After the crowd that was forming dispersed, the family decided to head back to the cabin and talk. There was a great deal of air to clear. Richard, Racheal, and their two youngest boys went in their truck while Spencer took Rose with him. Reed grabbed hold of Danielle’s hand and pulled her along to his truck. “Hey ass, I am going with my family. Let me go!” Danielle cried out.

“We are family now, so you are going with me. If you want to argue about it, I can tell them right now or we can talk and tell them together. It’s up to you, baby doll.”

“Fine, but I still think you’re an ass.” She made a face at the man she didn’t trust but couldn’t help but love. Once they were in the truck he stole her hand and looking at its emptiness and intertwined their fingers. He smiled when she didn’t reject his gesture and even squeezed his hand.

They talked the whole way back to the cabin. Stopping once on the way to get some things straightened out.

Further up the road Spencer pulled over to the side and put the truck in park.

“Rose, are you okay, sweetheart?”

“Spencer, I don’t know what to say. I just found out that Reed is my brother and my father is not my father.” Her eyes were full of unshed tears.

“What are you feeling?” He wanted to pull her into his arms but couldn’t, so he just held her hand and drew circles with his thumb.

“I feel sad for him. I really do. Two years ago things changed in our family, just about the time he started doing business with the Kane Corporation. He and my mother suddenly couldn’t stand each other, and they took it out on me. He no longer treated me like, well, like a daughter anymore. It was like I had become a bother, and I didn’t understand why until now.” Rose’s eyes were glazed over with tears as she gazed unseeingly out her window. Spencer wanted to punch her father again and her mother even more. He could kind of understand her father’s abandonment because he no longer had a child of his own flesh and blood. However, her mother had done all of them wrong and took it out on poor Rose. How could a mother do that to her child? Despite Landry’s assertion that Rose would be unfaithful, he realized her heart was too good to do something like that to him.

“Rose, it will get better, I promise. You have a new family and we will be making a new addition to that family if I get my way. By next Christmas you will be waddling around the house.”

“Look at me. I need you Rose and always will. Tell me you understand that.”

“I understand it,” she said solemnly.

“Yes, you understand, but baby, what I want to know is can you believe it? Can you not compare your parents’ marriage and treatment of you and think about my feelings for you and the feelings I hope you are developing for me?”

“I can try,” she looked hopefully into his eyes. He exited the truck and opened her door. Standing, blocking the wind but turning her body to face him, he said with all his heart, “Rose, I love you. I really do. I don’t understand how it could happen, but it did. I feel in love with you, I think from the first moment you stepped out of the car.”

“Oh Spencer…” She had tears streaming down her pretty face. Spencer waited with baited breath to hear what her reply would be.

“I don’t understand it either or when I knew for sure, but I love you, too, so very much.”

They kissed with the feelings the words they spoke embodied. “Damn it. Why do we have to have company right now? If we didn’t, baby, I would take you before we even made it to the nearest soft surface.” She giggled but agreed she was feeling very needy for her Spencer’s loving.

“We have lots of soft surfaces here, and I can feel the cold is not affecting you that much.” She saucily gave him a look that challenged him to refuse.

“In the back, now, woman.” She giggled as she jumped in the backseat and pulled her pants down and assumed the position.

“Oh lord, woman, are you trying to kill me by sticking that fat ass in my face. Baby, this has got to be fast.” She wiggled her bare pink ass in front of him, taunting him like a bull with a red flag.

“Oh, this is going to be really fast.” He smiled cheekily and bent over and bit her ass.

He got on the foot rail and jumped up in the truck with his pants down only enough to let his guy loose and ready for action. He checked her sweet pussy with the tip of his cock and found she was just as ready as he was and sunk his way in and rode her home. The cold had no effect on their libidos. Spencer pushed deep and gripped her hips to keep his leverage. It was not long before they both reached fulfillment.

Their cries of ecstasy could only be heard by the deer in the fields. The cold winds bearing down on the hills had hidden their noises, but it didn’t stop the truck from swaying. It was how Richard had found them and quickly turned back to the cabin to leave the lovers undisturbed. At least he could set his wife’s mind at ease and hope that there would be a wedding and some grandchildren in the near future.

It was nearly an hour since the public brawl when the two missing trucks pulled up to the cabin.

“Well, did you have another accident and have to walk back to the cabin?” called out Ryan as he was picking at his mother’s freshly made cookies, earning a fast smack on the hand from the worried mom. Racheal Kane had a habit of baking or cooking when she was nervous, and it was only when Richard came back to tell them they were all just having a talk that she calmed down and started to plan out the upcoming weddings.

The guys had explained what was going on with Reed and Danielle. Well, as much as Reed was able to tell them on the way to town, so she had assumed that this was more than just another boyfriend.

It was clear Spencer was hooked so the wedding was a done deal. As far as she was concerned it was just a matter of how soon. From Spencer’s actions, she would say New Years was looking like a sure thing.

“Rose, can I talk to you for a minute in private?” Reed had asked his half-sister.

“You two can go into the den,” Spencer said, then placed his hand on the small of her back and whispered, “remember I love you and so does Reed.” She smiled up at the man who had changed her whole world, and he captured her lips as though it were the last time he would be able to do so. That is the way it would be for all their life if he has his say.

Reed and Rose entered the den and he closed the door.

“Reed…”

“No Rose, let me get this out. I am sorry that you had to find out this way. I really wanted to tell you sooner and in private, but unfortunately that was not the case.” He started running his fingers through his hair.

“You knew? For how long? Did Spencer know?” She thought he may have known by his lack of reaction earlier but was not certain until now.

“I have only known for about a month, but I didn’t tell Spencer. It has been a lot to take in. My mother and father married because of the financial gain. They could not stand each other by the time I was three and that was when according to my father, that your mother had stopped by after finding Mitch with another woman. One thing led to another and you were conceived. My father apparently could never understand why she hadn’t left Mitch. She had used him that night for revenge.” He had started pacing around the room, having a hard time looking at the sister that had been left to deal with the brunt of their parents’ mistakes.

“About two years ago your father had a business venture with the Kane family. My father had been angry at Mitch for not letting him in on the deal, and they got in to a huge argument. That was when Mitch said that he had been screwing my mother for a decade and that I was his son. It had been a lie, but that was when my father returned the insult and admitted he had an affair with your mother and that you were possibly his child. Out of fear of being humiliated, Mitch hadn’t told anyone or outright rejected you. Mitch had secretly done DNA testing on you and realized you were not his daughter.” The agony and pain that radiated across her face as she sat on the chaise lounge in the center of the room had torn at his insides.

He reached down and kneeled next to Rose, holding her hands in his and continued, “He threatened to sue my father, who had been struggling financially since the divorce, for the years of the lavish lifestyle you had been living if he divulged the truth. He wanted to tell you but couldn’t. It was only revealed to me by accident one day after going through my father’s business dealings and helping him out. He tried to snatch the file from me but couldn’t because I was too fast and too curious. I was shocked to see the results of the test. I was so mad that he had not told you, but he tried to explain and well, I hope that you can one day forgive us for that. I love you, Rose. You are my cousin, sister, whatever you want to be to me.”

She rose from her seat, telling him to follow her lead, and wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his chest.

“Reed, thank you for explaining this to me. Over the years we have not been that close, but I always thought of you as more than my cousin. You have been looking out for me. Don’t think I haven’t noticed, and I am happy to call you my brother.” They held each other for a long time before Reed tried to break the tension and pretend to be a big threatening brother.

“Seeing as you see me as your brother, do you mind telling me what you are doing with my best friend’s arm around you?”

“We are dating.” Reed was confused. He knew about Spencer’s problem, had it returned to normal? He didn’t want to think of that, this was his little sister here.

“Wait, I talked to him and asked if you were okay and if he would take care of you and protect you from his brother. The lying bastard.”

“He did take care of me and if you had been here earlier this morning, you would have seen that he did stop Matt from making his move on me.” She was smiling, something he hadn’t seen her do in a long time.

“Well, he better treat you well or I am going to have to kick his ass.”

Just as he said that in walked Spencer, “You don’t have to worry about her. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her. Although I am going to have to get her to transfer to a school in Boston because I can’t up and quit my own company and I will not be away from her for that long, ever.”

“Well then, I guess that is settled. When is the wedding?”

“Do you mind if I am asked first?”

“Baby, you already know I am not letting you go. So I will ask just for the sake of asking, but it is a done deal. Understood, woman?”

“Thank you for pretending to give me a choice. You are so sweet,” she said sarcastically with a roll of her eyes.

“What a mouth on this girl! You see what I have to put up with?”

“I wish you all the luck, my brother.”

“Speaking of siblings, you care to explain why my sister is vomiting in the bathroom right now?”

“She’s sick?!” Reed ran out of the room and searched for Danielle.

“You are bad.”

“I am bad. He knocked my sister up. He’s lucky I don’t break his neck. If it wasn’t for you, I would have. Now where was I?” He sat his love back on the chaise and got down on one knee.

“Rose, I fell in love with you when I didn’t think a happily ever after was in the cards for me, but I need you and I am hoping that you can find it in your heart to put mine at ease and marry me. Will you, Rose Landry, do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”

“Spencer, this has been an amazingly intense and wonderful day. This week has been outrageously life altering and yes, I want to spend the rest of my life with the man who makes me feel amazingly wonderful. I love you, Spencer Kane.”

He pulled out a small jewelry box and opened it to a very surprised and delighted Rose. “I don’t have an official engagement ring, so my Christmas present will have to do.” He slid the beautiful rose ring that he had purchased from Mrs. Felding’s store this morning. Wow! It was only this morning that he had bought the ring, he thought.

“It’s so pretty. Thank you, my love.”

“I know it is not what you deserve. I will get you a large diamond so big you will need to use something to hold up your hand when we get back to Boston.”

“Oh, no you will not, Spencer. This ring is so beautiful and so thoughtful. I don’t want a replacement ring that would only be second best.” She looked down at the diamond platinum ring. It wasn’t overly sparkly, but it had an understated elegance about it. A rose in full bloom that had a large solitaire diamond as its center graced the top of the ring and the band was covered in tiny diamonds. It meant the world to her that he picked something out that was obviously last minute but oh so precious.