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“I’ve seen you cry before.”

“Not ugly like this,” I heard her say between sniffles and blowing her nose.

“This I have to see because I doubt it.”

“No, please, it’s worse than you think. I’m a snotty crier. My nose runs faster than my tears. Seeing those photos of Maisy makes me miss her and my family so much. Give me space. Go for a run or something.”

“I can’t leave. I’m worried you’ll pack your things. That I’ll get back to the apartment and find you’d gone backto Holly Creek. I swear you’d rip my heart out if that happened. I’d be a sobbing mess myself. And I’m not usually a crier. Please, don’t leave me, Chelsea.” I’d grovel on my knees for this woman if needed.

“You think I’m leaving you because of this?”

She threw open the door, and I raised a brow at her face. She wasn’t kidding. The ugly crying was a sight, red faced, cold sweat, tears making rivers down her cheeks, snot bubbling through her nose, but she was still the most beautiful woman to me.

“See. Get out now while you can,” she groaned.

I grabbed her and held her tight to my chest. “I’m never leaving you. So cry all the snotty tears you want. Soak my shirt. You’re stuck with me.”

She shook in my hold and all I could think about was how to make the ache of missing her family less. Her brother in the military, Maisy somewhere else in the world, her mom and friends back home, and all she had in New York was me. Somehow, I’d make this up to her.

Several tissues later, she was almost her old self, except for the constant flow of tears. “I’m never leaving you, Rex. Unless you do something monumentally stupid.”

“What would that entail?”

“Cheating.”

I snorted. “That’s never going to happen. You have me whipped, don’t you know that by now? I’d never be able to stick my dick anywhere else ever again. I’m yours, baby.”

“Then you not standing up to your mother for me.”

“Yeah, well, with my mother, it’s complicated.” Isighed. I wouldn’t say I was a mama’s boy, but there was deep respect and love for Miriam, and I didn’t want to let her down. “But I can promise you this…my darling wife-to-be, I will always put us first. With this wedding, it’s hard not to side with Mom because I would spend every cent of my fortune to put on the biggest wedding this planet has ever seen so that I can show you off to the world as my wife.”

“But I told you before, money isn’t the answer to everything. Would a huge wedding really make you happy?”

“Yes.”

She cocked her head at me with an arched brow.

“Um... No?”

“All I ever wanted, Rex, was a cute wedding in Holly Creek. I saw myself married by the Christmas tree in the square with snow falling all around, me wearing a cloak of fur and my hands not freezing in a white fur muff. Saying I do, and kissing the man I love with cold, red noses, with all my family and friends there looking on. Simple can be very satisfying, too.”

“Wish we would have talked seriously about the wedding before we talked to Miriam. I could have made all that possible.”

Her laughter returned with a vengeance. “Not with your mother, you couldn’t. Somehow, she’d have blown up a wedding in Holly Creek to gigantic proportions.”

She had me at that, and we enjoyed a good laugh together. “You don’t regret saying you’ll marry me now, do you?”

“What? Not at all. How could you think I regret this? I don’t.”

“Chelsea, I love you for you, even with all your small town dreams, even under the cloud of ugly tears,” I teased.

“See, I told you I’m an ugly crier.”

“You could never be ugly because you have a beautiful heart. I know this wedding planning has been too much. But we’re in the home stretch, yeah? And I’m counting down every second until you’re my wife, Sweetness,” I assured her, swiping my thumb across her wet cheek.

While I loved Chelsea’s inner strength, how she could get through anything life threw her way, was it sick that a part of me loved this vulnerable side of her, too? Maybe even hoped I’d see it again soon? “Now. I need you to dry up these tears and put on something casual. I figured today with the florist wouldn’t be easy, so I set up a surprise for you.”

“You did? What is it?” She blew into a few more tissues and turned toward the mirror to dab more at her face.