Along Came Trouble(130)
This time, he kissed her mouth gently, almost reverently. “I love you, Ellen Sydney Callahan. I want to marry you and take care of you and help you raise your son. I know you probably think it’s too soon for me to be sure about all of that, and I’ll have to give you time to hem and haw and drag this out for about five years until you agree, and that’s all right. I can survive it. Just say you’ll think about it, okay?”
“Okay.”
Caleb smiled, but then his forehead furrowed. “Wait, was that okay, you’ll think about it, or okay, you’ll marry me?”
Ellen shook her head, laughing at him. “That was ‘Okay, Caleb Mortimer Clark, I think you’re pretty great, and it’s possible that someday, maybe, eventually, I’ll want to marry you.’ Okay?”
“Mortimer?”
“I don’t know your middle name. It’s probably a sign that it’s way too soon for you to be talking about marrying me.”
Caleb smiled and rolled them to the side, wrapping his arms around her so tight she could hardly breathe. “Andrew,” he said against her neck.
“Nice to meet you, Caleb Andrew Clark.” She pushed her fingers through the soft bristles of his hair. “That’s going to look nice on the wedding invitations five years from now.”
“Yeah?” He kissed her again, as happy as she’d ever seen him. Happy, sexy, wonderful, and completely hers.
“Yeah. Hey—” She sat up, struck by a very appealing vision. “Would you get married in uniform, by any chance?”
He shook his head. “I’m not in the army anymore. Why, you have a thing for guys in uniform?”
“Just the one, Sarge.”
As he leaned over to kiss her again, she heard the sound of the garage door opening, accompanied by Henry’s happy babble.
“Damn,” Caleb said. Ellen’s eyes shot to the door. “It’s okay. I locked it,” he reassured her.
“This is going to happen a lot, you know,” Ellen warned him, running her hand over his chest. “Parenthood isn’t as sexy as you might think.”
“I know. But I’m up for it.” His eyes told her he meant it, and her heart told her not to worry. Caleb could handle fatherhood. He could handle anything she threw at him. “Besides,” he added, “Hank has to go to bed sometime, right? And I’m a patient man.”
He rolled off the mattress, tossed her clothes into her lap, and disappeared into the bathroom with his pants. When he came out, she was standing in the middle of the floor pulling her shirt over her head, and he took advantage, planting warm, wet kisses on her stomach while her arms were all tangled up. Ellen giggled. “Stop it.”
“You’re not really going to make me wait five years, are you?” Caleb dragged her into his arms and pressed his forehead against hers. “Because I’m not sure I’m that patient.”
“Maybe three or four.” She managed to keep a straight face when she said it, but the truth was that she’d already made up her mind. Improbable as it seemed, she knew who she wanted to wake up next to every morning for the rest of her life. She didn’t really care how long it took them to get the paperwork signed.
He did, though, and she liked winding him up.
Wrapping her arms around him, she said, “Don’t look so glum. Think about it this way. We both want to get married someday. Now we get to do the fun part.”
“What’s that?”
Parroting his own words back at him, she smiled and said, “What we’re going to do now, honey, is negotiate.”
Epilogue
Three months later
Ellen sat on her front porch with her feet up, sipping a glass of iced tea and watching Caleb rake up leaves while Henry followed him around with his own tiny rake. It was windy—typical for October—and their voices drifted to her on unpredictable currents, so that she caught only snippets of Henry’s questions and Caleb’s patient responses.
Jump now, Cabe?
Not quite yet, buddy. Give me another second to make the pile bigger.
Then, later, I’m raking! Cabe, look! I’m raking!
I see you, Hank. That’s awesome. You might want to rethink your technique a little . . .
Caleb had spent weeks gently correcting Henry every time he mixed up “I” and “you,” and then one morning a switch flipped, and Henry woke up fluent in pronouns. Naturally, Caleb took credit for teaching him, and Ellen smiled and praised them both.