“Yes. Forever. You never have to look over your shoulder for him again.”
And she would’ve, Tanner realized. Even if Jeter had gone to prison, she still would’ve spent the rest of her life always wondering if the shadow behind her was Jeter.
She clutched him tighter. “This is it. Now we’re finally able to move forward. No more past to keep us trapped.”
Tanner dropped to his knee right there surrounded by firefighters, paramedics and cops. The building was burning, they were both bleeding and smelling like smoke.
He pulled out the ring anyway.
“This should have been on your finger before today, but for whatever happened in there when you threw it at Jeter and he lost all focus, I’m thankful it wasn’t.”
She looked down at him, her green eyes even more huge in her face smudged by soot.
“I love you, freckles. I know we have things we need to work out, but marry me. We’ll figure out the rest as we go.”
Her hands stayed clinched at her side. “I know Jeter is gone, but that doesn’t change who I am. The things he did to me... The way I had to live to survive... I’m never going to be like normal women with normal expressions of emotions.”
“Thank God. You are everything to me, Bree Daniels. Everything I never even knew I wanted. Now say you’ll be my wife so poor Whitaker over here can stop pretending like he’s not about to cough up a lung.”
She cupped his face with her hands. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life.”
The smile that split her face was breathtaking. “Then yes. I’m yours, forever.”
Turn the page to start reading
Risk Everything
the next book in USA TODAY bestselling author Janie Crouch’s The Risk Series: A Bree and Tanner Thriller miniseries
Chapter One
In the past year Bree Daniels had been chased across the country, shot at, kidnapped, almost blown up, strangled and had watched the man she loved almost bleed to death right in front of her.
But she could honestly say none of that was as treacherous as what she was going through now.
Planning her wedding.
Seriously. When a bad guy with a gun or a knife came at you, you knew you were in trouble. But nobody suspected that agreeing to get married and giving the ladies of the small town where you’d made your home free rein in planning said nuptials was also just as dangerous.
If they were ever arrested, wedding planners would need their own special section in prison. In isolation. Because otherwise they would take over and rule the place, for sure.
For the past seven months the women of Risk Peak—mostly Cassandra, her good friend and future sister-in-law, and Cheryl, owner of the Sunrise Diner and surrogate mother to Bree—had tracked Bree down, no matter where she’d tried to hide, demanding answers to impossible questions of all types.
Like what kinds of flower arrangements Bree wanted. And whether she wanted a custard cream, buttercream or whipped cream to go along with the raspberry ganache in the cake.
When Bree had finally had a chance to look up what a ganache was, she wanted to throw her computer across the room. Why the heck hadn’t they just said raspberryfilling?
The ladies were so enthusiastic about the event that Bree wasn’t even sure they would notice if she fled the state.
The thought had crossed her mind.
But she was trying to be morenormal. Normal women were excited about all this wedding planning, right? Cassandra had shown her the scrapbook she’d made from the ages of seven to eighteen. That thing had roughly four million pages of pictures of wedding gowns, color schemes, flower types and bridesmaids’ dresses.
Bree had mentioned there were much better ways to organize the information electronically, but Cassandra had just rolled her eyes and said that wasn’t the point.
Bree wasn’t exactly sure what was the point, but she knew that most women were a lot more excited about this whole planning process than she was.
