Millionaire Hero (Freeman Brothers 4)

“What are you doing?” she asked with a laugh.

She rolled over onto her side, so she propped her head in her hands, her elbow holding her up. One hand slid around her waist to rub her belly, and I felt like I was the one who was going to burst.

“Marry me,” I said.

“What?” she asked, laughing again.

“Bryn, will you marry me?” I asked.

She stared at me for a few seconds, and tears pooled under her eyes. As they started slipping down her cheeks, she laughed like she couldn’t settle on what emotion she was feeling. She leaned forward and gave me a playful smack on the arm.

“Are you serious?” she asked. “This isn’t a funny joke if you’re just doing this because that was so good.”

“I will not argue with you on that point, but, no, I’m not joking. I am completely serious. I love you more than I could ever put into words, and I want to spend the rest of my life rolling off of beds and couches, drinking coffee with you, and experiencing everything that this world has to offer us. I want to be a family and to enjoy all of it with you. I even want to do all the things I won’t enjoy. I want to be mad, and sad, and sick, and frustrated. I want to do all of those things, because they would mean we were living our life together. So, I’m going to ask you again. Bryn, will you marry me?”

She pounced on me, landing in my lap with her legs around me, kissing me all over. In between kisses along the sides of my neck and all over my face, she said yes. I wrapped my arms tight around her and kissed her back, laughing. Then I leaned back and put my hands on either side of her big belly.

“Did you hear that?” I asked, dipping my head down to kiss the swell. “Mommy and Daddy are getting married.”

Bryn laughed and shook her head. “I don’t think he cares.”

“That’s okay. I do.”

She tilted her head to the side and smiled at me. “Getting your practice in already?”

I swept her up and dropped her onto the bed for round two.

We kept the news to ourselves for the rest of the day. It was nice to be able to revel in it just the two of us, savoring the moment, celebrating, and just enjoying each other. There was no need to pick up the phone and call my family to let them know. The next day was Sunday, which meant we would all be getting together for our normal family dinner.

It would be the perfect opportunity to give them the news. Not only would we all be together, so we would only have to make one announcement rather than go through several rounds of phone calls, but we would also be able to tell them in person and get their reactions. That was one of the many little life lessons I was learning from Bryn. Some things you don’t do over the phone.

Besides, I had a feeling she wanted to have a bit more control over the reveal of our impending wedding than she did with her pregnancy announcement. She still hadn’t lived that down in the family. Over the last six months, she had become a regular attendee at the family dinners, and every couple of weeks one of my brothers would come up with a way to tease her for the news bursting out of her like it did.

It was all in good fun, and I could tell it didn’t really bother her. She liked that they accepted her and wanted her to feel like one of us. But it would also be good for a change to be able to make an announcement together, when everyone was ready to hear it.

I was particularly looking forward to seeing how my mother was going to react. We all already knew she was more than happy to be involved with the wedding planning. Considering her attempting to plan a wedding for Bryn and me whether we liked it or not, or if we were even together or not, we knew she would be excited. I wanted to see how happy she was going to be.

There was definitely something to be said about a mother’s intuition. We didn’t even have a chance to say we had news to share with everybody before Mom asked what was going on. Bryn and I had been at Quentin’s house for less than three minutes when Mom rushed up and rubbed her belly, talking to the baby boy inside for a few seconds, then looked up at us.

“Alright, you two. What is it? What’s going on?” she asked.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “We just got here.”