“Sure,” she said. “I’m right here.”

He walked through the very small living room and faced her. “Alone?”

“Where?” she asked. “The bathroom?”

“Maybe we could, um, go sit in the truck?” he said, but even as he said it, it sounded so dumb. And not exactly the way he wanted her to remember a marriage proposal. But then, neither was this.

She leaned toward him and whispered, “If it’s about last night, there’s nothing to talk about. Everything was fine. Lovely and perfect. Shhh.”

He whispered back. “I want to marry you.”

She almost broke her neck, it snapped up so fast. “What?” she said.

He looked over his shoulder uncomfortably. Jed was peering at him over his reading glasses.

“I love you,” Tom said quietly. “I want to marry you.”

She frowned and leaned toward him. “Are you drunk?” she whispered.

“No! I’ve never been more sober! Way too sober. Marry me. You’ll learn to love me, I promise.”

Nora swallowed. “Tom, this is very sudden.”

“So is you packing boxes. Listen, don’t go. Let me take care of you, let me—”

She was shaking her head. She couldn’t be saying no already! “You can’t possibly have had time to think this through.”

“Hours,” he said. “I haven’t slept a night through in days.”

“You’re probably just hallucinating. You don’t get married just because you—” She leaned to look around Tom to her dad. “You should give yourself more time to think about this.”

“I have thought about it. I don’t need more time, I need you.”

“But you were concerned about making sure things, you know, didn’t get serious.”

“Yeah, because I’m an idiot—I was falling in love with you and it scared me to death. I’ve never been in love before, but I am now. I want you. You and the girls. If you need more time, fine—but don’t leave town. I love you.”

Jed cleared his throat. They both glanced at him.

“This is too fast,” she whispered. “What if it doesn’t work?”

“It’ll work,” he said. “It has to work because I haven’t ever felt like this before. In fact, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to feel like this, but here it is—Nora, I swear I’ll be a good husband. And father. We have Maxie to kick me around if I make stupid mistakes—she loves that job.”

“I’m not sure I’m ready to cross that line, and it has nothing to do with how I feel about you. I’m crazy about you. But I—”

“I’d bet everything on us,” he said. “But if you need more time, I’ll show up at the auction and buy this house. Then you can take your time, give it some thought. If you want to go back to school, I’ll make sure you get to.” He lifted one brow. “We do have colleges here, you know.”

She laughed at him. “You can’t buy a house!”

“Yes, I can. I can buy three houses and a truck. I’m not broke. I was going to plant more trees and get a new tractor, but this is more important. You can come to the orchard and find out what it’s like there after the harvest.”

“Or I could go to Stanford and we could talk on the phone, write and email and visit on weekends.”

“We could,” he said. “And be miserable apart. Or you could just marry me and let me give you everything I have.”

“Listen, try to understand, my parents married too quickly and it went south very badly.”

“Yeah, sorry. I know that was really hard for you as a kid. I don’t know anything about how mine were together, but I know how we are together. No two people have ever been more right together.”

She put a hand on her hip. “What makes you think I’m right for you?”

He laughed and grabbed her hips, pulling her closer. “Are you kidding? You’re way too proud and stubborn, for one thing. And you insist on doing things yourself—such a tough little broad. I’ve met plenty of the other kind, but I like women like you and Maxie, women who aren’t afraid of themselves, who set no limits on what they can accomplish. Did you know Maxie had a tough time when she was growing up? She did,” he finished, ignoring her nod. “And that didn’t keep her from being a great mother and grandmother—like you. And even though you’ve had a few hard knocks in the love department, it sure didn’t affect your ability to give love. You give love so good, a man could go blind.”

“Tom!” she said. She leaned to look at her father, but he was gone. She gasped and ran to the front door. He was outside; he had the girls in that big stroller. “Dad, it’s cold out there!”

“We have our coats on. We’ll be right on this block, don’t worry.”

“Are you sure?”

“Nora, take a few minutes to talk to your… To talk to Tom.”

She came back in and closed the door and found herself instantly in Tom’s arms. He was smiling. “I’m telling you the truth—I started to want you the second I saw you and I started to love you by the time I’d known you for a week. I wasn’t sure that was such a good idea—you being an employee. But you just had me. Everything about you—the way you laughed when you had nothing to laugh about, the way you cried when you longed for the love and trust of family… Nora, you’re everything I want in my life. Nothing else much matters right now. If you need to think it over, I’ll make sure you have this house, no strings, while you think.”

“Tom…”

“I came empty-handed because I was in a panic—I had to tell you how I feel before you ran off to start a new life. But I promise if you give me a chance I’ll buy you a good ring, give you any kind of wedding you want, give you all my worldly goods and bring you flowers every day.”

Her eyes flooded. “I love you, Tom. And not for what you can give me. For who you are.”

He ran a knuckle down her jaw. “I’ll take anything you give me. Marry me or think about it awhile, but just don’t leave me. I love you with everything I am.”

“If you take me, you have to take the whole family,” she told him. “You have to be a father to two little girls.”

“I’ll do my best. I think I’m up to it. They like me.” He smiled. “You have to take my whole family, too. Maxie is determined to live to a hundred and twenty, and I like her chances.”

“Then yes, I’ll marry you.”

Epilogue

In early June, when the weather in the mountains was warm and sunny after a long winter, Nora sat on the porch at the orchard house. Maxie was in the kitchen making a very big dinner because Nora’s father and Susan were up for the weekend. Berry and Fay were playing on the porch; they were now Cavanaughs. Tom’s adoption of them had been completely uncontested.

There had been a quiet wedding in Maxie’s living room right before Thanksgiving and they’d been an extended family ever since. Jed loved visiting the orchard and had become enamored of researching the apple tree species. He was helpless in the face of research—he just loved it. It was hard to keep him away during the spring planting.

She rubbed a hand over the small mound in her middle that she and Tom had planted. They started it right around Christmas, it was another girl and she would arrive in September. Tom was thrilled and hoped that she, like her sisters, would look just like Nora.

No one had ever loved Nora as selflessly as her man. Her children were thriving within his love and the attention Maxie showered on them.

And just as he crossed her mind, he crossed the yard. She laughed as she saw that he carried a stem of apple blossoms. He put a booted foot up on the porch and held them out to her.

“You have to stop doing this,” she said, taking the branch. “These are unborn apples.”

“I promised you flowers every day.”

“And love every day, which you shower on me.”

“But that’s the easy part,” he told her.