Wes held up two paintbrushes. “Well? What do you think?” he asked his brothers, plus Jaeg, who’d been recruited for his woodworking skills. They were all piled in the small bedroom of the new home. It closed yesterday, two weeks after Wes had made a cash offer. Technically, the room they stood in wasn’t small, but with six strapping men inside, the place filled up fast. “Light green or lavender?”

“Green,” Levi said. “No way you can know it’s a girl. Green’s more versatile.”

“Fuck you. I know.” Wes looked to Adam. “What do you think?”

Adam tilted his head and scratched his neck. “Both?”

Wes looked at the paintbrushes. “That’s not a bad idea. Do we go half up the wall with one color, add a chair rail, then paint the top half with the other color?”

“You mean, will I add the chair rail?” Jaeg said.

“You think I know how to do that shit?”

Jaeg stretched his large arms over his head, briefly touching the eight-foot ceiling. “Just making sure I know my duties here.”

“Manual labor,” Bran said. “That’s what we’re good for.”

“Or,” Wes said, ignoring the jackasses, “we could paint an accent wall.”

Adam looked up from his phone, pausing in what Wes assumed was a text to Hayden. “Since when do you know about accent walls? I didn’t know you’d turned into Martha Stewart.”

“Fuck you, asshole.” Wes set the paintbrushes back in the trays. “I’ve been poring over design magazines and talking to people. Thank God I’m only doing one room.” He brushed his hands on his work jeans. “Executive decision time. Jaeg will build the chair rail and we’ll do half up and half down, green on the bottom. Then Levi can use his manly muscles and put up the delicate girly decals on the walls.”

Levi bit into a sandwich. “On it.”

Jaeg cut the wood for the chair rails in the large garage, where Wes had set up a work space equipped with a fridge full of beers and snacks, and Wes put together part of the crib while the rest of the guys painted the bedroom.

Wes wasn’t sure the finished crib would fit through all the doorways, so he set up the sides while he waited. He would finish putting the crib together once the walls were painted in the baby’s room. The rest of the furniture he’d bought local and came already assembled.

Emily had helped him out with some of the other items she thought Kaylee might need in the nursery, like a rocking chair and an ottoman and a diaper pail. And about a million other little things Wes had no idea what to do with. He’d shoved them in the closet for Kaylee to organize later.

If she liked the house.

God, he hoped she liked it.

With six strong guys—one of them actually skilled at construction—the room was ready in a few hours. Now it was time to visit Kaylee.

Wes hadn’t been around Kaylee as much as he would have liked these last couple of weeks, but he’d still made sure to bring her lunch every day and check in on her.

Okay, he walked by Club Kids about six times a day, but who was counting? Weekends were torture. He could only get away with checking in on her once or twice, though work and preparing the new house had kept him busy.

Kaylee was already asking him questions he couldn’t answer. About the tour and why he’d been home these last few weeks. He didn’t want her to think he was giving up his dream for her. She’d feel guilty, and she’d worry. So he’d waited until he could explain things properly. And the time had come.

Wes drove home, cleaned up, and went to Kaylee’s parents’ house. He and the guys had gotten started early this morning, so it was only six in the evening by the time Wes rolled up to her place.

He knocked on the front door and waited. And shifted his feet. And waited some more. Kaylee was almost halfway through her pregnancy and was getting slower. Or Wes was impatient. Mostly, he was impatient.

The door swung open, and there she was. Sweatpants, small ponytail on the top of her head, holding up only half of her hair because the rest was too short, with yellow gloves on her hands. “Wes? Is something wrong? I wasn’t expecting you.”

He glanced at the giant yellow rubber gloves. “I can see that.”

“Oh.” She stepped inside, pulled off the gloves, and set them on the kitchen counter. “Sorry. I was scrubbing the floor.”

Wes frowned. “You shouldn’t be doing that. I’ll hire someone to clean the place.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m pregnant, not incapacitated. Besides, I’ve got strong nesting instincts going on right now. I need the release.”

Wes’s mind went straight to other forms of release, which he quickly shut down. Not the time. Hopefully, if he was a lucky son of a bitch, there would be. Until then, he’d used his memory bank of naked Kaylee images to pleasure himself. It was like high school all over.

“I’ve cleaned this entire house, top to bottom,” Kaylee said, cutting into Wes’s sexual musings. “Just need to decide which room to make into the baby’s.”

On that note… “I came by because I wanted to show you something. Do you have time?”

“Sure, when?”

“Now?”

She stared down at her outfit. “Not sure I’m fit to go out in public.”

He looked at her stomach, swollen with their child. Her cheeks were flushed from the activity she’d been doing, and she wore no makeup.

He swallowed, overwhelmed by all he felt for this woman. “You’re beautiful.”

Kaylee smiled slightly, her expression soft but curious. “Give me a sec.”

She wobbled slightly as she hurried into the kitchen and washed her hands. She pulled the small ponytail from her hair and smoothed down the dark strands, then slipped on a pair of flip-flops. “I hope this is okay, because it’s about as good as it gets for me today.”