Free A CALLAHAN CHRISTMAS MIRACLE by Tina Leonard Page B

brothers—running around in circles trying to win their woman. I want to be married now. I want it to be right.”
    “They’re married. They’re happy. What’s wrong with how it happened?” Rose was puzzled. “Not that I want to turn down a marriage proposal, but I would like to understand what I’m turning down.”
    “You’re turning me down?”
    “I don’t even know what you’re asking, exactly,” Rose said, exasperated.
    “I’m asking you,” Galen said, pulling her gently toward him, “to marry me, be my wife.”
    “We’ve only known each other a few days.”
    “But we’re sharing midnight snacks. And a little more. It’s the little more that convinces me I’m marrying you.”
    She looked at him. “Galen, I’m trying to understand the workings of your mind, but it’s like looking at a maze. Are you saying that because we’ve slept together, we should automatically get married?”
    He nodded. “I waited a long time for a woman like you. If you become pregnant, I don’t want you running off. Women that get attached to my brothers tend to do that.” He looked alarmed at that prospect. “You can call me crazy if you like. I think I’m being smart.”
    He kissed her again, and she sensed he really was convinced of his plans. She gently moved back a step, needing to clear her mind, which she couldn’t do while he was kissing her breathless.
    “I don’t know what to say.”
    “Except for yes, there’s nothing else I want to hear you say,” Galen said, reaching for her again.
    “I need to think about it. Probably you should make love to me while I think.”
    “Okay, that works just fine,” he said, and proceeded to convince her.
    * * *
    T HREE DAYS LATER , Galen had Rose in Santa Fe at a justice of the peace before she could change her mind. “I’m a big believer in striking while the iron is hot,” he told Jace, who’d come to stand in as witness. “The branding iron,” he finished with a proud grin.
    “Not to be chauvinistic or anything,” his brother said, slapping him on the back. “I never thought I’d see the day you’d hotfoot it to an altar.”
    “Me, neither.” Galen glanced over at Rose, who stood nearby, talking to her father and Ash, who had been her witnesses of choice. Mack had beaten them to Santa Fe, dressed in a Western tux and boots. Ash came along to serve as Rose’s maid of honor, even though there was no such requirement. She’d said she had really come along just to see Rose put the ball and chain on her big brother, and wouldn’t miss that for the world.
    His family could laugh all they liked. He wasn’t nervous. Rose was meant to be his—even if she didn’t seem one hundred percent convinced that this was how she wanted to be married. But when he’d told her that she ought to grab him while he was up for grabs, she had shaken her head and said, “Guess that’s an offer I shouldn’t refuse. Consider yourself grabbed.”
    He’d rewarded her with a kiss and more.
    “Here we go,” Jace said cheerfully. “Time to help my brother commit himself to a lifetime of misery. I mean, happiness and joy.” He grinned, pleased to jab at Galen. “And may I never follow in your footsteps.”
    Galen ignored him and took Rose’s hand to step up to the justice. She smiled at him a little shyly, and he thought he was the luckiest man in the world to win such a cute little darling girl. His brothers had done things all wrong. They were cart-before-the-horse kind of guys.
    Me? My horse is always in front of the cart.
    * * *
    “C ONGRATULATIONS ,” HIS BROTHERS SAID after they’d flung rice on them at the top of the drive upon their return. Fiona and Burke had birdseed in tiny paper cups for the children to throw, and everything was right in Galen’s world as he brought his bride home this beautiful late May day.
    “As I said, you weren’t getting any younger,” Sloan said. “It’s a good thing you tied him down,” he told his new sister-in-law, with a