Jessie, his sweet fiery Jessie, didn’t stay passive. She slapped her hands on the sides of his face and locked her gaze to his. “You are the one man in the world I will fight for, Brandt McKay, because I love you.”
“You do?”
“Yes. Before you jump to the conclusion that I’m telling you this now when Landon isn’t in the picture, you’d be partially right. What I didn’t say earlier today before Landon left with his mother was that I’d never make you choose. But now that he’s gone I was afraid that you don’t need me anymore—”
“Since all I wanted you for was Landon’s childcare?” he demanded. “And all you wanted me for was sex?”
Her eyes searched his. “No. But did the high emotions and intensity of the situation and the hottest freakin’ sex on the planet heighten everything between us?”
The knot of fear in his belly tightened. Oh hell no. He was not losing her now. “Let me make this clear, Jessie. I love you. I’ve loved you for a long goddamn time, even when I shouldn’t have loved you. I know you love me—even when you were too stubborn or scared to admit it. I see it whenever you look at me. I feel it when you’re touchin’ me. So I cannot for the life of me understand why you’re questioning this now. Now when we have no obstacles and a lifetime ahead of us.”
“Because I want a clean slate about everything. That includes the big ‘what if’ scenario that’s been hanging between us for three months.”
“So what are you sayin’?”
“If Samantha had shown up today and asked you to continue as Landon’s guardian without specifying how long, I would’ve pulled up my big girl panties and stayed by your side where I belong. I would’ve found a way to deal with it.”
This woman…goddamn, she could knock him to his knees.
“I want you in my life, Brandt. So if part of your life is caring for your brother’s son, then that makes it part of my life too. Whatever black and white view I had of this situation with Landon in the beginning changed over the past few months. I care about him. I care what happens to him.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m happy we had him for as long as we did. But seeing how much Samantha loves him and how happy he was to see her…I know he belongs with his mother.”
“This is why I asked you to help me. Because you’ve got a big heart and you’re willing to put it out there, even if there’s a chance you might get it stomped on. Jessie—”
She placed her thumbs over his lips. “Us being together won’t be an easy road. There will be people like Lydia, like your father, who will want us to fail. So you should know I fell in love with you not because you’re Luke’s brother, but in spite of it.
“You’ve become everything to me in ways Luke never was. I never imagined I’d find a man like you, who’s sweet, sexy, funny, thoughtful, kind. A man who makes me feel like I’m enough for him. A man I can trust without question. A man I will fight anyone for.” Her eyes filled with tears and she whispered,
“God. I feel like such an idiot because you’ve been here the whole time.”
“Hey.” Brandt wiped her cheeks. “You weren’t ready to see me in any of those roles in your life.”
“Yet you waited until I was.”
“After you were so shocked when I told you I wanted more than a family type relationship, I realized too late you still needed more time. Come to find out time was good for me too.”
“Meaning what?”
“The years you were married to Luke, it hurt me to see how he treated you. After Luke died, I made myself available, hopin’ you’d see me as the man who could heal you. And you took what I offered, but gave me nothin’ in return.”
“I’m sorry.”
Brandt kissed the inside of her wrist. “I know you are. I also know it wasn’t intentional. In the last few months, I’ve gotten to know you, the real Jessie, not the idealized version I’d built up as the woman I was determined to save. Not the woman who needed me only as her handyman and grief counselor. Not the woman I lusted after. I realized what I felt before wasn’t love. Because now? Now I understand what real love is. It’s this.” He lowered his mouth and kissed her, loving how she wrapped herself around him as if she’d never let him go. He broke the kiss with a laugh.
“What?”
“Never thought I’d be confessing my love to you in the damn parking lot of a bar.”
“I never thought it’d take a hair pulling fight to prompt me to tell you how I felt about you.” Jessie rubbed her lips across his and whispered, “Promise you won’t stomp on my heart, Brandt McKay. I swear it would crush me in a way I’d never recover from.”
“I promise. I love you. So will you marry me?”
Her mouth opened. But something stopped her from answering.
“You do understand that I won’t be like Luke? I promise to be faithful to you forever. I don’t see fidelity as an option clause in marriage vows.”
Jessie bit her lip and stared at him with those wide eyes.
“Don’t leave me hangin’ now,” he half-snarled.
“What about your family? I think Dalton and Tell will be okay with us being together. But your dad?
He hates me. Can you—”
“What’s the worst he can do? Say no?” Brandt kissed her. “Nothin’ would be worse than not havin’
you in my life, Jess. Nothin’.”
“Then if you’re sure…Yes. I’ll marry you.”
He whooped and spun her around, not noticing the cold, or anything else except the look of happiness in Jessie’s beautiful eyes that he knew mirrored the happiness in his soul.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Brandt would rather have a root canal without anesthesia than talk to his father.
He knocked on the front door of the house he’d grown up in.
His mother answered, dishtowel in hand, as usual. “Brandt. Sweetie, it’s good to see you. You don’t need to knock. Come in. What’s up?”
“I have something I wanna talk to you guys about.”
She kept her expression neutral. “Go into the dining room. Your dad’s in there. I’ll be right in with coffee.”
Brandt rounded the corner and saw his dad sprawled in his padded captain’s chair at the end of the big oak table. He stopped out of habit to gauge his father’s mood.