Second Chance at the Riverview Inn (Riverview Inn)

And he’d never been so nervous.

“Oh my god,” Helen groaned. “What’s that smell?”

Oh no. They’d been through this before. “Good smell or bad smell?”

“Good.”

He and Bea looked at each other in relief. Once at a restaurant in London someone thirty feet away from her had been eating sausage and she’d barely made it to the bathroom.

“Nope.” Helen changed her mind. “Bad smell. Bacon is a bad smell.”

He put the tray on the ground and lifted the dome and Bea, always ready to throw herself into danger for her family, grabbed the bacon and shoved it into her mouth.

“Good thinking,” he told her.

He stepped carefully around the bed and Helen sat up, looking like the love of his life and also a little like death warmed over.

“Bea, honey?” Helen said. “I love you so much but can you take that bacon smell outside?”

Bea nodded, still chewing, and stepped out of the cabin.

“I have some options for you,” he said. “Pancakes. Strawberries dipped in chocolate. Fizzy juice or coffee?”

“Pancakes sound…not terrible.”

“Pancakes it is,” he said with a wide smile. He set her up with the tray on the bed and then sat down on the edge.

“You’re really the sweetest. I’m so sorry I’m such a mess right now.”

“You are having my baby, Helen. You never have to apologize. But…” He lifted his hip and pulled out the black ring box. “I have another option for you.”

“I maybe could have some coffee,” she said. “Just a little. Maybe…” She saw the box and her mouth fell open.

“The option is me and you. And Bea and little Roman in your stomach there—”

“We are not calling the baby Roman.”

“Fine. You can name the baby if you just say…” He opened the box. “Yes.”

“Oh my god.” She burst into tears. “That’s my grandmother’s ring.”

“Jonah gave it to me.”

“You talked to Jonah?”

“He says you have to marry me.” She looked shocked. “I’m kidding. Your parents gave us their blessing.” He kissed her messy head because she was just so incredibly dear to him.

Marry me…something something…Dear to me. Hmmm…he liked that.

“Are you writing a song in the middle of proposing to me?”

“No.” He took the ring out of the box and took her hand in his. “What do you say?”

The door to the cabin opened and Bea jumped back in. “No more bacon,” she said opened her mouth wide as if to prove it. She bounded up onto the bed, against Jonah’s back. Her arms around his neck. “Mom, did you have the strawberries? I made them.”

Helen leaned up wrapped her arms around Micah and her daughter.

“Oh mom,” Bea said. “I think you are a bad smell.”

Micah laughed, he couldn’t help it. He laughed until the tears burned in his eyes and he held onto these girls with both hands and his whole heart.

“Yes,” Helen said, blinking her green eyes at him. “I say yes. Of course, yes. Forever. Yes.”