Pregnant. Pregnant? PREGNANT.

“Holy shit.” Victoria stared at me, her eyes round as the dinner plates we’d be eating off of later. Wordlessly, her hand fell to her stomach.

The room fell silent, and Theo and Alex’s heads bobbed between us like they were watching the championship match at Wimbledon.

“No fucking way.” Alex said, pushing off the counter to stand sentinel next to his sister, his feet spread shoulder-width apart and his big, burly arms crossed over his chest. “You knocked my sister up, asshole?” Even if he hadn’t resorted to name calling, his tone of voice would have been clear enough. He was not thrilled with the idea of Victoria being pregnant with my baby.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t had time to process it at all.

Pregnant.

I shook my head in wonder. We hadn’t been using condoms since … well, since practically forever, but Victoria had been on the pill.

You know the pill isn’t one hundred percent effective, my subconscious lectured unhelpfully.

Yeah, no shit.

But it wasn’t as if I was unhappy with the idea of her having my baby. Just … surprised. And needing a minute to get my bearings. I’d known Victoria wanted kids, and I’d figured we’d get to it—eventually. Somehow, though, I hadn’t pictured eventually coming quite so soon. Then again, neither of us was getting any younger. If we were going to have kids, maybe starting sooner rather than later was the best approach. As it was, I’d be over fifty by the time this one graduated from high school.

Assuming, of course, Victoria was pregnant.

“Victoria?” I took a step toward her, but Alex put his body between me and her, blocking my path.

I leaned to the right to look around him. “Is it possible?”

Victoria’s eyes pooled with tears and her lip quivered. “Maybe?”

Theo moved into the fray. Setting his hand to Alex’s shoulder, he pushed the big man aside. “Come on. Let’s give them some privacy.”

Alex glanced at Theo and shook his head. “No. If he’s knocked her up, I want to hear what he intends to do about it.”

Not that it was any of Alex’s business, but if Victoria was carrying my baby, I was going to marry her—no question about it. I’d planned on marrying her anyway. It was no great hardship to run to the Justice of the Peace next week from where I was standing. Then again, we hadn’t exactly discussed her thoughts on the subject. I’d been waiting until Christmas to broach the subject officially.

And we weren’t going to discuss it in front of her brothers now either.

“Alex, I appreciate that you’re concerned for Victoria, but I’m going to have to ask you to get the fuck out of my way so I can speak with her. In private.”

Alex’s head lurched back as if he was shocked that I’d had the balls to speak to him with such force. Frankly, I could understand his surprise; Alex was a big hulking barbarian of a man, and I guessed not many people had the guts to put him in his place. Lord knew there’d been a time or two these past few months I’d wanted to tell him to shove his attitude up his ass, but had held my tongue instead.

Well, not anymore. This was way too important.

Alex glowered at me for a beat, but eventually relented. “Fine.” He stepped to the side. “But if I find out you—”

Recovering her equilibrium, Victoria smacked her brother in the back of the head with a dishtowel. “I can speak for myself, you know.” She pushed him toward the back door. “For what it’s worth, I don’t need you threatening my boyfriend.”

“I know, but—”

“No buts,” she said, her voice softening. “Thank you for being my champion, Alex, but in this case, your chivalry is misplaced.” She cast a quick glance at me, her lips flattening into a tight smile. “David and I will figure this out. Together.”

Theo pushed Alex the rest of the way out the door before turning to his sister. His eyes darted to the food preparations underway on the other side of the room. “Are we—”

Victoria laughed. “Yes, we’re still on for dinner. Go figure out what’s up with Drew, and the three of you come back at five o’clock.”

He nodded briskly. “You sure you’re going to be okay?”

Victoria nodded, her hand dropping to her stomach again. “Yes. Now go, please.”

Theo’s eyes met mine. “You good, too?”

I shoved my hands into my pockets and rocked back on my heels. There were so many ways to answer that question, but I settled on, “Yeah, I’m good.”

Theo waved, and then he and Alex made their way to Alex’s SUV and drove away.

Victoria closed the door, turned, and leaned back against it. “So …”

I stepped to her, a happy smile spreading across my face. I set my palms to her belly, cradling what I thought was a slightly small bulge. Suddenly, I couldn’t contain my happiness. We might not have planned for this, but I wanted it. I really fucking did.

“A baby,” I whispered in awe.

Victoria’s hands settled tentatively over mine. “We don’t know for sure. It could be food poisoning.”

“And if it’s not?” I asked, meeting her gaze.

She took a deep breath, her chest lifting and falling as she exhaled. “If it’s not, we’ll figure out what to do next.”

Startled, I took a step back. As far as I was concerned, there was no ‘figuring this out.’ I knew exactly what we should do.

“What do you mean, we’ll figure out what to do next?” I barked, then winced at the force of my tone. I hadn’t meant to yell at her.

“Just that. You and I will sit down and discuss how we want to handle it.”

“Victoria—”

She pressed her palm over my mouth, stopping me mid-sentence. “No. Don’t say it.”

My tongue darted out from between my lips, coating her palm in saliva.

“Eek!” She pulled away and wiped my spit off against her pant leg.

“We should get married,” I blurted before she could stop me a second time.

Victoria sighed, and her shoulders curled in on themselves.

Shit. That was not the reaction I’d hoped for.

“David …”

I took her hand in mine and led her to the table. Dropping down into a chair, I spread my legs and pulled her into the open space between them. “Why won’t you even entertain the idea of marrying me?”

“Because we don’t even know if I’m pregnant. And besides, even if I am, you’re only asking out of a sense of obligation.”

“That’s not true,” I argued.

“You’re telling me you’d actually planned on asking me to marry you today then?”

“Well, not exactly—”

“Right. Not exactly. You’re only asking because you’re worried that you’ve knocked me up and my brother is threatening you.”

The implication that the only reason I was acting honorably toward her was because her brother was forcing my hand was unwelcome. And painful as hell.

I must not have done an adequate good job of keeping the pain from showing on my face because she rushed to assure me that she wasn’t saying no forever. Just for right now.  

“Listen to me,” she said, setting her tiny palms to my cheeks and crouching down so that we were eye-to-eye. “I love you with all of my heart, but I don’t want you marrying me because you think you have to. Maybe it makes me weak, but if I am pregnant and we were to get married, I would spend the rest of my life wondering if that had been the only reason you’d asked. You already did that once with Stacia, and I don’t want you repeating the mistakes of your past.”

Ugh. She was right.

Fuck.

I drew a deep breath into my lungs and released it on a long, slow gust. “Okay, I hear what you’re saying. And I get it.”

I did get it. And yet I was inordinately sad that she was taking such a pragmatic approach to the situation. For a brief moment, I’d wanted her to share my joy, not resort to sound, logical thinking.

In those few moments before she’d crushed my spirit, all sorts of scenarios had flashed through my brain. Her walking down the aisle toward me. The day our baby was born. His or her first steps. Their first words.

An hour ago, I hadn’t known that’s what I wanted, but now that I’d had a glimpse of what the future could hold, I didn’t know if I could pretend.

It was the exact opposite of how I’d felt when Stacia had told me she was pregnant.

The truth was, I didn’t care if Victoria wasn’t pregnant right now. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wanted a family with her. Now, tomorrow … whenever. I wanted to be the kind of dad to our children that my father hadn’t been to me. I wanted us to grow old together, spending summers on Dobber’s Island with our kids and our grandkids in tow, sitting in rocking chairs on our front porch surrounded by happy faces covered with berry juice as Victoria regaled them with stories about how we met.

But I also knew that I needed to slow my roll, as my students would say.

We’d get there. Eventually. I’d have to be happy with that.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” she answered, settling down into my lap and twining her arms around my neck.

“If I had asked you to marry me today, without all this talk of a baby on the horizon, what would you have said?”

Her eyes flicked between mine, and I could tell from the look on her face that she was giving it real thought.

Finally, her lips tipped up to the side in a small, angelic smile. “I would have said I couldn’t wait to become Mrs. David Carstairs.” She dropped her forehead to mine. “I want to marry you, David. I do. But I want it to be for the right reasons.”

And a baby isn’t the right reason? was on the tip of my tongue, but I bit back the question. Deep down, I knew it wasn’t. Been there, done that, got the divorce papers.

And of course, this was all assuming Victoria was pregnant.

Which we still didn’t know.

“Okay,” I answered. “Message received.”

She slid from my lap and went back to the stove. Making sure that the food hadn’t burned or turned to mush, she glanced over at me. “Since you never actually made it to the market, can you run out real quick for me now?”

I launched to my feet, pushing aside the disappointment of the last half hour. “What do you need?”

“I still need molasses,” she pointed out. “And you should probably pick up a pregnancy test … or twenty. You know, just to be sure.” She smiled, and it stopped me in my tracks.

In that moment I knew that I didn’t need a ring for this woman to be mine. We didn’t need a marriage certificate to say that we belonged to each other. She was mine, and I was hers … and if there was a baby on the way, we’d love it just like we loved each other—unconditionally and without reservation.