Bucking Bear (Pounding Hearts 3)

“Ready to see your new room?” he asks, and she grabs his hand, half bouncing, half leading him towards his own house.

“Yeah!”

I hop out of the car and follow behind them, feeling a little nervous about how Hope will react. Will she love it or hate it?

If she’s hates it how is Max going to take it?

After punching in a security code, Max opens the front door and stops, holding his other hand out for me. I place my hand in his and take comfort in his strength, in his strong fingers wrapping around me and tugging me close.

He leads us down the hallway, stopping two doors past his bedroom.

“Ready?” he asks Hope.

She bounces and squeals.

I hold my breath, afraid that once he opens that door she might be disappointed by what she finds in the room.

With a grin, Max pushes open the door wide and hangs back. Hope bounces into the room and lets out another loud squeal.

A moment later she bellows, “I love my new room!”

Curious, I peek my head around Max to get a look. Surely her new room can’t be that spectacular. We didn’t even know we were moving in until last night, yet…

Somehow Max has managed to have the room completely furnished for a little girl. The walls are still white and bare but the furniture more than makes up for it.

“How?” I ask as Hope climbs up on her new full-sized pink canopy bed and starts jumping on it.

The entire rooms looks as if it was furnished for a princess in a fairytale.

Max shrugs as if it’s no big deal but from his grin I can tell he’s really proud of himself. “I have my ways…”

“This wasn’t here the last time I was here… was it?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

Hope jumps off of her bed and the concerned mommy inside of me winces and calls out, “Be careful, honey.”

“I will, mommy!” she cries back automatically as if she expected it and races towards her royal toy box. Throwing back the lid, she lets out another earsplitting squeal to find the box already filled with dolls.

“Max,” I frown and poke him in the ribs. “You went toy shopping too?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, didn’t have time.”

“How?” I ask again. Did he hire someone to do this? Or has he had the stuff secretly stashed away, all along planning this?

He smirks. “Brett owed me the favor for that other night.”

“Oh,” I nod in understanding. Finally getting it.

Just before Max’s fight we were lookouts out in the woods for Brett so he could pull off a special proposal for Mandy. “So you had him do all of this?”

“Yeah,” Max grunts.

I laugh, picturing Brett picking out all this stuff for a little girl.

“Told him to put together a room fit for a princess, looks like he took it literally.”

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