in him sing. “All the way.”

He pulled her out into the middle of the lodge floor and when he did, the band started playing a sweet old country song in their honor. And Ryder danced with his Montana girl, knit hat on her head and snow boots on her feet, and twirled her around and around until they were both dizzy. Again.

And laughing the way he hoped they always would, like there was nothing else on earth but the two of them.

Then everyone else joined them to dance some more, but the twins came and climbed on their feet and decided that was dancing. So it was the four of them, the way it should have been all along and would be, going forward.

Until they were more than four.

And it wasn’t that it was suddenly less scary, all this intimacy that he’d been avoiding all of his life. It was Rosie.

Rosie was worth stepping out into all that intensity. Rosie was worth not running.

This was them. This was the family they’d made together, with a few years in there of solitude to make them really understand how special this was now.

He had already missed too much of his sons’ lives. He did not intend to miss another moment.

And he didn’t.

Ryder used to ride bulls. He knew that he could do anything, seven seconds at a time. And that was exactly what he did.

He invested in his new life, his new family. The first thing he did was invest in the lodge project, because as much as Rosie had just become a Carey, he’d also become a Stark.

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