Page 21 of Bear for the Holidays

He blinked, coming back to himself, and realized that Deanna was standing in the doorway to the kitchen wearing a pair of mismatched oven mitts and carrying a tray of cookies still gently steaming from the oven.

“Marry me,” he blurted out, and his bear growled his approval.

Deanna stared at him for a moment, and then the corner of her mouth kicked up in an irrepressible grin.

“Okay,” she said. “Come on in and eat. I just need to set the cookies down to cool and to grab some spoons.”

He stared after her for a moment, fighting down the sudden urge to scoop her up, cookies at all, and do something drastic, pregnant cat in the bedroom be damned. He would carry her off the mountain. He would put a ring on her finger.

He would be normal about this.

“This all smells amazing,” he said, following her into the kitchen. “And, you don’t have to answer, of course, but I feel I should tell you that I was serious.”

“Spoons, spoons,” Deanna muttered, scanning the kitchen drawer. “Ah, these will do. And so was I.”

Nik sat down to a bowl of stew that looked incredible.

“That’s it?” he couldn’t help pressing. “Okay?”

Deanna returned to the table with spoons and napkins. It wasn’t until he saw the look in her eyes, the joy, the humor, the fun, everything that made it Deanna accepting his clumsy proposal and not anyone else, that he started to smile himself.

“Okay. Yes. Absolutely. Without a doubt. Definitely. Right away,” she said. “There’s only going to be one answer to that question for me if you’re the one asking, and once I knew that, I didn’t want to stall.”

She hesitated, and even as his stomach growled longingly at the food, Nik set it aside to take her hands. They were warm and strong, and he brought them to his mouth. He kissed her fingertips, riding the sparks of electricity the contact sent through his body.

“Want me to say it first?” he asked gently.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice as small as he had ever heard it. It made his heart ache, and he decided he was going to spend the rest of his life saying it first, reassuring her that she never, ever had to be nervous when it came to this.

“I love you,” he said, his voice hushed. “So much.”

Her face lit up like the sunrise, and she seized his hands so hard it almost hurt.

“I love you,” she said breathlessly. “I’ve known. I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve known since you opened the door, since–”

“Of course,” he said, dipping his head to kiss her fingers. “We both did. And it doesn’t matter how long it takes, okay? It doesn’t matter if you need to go back and forth and decide what this looks like for you and what it doesn’t. All I know is that I’m going to be with you, and that I love you with every part of me–”

There was another wailing call from the bedroom. There was another thump on the roof.

“We cannot haveone moment,”Deanna snarl, and Nik grinned.

“We can make the moment,” he said firmly. “Maybe not this one, but we can make one.”

“I’m selling them both to the circus, see if I don’t. But right now, you need to eat. Tromping around in the cold is exhausting, and you need the calories.”

She wasn’t wrong, and they both tucked into the delicious food. The stew was exactly what he’d known it would be: sturdy, delicious food that he’d grown up on. Something about watching Deanna eat it gave him an echo of the feeling he had gotten when he’d fed her that morning. They were eating well together, and that, so far as his bear was concerned, was the pinnacle of happiness.

Our mate is feeding us. Our mate loves us and wants us to be strong,his bear added with pleasure.

Nik grinned, and when Deanna asked him what was up, he couldn’t help shaking his head with a smile.

“My bear loves the fact that you’re feeding us and you want us to be strong. To him, I think, there’s no higher expression of love.”

“I grew up in an immigrant household. That sounds about right,” she said, but her smile was as soft as dandelion fluff. “I’ll bring you home to my folks, and they’ll feed you so well we’ll have to roll you out the door.”

“I could just stay,” Nik suggested. “You know, draped across the threshold, doing double duty as a home defense system and a rug. And sit down, I’m doing the dishes.”

He was pleased that Deanna simply took her seat on the counter again, watching him work with a small smile on her face. When he had scrubbed everything down and left it to dry, he broke a peanut butter cookie in two, giving her one half and eating the other in two large bites.

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