His gaze dropped down again. “You like your name, Sofia Lillian?” he asked as another kick hit his hand. “It’s amazing.” He shook his head before he leaned in and pressed his lips to the spot. “God, this is incredible.”
And this time it was a sniff from the doorway that filled the room. Harper and Liam both looked over at the same time to see her mother standing there, tears falling from her eyes.
“I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath like she was trying to compose herself. “I came up to see what you thought about the cradle. I…I didn’t mean to…to interrupt. You’re going to name her after my mother?”
“Is that okay?” Harper asked.
“It’s more than okay.” Delilah nodded, her bottom lip quivering.
Liam got to his feet again. “You want to feel your granddaughter move?”
The question was barely out of his mouth before Delilah was moving across the room. Liam grabbed her hand, placing it over the spot that Sofia had been kicking. It took a moment before another pop hit the side of Harper’s abdomen.
Delilah looked up at Harper, the delight in her eyes exuberant. “Sofia Lillian. It’s a beautiful name.”
“Liam figured it out.” Harper grinned at him.
“I’m glad you like it, Mrs. Laurence.”
Her eyes moved from Harper’s face to Liam’s, and she shook her head. “Delilah.” She reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing it. “You should call me Delilah from here on out.”
Well, apparently Harper was covering the full range of emotions today. And as she hadn’t been prepared for any of this, it took everything in her not to lose it right then and there.
Chapter Twenty How to Burst a Bubble In Under a Minute
As Harper was going to be heading up to Nashville with Liam for a few days, she was fitting in as many clients who wanted to schedule a massage before she left town. Her last one wasn’t going to finish up until after nine on Wednesday night, so Liam went to the Sleepy Sheep to grab a beer.
Finn was working behind the bar that evening. The man might be a full-time veterinarian, but he still put in a few hours at his family’s bar every once in a while. Ever since Shep started brewing beer in mass quantities, his nights at the bar had been cut down. And it was still an important feature to have a Shepherd presence at the place as much as possible. According to Harper, the Sleepy Sheep was an institution in Mirabelle.
Tripp and Bennett were at the bar, too, though the two of them were getting a drink as opposed to working it.
“You flying solo tonight?” Bennett asked as Liam took a seat next to him.
“Yup, Harper is working late. What about you? Where is your lady love?”
“Over there.” Bennett pointed to a booth in the corner where Mel, Grace, and Beth were all giggling over their glasses of wine. “She’s having a girl’s night. Beth needed to get out, Mel is taking advantage of her last few late nights before school starts again, and Grace is enjoying an evening while Jax is on baby duty. I get to drive them all home when they’ve had enough. I think they are working on their second bottle now.”
“Almost finished with it, too.” Finn nodded as he slid a beer down in front of Liam. “Should make for an interesting night when you get home with your wife.”
“It should.” Bennett grinned hugely.
Liam couldn’t wait for the day that he could say that: home to his wife.
Soon and very soon, at least he hoped. Prayed. He’d gotten more than just Paul’s approval in regards to asking Harper to marry him. After dinner, he’d been helping Delilah dry the dishes at the sink when he’d asked her as well.
She’d reached over and grabbed his hand, much like she had earlier in the evening. “Paul already told me about what the two of you discussed.” She’d grinned up at him. “You have my blessing, too, Liam.”
Now he just needed to figure out how to ask Harper. He wanted it to be special…memorable.
“What was your big gesture?” he blurted out, turning to Bennett next to him.
“What?” Bennett’s eyebrows pulled together over his eyes.
“With Mel. The big gesture to get her to marry you?”
“Oh.” Dawning recognition overtook his face. “You’re going to ask Harper.”
“Yeah, and it should go without saying that this conversation is embargoed.”
“Obviously.” Bennett nodded.
“Dammit.” Finn’s hand hit the counter, making Liam jump. “Shep is probably going to win the bet. He had his money on the end of August as to when you were going to propose.”
“You guys made a bet?” Liam asked.
“Yeah.” Tripp nodded. “I forget how many of us were in the pool, but the winner gets over four hundred dollars at this point. Your brother and sister are in on it. Abby too.”
“Seriously? When did this happen?”
“Fourth of July,” Bennett answered before he took a sip of his beer. “So you wanted to know about grand gestures?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t really have one in asking Mel to marry me. I kind of messed up a couple things at the end there, spectacularly so, and pushed her away. When I realized she was it for me? That she was the home I’d been looking for? Well, all I knew was I had to get her back. She was the future that I wanted, so I proposed and hoped to God that she forgave me.”
“I see that she did.”
“Yeah, I’m one lucky son-of-a-bitch.” Bennett’s eyes moved over to his wife again, and the undying adoration for her was beyond clear.
“His grand gesture was before he even figured out that he was in love with her,” Tripp interjected.
“How in the world does that work?”
“I helped her with a project at the school. Building bookcases for the library with her students.”
“Jax was the same way with Grace. He built her a house,” Tripp said. “A house that a lot of us helped out with in the making. Took months to do, too. A lot of planning. And for most of it Jax wasn’t even dating her.”
Bennett laughed. “He was running in the opposite direction actually. The guy was a little stubborn in the beginning. Refused to accept reality.”
“A little bit like you?” Liam looked at Bennett.
“A little bit like me.”
Well, that most definitely hadn’t been a problem for Liam. He knew exactly what he wanted.
“What about Shep?” Liam asked.
“He was going to give it all up. Move to New York to be with Hannah. Turned out she didn’t want to go back to New York as much as she wanted to stay here with him. The inn was the home she wanted.”
“And Brendan?”
“Ahh, Brendan is a special case.” Bennett shifted on the stool, resting his elbows on the bar. “He was pretty much all in the second he met Paige. It was more a bunch of little gestures like getting her a job and asking her to move in. She wasn’t set on staying here until Brendan made her feel like she’d found home again.”
“I have a question.” Finn raised his eyebrows high over his thick black-framed glasses. “Where is home going to be for the two of you? You and Harper going to settle down here, or is she going to move up to Nashville?”
“Nashville isn’t really home to me, and I wouldn’t want to take Harper out of hers. I think staying here is the better option. So as to where we are going to settle down? Well I hope it’s here.”
“You hope?” Tripp was now raising his eyebrows, too.
“We haven’t exactly talked about it in depth.”
“Maybe you should.” Bennett frowned. “Time is ticking, my friend. That baby of yours is going to be here before you know it.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I have a question, too.” Tripp leaned forward. Bennett was sitting in between them so he was trying to get a better view. “How is it that you are asking about big, grand gestures? Isn’t there a song currently on the radio that’s about Harper?”
“Yeah. If that isn’t big and grand enough, then he and I are screwed when it comes to finally settling down.” Finn nodded at Tripp.