She seemed so shy now, as if they hadn’t spent three weeks together. As if he hadn’t touched her. As if she hadn’t slept in his arms.

“I don’t know the words, Emery.”

“What words?” Her shy whisper brushed his heart.

“The ones to tell you how much you mean to me. I feel like I’ve been walking around holding my breath all my life and suddenly I can breathe. I’ve been half dead for years and you make me want to live forever.”

When she didn’t answer, he looked away. “I don’t have anything to offer. I own a horse and a wagon.” He took a long breath and let it all out. “I do have enough money to buy a little place or the colonel offered me a job. But without you I don’t think I could settle down.”

All at once he couldn’t find the words. He’d lived from day to day, never dreaming for so long he was afraid to wish for more.

She smiled. “What do you really want?”

“I want you to be with me forever. I want to have a bunch of kids. I want to sleep next to you until I die.”

“You have me,” she said so low he wasn’t sure he heard her. “You’ve had me since the day we left Jefferson and you couldn’t be stern with Four. You had me when you let Three be her own person and you let One become a leader. You watched over us all.”

“I know who you are, Trapper Hawkins. I saw the truth the first time I saw your blue eyes. You’re a good man. You have everything I want even without the money or the land or even the job. I want you.”

“Any chance you’d marry me?”

She smiled. “You can bet on it.”

As he kissed her, Trapper swore he heard five little girls laughing just outside the window.

“Look, One,” a four-year-old whispered, “Tapper got what he wanted for Christmas.”

Read on for a preview of Jodi Thomas’s next novel . . .

DINNER ON PRIMROSE HILL
A Honey Creek Novel

Available November 2021 wherever books are sold

Prologue

Prologue

March 8
Friday

Professor Virginia Clark stared out the third-floor window of her office on a campus so small it seemed more like a set for a Hallmark movie than a college.

Tomorrow would be the start of spring break and at forty-three years old she no longer cared. In her college days she’d loved the break. A time to travel, have fun, and maybe go wild, but now it was only a time to clean her office and catch up on paperwork.

If she could turn back time, she’d live one more wild spring break.

But she had a survey to conduct and a paper to write and an office to organize. No fun in that.