Boone Callahan had been carrying an engagement ring in the front pocket of his jeans for one hundred and eighty-three days. Not that he was counting.

He was absolutely counting.

The box had gone through the wash twice, survived a cattle auction, a fence repair, and one unfortunate incident involving an overly affectionate mule named Biscuit.

Six months. Six months of waiting for the perfect moment. Six months of deciding every moment wasn’t perfect enough. Because Vivi deserved perfect.

Or at least as close to perfect as a bumbling cowboy could get.

Instead, Boone currently found himself standing in Espresso Yourself while Jo stared at him like she’d just caught him hiding a dead body. She took her trademark toothpick out of her mouth. “You look suspicious.”

Boone took a casual sip of coffee. “You look unemployed.”

“Rude.”

“Accurate.”

“What are you hiding?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

Jo narrowed her eyes and Boone felt his palms sweat. He used to have a great poker face, but like his heart, Vivi had apparently stolen that too.

“You’re hiding something,” Jo said, pointing to him with her toothpick.

“I’m literally standing here drinking coffee.”

“Exactly,’ she said and Boone forced his face to go slack. “There. That. Whatever that face was.”

“What face?”

“The face of a man who has a secret.”

“I don’t have secrets.”

Jo barked out a laugh loud enough to rattle the windows. Across the shop, Spud looked up from his cinnamon roll.

“That might be the biggest bullshit answer I’ve heard all year,” she said.

Boone considered leaving—possibly the state. Instead, he shoved a hand into his pocket. His fingers brushed velvet.

Dammit.

Jo’s eyes widened. “Well, fuck a duck.”

Boone immediately knew he’d made a mistake. The kind of mistake that ended with his grandmother involved. Which meant it was no longer a mistake. It was a catastrophe.

“Tell me that’s not what I think it is,” Jo said.

“Don’t.”

“Boone.”

“Jo.”

The coffee shop went silent. Not the normal kind of silent, but the guilty kind of silent that happened right before somebody announced a surprise party or a murder.

Spud stood. “Is it a ring?”

Boone closed his eyes. When he opened them again, half the coffee shop was staring.

Jesus Christ.

“No,” he said.

“That wasn’t a denial,” Annabelle called from behind the counter, her hair dyed a particular shade of teal today.

“That was absolutely a denial.”

“It was weak,” Spud added.

Jo smiled. “It was suspiciously weak.”

Boone looked toward the ceiling. This was why he preferred cows. Cows minded their own business. Mostly.

Spud gasped. Actually gasped. “He’s proposing!”

The entire coffee shop erupted into hushed whispers, and some not so hushed.

Boone seriously considered setting himself on fire.

And just when he thought things couldn’t get worse, the bell above the front door jingled and every person in Espresso Yourself turned toward the door and went the suspicious kind of silent that happened when someone had broken something and was waiting to see if they could get away with it.

Boone immediately knew he was screwed.

He turned right as Vivi walked through the door wearing a smile that still hit him somewhere behind the ribs. Even after all this time, that woman still had the power to knock the wind clean out of him.

Her dark hair was piled on top of her head in the messy way that meant she’d been working. One of his flannel shirts was rolled to her elbows, sleeves pushed up, the hem tied at her waist over a pair of jeans that hugged every curve he’d spent the last year and a half memorizing.

Rea floated beside her wearing entirely too much satisfaction for a woman who’d done absolutely nothing wrong—which usually meant she’d done something very wrong.

Vivi stopped short as her gaze swept over the room.

Spud suddenly became fascinated by his cinnamon roll. Annabelle started aggressively wiping an already clean counter and Jo looked up at the ceiling. Even the damn customers wouldn’t make eye contact.

With her bullshit meter blaring loud and clear, she looked around the coffee shop and crossed her arms. “Why does it feel like I just walked into a surprise party?”

“No reason,” Jo said way too fast.

His hand unintentionally went to his pocket and Rea’s smile went into full busybody mode. She never smiled like that unless she was about to cause emotional damage.

“Boone?” Vivi asked.

His head lifted and, holy hell, amber eyes met his and just like that, every ounce of noise disappeared. Because after all this time, after all the chaos and all the growing pains and all the ways they’d nearly missed each other, looking at Vivi still felt like coming home.

She took one step toward him. Then another. The third had his heart pounding out of his chest. Then a slow smile tugged at her mouth and his lungs stopped working entirely.

She clasped her hands together and bounced on the balls of her toes. “This is it, isn’t it?”

The entire coffee shop smiled with glee and confirmation that this was, indeed, it. Because there was no way to postpone now. Even if he could convince her that the surprise wasn’t a proposal, she’d hear it from someone the second he walked out that door.

“Traitors,” Boone bellowed. “Every damn one of you.”

Nobody even had the decency to look guilty. Then there was Vivi, who was laughing—actually laughing like she’d known all along. Only the sound hit him right in the chest, and suddenly all those plans he’d spent six months obsessing over felt ridiculous.

The sunset proposal. The river. The speech he’d rehearsed a thousand times. The candles.

The perfect moment he’d been waiting for—gone. All of it. Because the woman standing in front of him wasn’t looking disappointed.

She looked happy. And maybe that should’ve been obvious. Vivi had never cared about perfect, she cared about real and doing this here, in front of family and friends, couldn’t be more Vivi’s style.

Slowly, Boone reached into his pocket and the entire room leaned forward. Someone squealed—it was Spud. Someone else shushed him, but Boone ignored all of it. His attention stayed exactly where it belonged.

On her.

“Well,” Vivi said softly. “This is awkward.”

“Boots,” he said and her smile softened immediately. And there it was—the look that had gotten him from the very beginning. The one that said she saw every broken, stubborn, complicated piece of him and stayed anyway.

He looked down at the ring box in his hand. Then back at her. “I had a plan.”

“I know.”

“It was a good plan.”

Her grin widened. “Debatable.”

A laugh rolled through the coffee shop.

Boone shook his head. “There were candles.”

“Terrifying.”

“A speech.”

“Now I’m really glad it failed.”

The room laughed again and so did Boone, because somehow this felt better than the plan. Better than perfect.

This felt like them. So before he could overthink it again, before Rea released doves or set off fireworks or whatever else she had undoubtedly planned, Boone dropped to one knee and the coffee shop exploded.

Spud shouted, “About damn time!”

Boone pointed at him without looking away from Vivi. “One more word and you’re uninvited from the wedding.”

Spud immediately sat down.

Vivi was laughing so hard tears had gathered in her eyes. God, he loved her. He loved her laugh, her stubbornness, and the way she’d walked into his life wearing designer boots and carrying enough emotional baggage to fill a cargo plane. But she’d turned his house into a home and somehow turned him into a man who wanted forever.

The room faded away until there was only her.

“Vivi Calder,” he began. “You walked into my life and wrecked every plan I ever had. You stole my bed, my family, and somewhere along the way you stole my heart.”

He watched her swallow hard and then tears spilled down her cheeks.

“I spent six months trying to figure out the perfect way to ask you this,” he added. “But the truth is, the perfect part was always you.” He opened the box and held it toward her. “Will you marry me?”

Vivi stared at him for all of two seconds, then threw herself at him. Boone barely caught her before she knocked him flat.

“Yes,” she said, laughing and crying at the same time. “Obviously yes.”

The coffee shop erupted into cheers and applause. Oh, and somewhere in the chaos Rea burst into tears and immediately started telling everyone she’d known this would happen.

Boone slid the ring onto Vivi’s finger and then pulled her into his arms. Her forehead rested against his.

“You know,” she whispered, “this would’ve been my perfect proposal.”

Boone smiled. “Yeah?”

She looked around the coffee shop at her friends, his family and the town that had become home.

“Yeah,” she whispered.

And standing in the middle of a coffee shop packed with nosy townspeople, Boone finally understood something. Perfect wasn’t a place or a speech or even a plan. Perfect was the woman in his arms.

Everything else was just details.