“This one’s a girl,” Sierra announced when she and Deacon returned to the house on Sherwood Park Drive after her three-month appointment with Dr. Amaro.
Nick and Whitney, who’d brought their now fifteen-month-old son, Jameson, to Haven for a weekend visit, beamed happily in response to the news.
“Did you hear that?” Nick asked his son. “You’re going to have a little sister.”
“Cah!” Jameson said.
His mom laughed. “No, you can’t trade your sister for a car.”
“Cah!” he said again.
“Everything’s good?” Whitney asked Sierra.
She nodded. “The doctor said there’s no reason to believe that this pregnancy won’t be every bit as uneventful as the last one.”
“She also said there’s no need to restrict your physical activities,” Deacon said, with a wink.
“What does that mean?” Nick asked his sister. “You’re not planning on taking up rock climbing or something like that, are you?”
Whitney looked at her husband with amusement. “It means that they can have sex.”
“Please.” Nick put his hands over his ears. “I don’t want to hear that kind of stuff about my little sister.” Then he removed his hands from his own ears to cover his son’s. “And Jameson definitely doesn’t need to hear it about his aunt.”
“I doubt that you guys are abstaining because you’re expecting another baby,” Sierra pointed out.
“No. We’re abstaining because we have a toddler who ends up in our bed almost every night,” Nick grumbled.
“And since that’s more information than I need to know, I’m going to go start the grill,” Deacon decided.
Nick grabbed a couple of bottles of beer out of the fridge and followed him onto the back deck.
“Thanks,” Deacon said, accepting the proffered beverage.
“Actually, I wanted to thank you,” Nick said. “Whitney and I really appreciate you supporting Sierra’s decision to be our gestational carrier again.”
“It was always her choice,” Deacon said.
“She’d certainly argue that point, but the first time she offered to do this for us, there wasn’t anyone else to factor into her decision. This time, she obviously talked to you about it, and we’re grateful that you didn’t have any objections.”
“No objections,” he confirmed. “But I will confess to hoping that the next baby she carries will be ours.”
“Are you going to put a ring on her finger before then?” Nick wanted to know.
Deacon grinned at his hopefully future brother-in-law. “That’s the plan.”
Six weeks after Everleigh Sierra Hart was born, Deacon’s plan was proving a little more difficult to implement than he’d anticipated, forcing him to improvise.
“What happened to the raisin bran?” Sierra asked, staring into the almost empty cereal cupboard Friday morning.
“It must be all gone.”
“But I just opened the box on Tuesday.”
He shrugged, playing it casual. “I guess I ate a lot of raisin bran this week.”
She turned to look at him, a slight frown marring her brow. “You don’t even like raisin bran.”
“Just have something else today,” he suggested, a hint of impatience leaking into his voice.
“Apparently all we’ve got is Frosted Flakes.” But she took the box out of the cupboard, opened the flaps and tipped it over her bowl.
He sipped his coffee, pretending that his heart wasn’t pounding wildly in his chest.
“What the—” Her breath caught, and she reached into the bowl to fish out the diamond solitaire engagement ring.
She stared at it for a long moment—an endlessly long moment from where he was standing—before she shifted her attention to him and said, “When I was a kid, I felt lucky to get a plastic ring in a box of cereal.”
“How are you feeling now?” he asked cautiously.
The smile that curved her lips was reflected in her gaze. “Very lucky.”
The vise that had tightened around his chest loosened, allowing him to release the white-knuckled grip on his mug.
“Are you going to try it on?” he prompted.
“Are you going to ask me the question?” she countered.
“Should I get down on one knee?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t want you on your knee but beside me, every day for the rest of our lives.”
“You’re kind of infringing on my territory now,” he cautioned.
“Sorry,” she said, but the sparkle in her eyes told him she wasn’t sorry at all.
He set his coffee down and took her hands. “I love you, Sierra. The day that I met you was the best day of my life—until the next day and the day after that, because with each passing day I fell more in love with you. And though I can’t imagine loving you any more than I do right now, I look forward to being proven wrong every day of the rest of our lives together and hope you will do me the honor of being my wife.”
She was sniffling just a little as she offered her hand to him.
“I’m going to need a verbal answer to my question,” he said, holding the ring poised by her third finger.
“Yes,” she said. “I will marry you and prove you wrong every day of the rest of our lives together.”
“I guess that’s what I get for falling in love with a lawyer,” he said, chuckling as he slid the ring into place.
“I can empathize with that,” she said, drawing his mouth down to hers for a kiss. “Happily and forever.”
Look for Michael “MG” Gilmore’s story, the next installment in Brenda Harlen’s Match Made in Haven miniseries, on sale October 2023, wherever Harlequin Special Edition books and ebooks are sold.
Keep reading for an excerpt from Heir in a Year by Elizabeth Bevarly.