Snowbound Baby (Silhouette Romance) Read online

  “I feel like my family should be your family. They are everything you deserve.”

  “You came here because you want to give me a family?”

  “Don’t you understand?” Cooper bounced from his chair at the table. “I have nothing to offer you! You need the real thing. You need a man of character and courage who can stand by you. Someone who will love you forever not just ‘while he can.’”

  Zoe stared at him. “You don’t think it took a man of great character to give me his cashier’s check?”

  “That was only common sense.”

  “And you don’t think it took great courage to go to Arkansas to meet with your brothers—not for yourself, but so you could demand the ranch equity for your partner?”

  “I might agree with that, except I had everything about the situation wrong. They didn’t want the ranch.”

  “You didn’t know that. You went there with your head held high, ready to argue for your partner, and ready to start over again because you are strong. You are about the strongest man I know, Cooper Bryant. And why you don’t see that I will never know.”

  He knew she believed everything she was telling him. He had even drawn on her belief in him the night before. But today, sitting in her kitchen, reconciled with his brothers, with more options open to him than at any other point in his life, he realized that none of it had any meaning without her. He suddenly saw that the reason he believed his family should be her family wasn’t because she needed them but because he needed…no, wanted…just plain wanted her with him.

  She brightened his day.

  She made him see truth.

  She believed in him.

  She made him laugh.

  She made him angry.

  She had done what no one had accomplished in eight long years. She made him feel. For Cooper, years of emptiness slid away. Years of self-doubt crumbled. Years of needing to prove himself spiraled into nothing.

  And he smiled, then he chuckled, then he out-and-out laughed. “Zoe Montgomery, you are the pushiest female on the face of the earth.”

  “You need to be pushed.”

  He caught her hand and pulled her out of her chair and into his arms. “Of course I do.”

  “Occasionally you need someone to tell you what to do.”

  “Occasionally.” He tightened his hold. “But what I just realized I needed more than anything else was for someone to teach me to feel again.”

  She pulled back and stared at him.

  “When my brothers kicked me out, I turned off my emotions. But you, with your strip poker, your virus, your insistence on washing your clothes and your ever present baby…well, you didn’t give me two minutes to turn anything off. I couldn’t stop my emotions from pouring out and they all did. I felt more with you and for you in those days stranded on the mountain than I had in eight years and if I hadn’t met you before I went to see my brothers I would have stonewalled them. I never would have accepted their apologies let alone their generosity. I owe everything I have today to you.”

  “Well, you were pretty closed off.”

  “And rude.”

  She nodded. “And rude.”

  “And I think that’s why I’m here.”

  “To tell me you’re not going to be rude anymore.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Well, it better not be to give me more money because, damn it, I don’t want your money!”

  “It will look pretty darned foolish for my wife to refuse my money.”

  She thought about that a second, then her eyes widened. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying we should get married.”

  She gaped at him. “Married?”

  “And move to Arkansas.”

  “Arkansas?”

  “Where it’s warmer.”

  She stared at him.

  “And where you can meet my brothers and Madelyn and Lucy…and Prince Owen and Captain Bunny—”

  “Captain Bunny?”

  “Ty’s future mother-in-law. It’s a long story.”

  “You and your brother call his future mother-in-law Captain Bunny?”

  “Because he’s part of her family and her family has become my family.” He stopped and his heart swelled. He had something to give Zoe beyond money, beyond even his love. “Say yes and you instantly have a family.”

  She took a breath. “I want a family, but I also want to make clear that if I choose to marry you it wouldn’t be for a family.” She took another breath. “It would be because I love you.”

  And Cooper suddenly realized what he was doing wrong. Why she wasn’t jumping for joy and accepting his proposal.

  “I love you, too,” he said and allowed himself several seconds simply to soak in the fact that he’d actually said that and meant it.

  He now had a family to offer Zoe. More than himself. Two brothers. Two sisters-in-law. Two children. A family. A legacy.

  But more than that, he was giving her his love.

  “So you’ll marry me?”

  She leaped into his arms. “Yes!”

  Epilogue

  The following June, Zoe slowly made her way up the aisle of the small country church, holding her bridesmaid bouquet and smiling at the crowd. She and Cooper had beaten Madelyn and Ty to the altar because neither she nor Cooper had wanted a big wedding. Both had been alone so long they were eager to be together and didn’t wish to wait the months it would take to plan an elaborate event. Instead, they’d simply surprised Ty, Madelyn, Lucy and Seth with a trip to Las Vegas where Cooper’s family had witnessed the wedding of Cooper and Zoe. Madelyn had put the wedding announcement in the paper while the happy couple had honeymooned.

  They’d returned in time for Cooper to handle an unexpected problem with the delivery of some materials to a construction site and Cooper had been working with his brothers as a traffic manager ever since. His partner now ran the ranch, which had a full herd and employed ten hands. Zoe had paid the back taxes on the house, but called her parents and told them it was their responsibility to sell it or rent it, and her parents had agreed to call each other about the matter. She and Cooper had bought a huge home in Porter where Daphne had become good friends with Sabrina and Owen.

  Making her way to the altar, Zoe smiled at Cooper, then Seth, then Ty, who waited impatiently for Madelyn. All three men looked wonderful in their black tuxes and to see them no one would ever have guessed that the three brothers had been estranged for eight long years. They were happy…. No, they were tight. Like three men who defied anyone who would try to come between them. Exactly the way Zoe believed brothers should be.

  From there she cast a quick glance at Daphne, who was in the arms of Mildred Jenkins, Seth’s next-door neighbor. Daphne was happily patting Mildred’s face, but Mildred hardly noticed because she was too busy peering over the crowd, hoping for a peek at the bride. In the seat in front of Mildred, King Alfredo appeared oblivious to little Owen’s singing, as he, too, craned his neck to see the bride. And in the seat in front of the king, Audrey Olsen, Princess Lucy’s best friend, held squirming Sabrina and also angled her head to catch sight of Madelyn.

  Zoe had discovered she had access to a nanny brigade, friends of Madelyn’s mom who didn’t merely babysit, they would also make meals and give lessons on anything from cooking to gardening to baby care…as long as you joined their card club and didn’t mind getting your butt whopped in pinochle.

  At last, Zoe reached her spot at the altar beside Princess Lucy, who looked regal and stunning in the simple green gown Madelyn had chosen for both her bridesmaids.

  In her spot at the altar, Zoe turned. The organist changed tunes, and at the back of the church Madelyn and her dad, a short man with a graying crew cut, stood in the doorway. Though Zoe had seen Madelyn a hundred times that morning, she couldn’t stop her eyes from misting. Madelyn was the perfect bride with her red hair pulled into a cluster of curls at the top of her head and a veil that made a tulle backdrop f
or her bare shoulders and sequined gown. Her full skirt swished as she walked. And her smile could have charmed the angels.

  Zoe noted that it clearly charmed Ty, who looked spellbound. Then she caught Seth peeking at Lucy and saw Lucy’s answering smile. When she glanced at Cooper, her heart stumbled in her chest.

  They were undoubtedly the luckiest six people in the world…the luckiest nine people if you counted the three babies that had brought them together. The luckiest twenty-five people if you counted Madelyn’s family into the Bryant clan, and the Bryants definitely counted Madelyn’s family as their own. The luckiest five hundred, if you counted the employees of Bryant Development. And fifteen hundred, if you counted the entire small town of Porter.

  And Zoe did. Porter was a little place, but it was huge in the way it had been blessed with love and laughter and friends who were family.

  That is…they were family if you believed that love meant more than bloodlines.

  And Zoe did.

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-5486-5

  SNOWBOUND BABY

  Copyright © 2005 by Susan Meier

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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