Chapter 53
“I’m glad to see that you’re feeling better,” he said dryly against the pillow the crazed woman was currently trying to smother him with.
“No!” she snapped, making him once again sigh, wondering if she was going to start making sense or just keep saying-
“No!” she said, slapping him ineffectually with the pillow only to pause in her sad beating so that she could shift on top of him with a muttered curse and get more comfortable before returning to whatever it was that she was trying to do to him.
“Should you really be doing this in your condition?” he asked, keeping his hands on her hips to make sure that she didn’t fall on her beautiful ass, which she had an unfortunate history of doing.
“No!”
“Any chance we could get past this and get to the point of your violent attack?” he asked, gently plucking the pillow out of her hands and tossed it aside.
Narrowing her eyes on him, she pointed a stern finger at him and said, “No,” which had him rolling his eyes as he placed his hand back on her hip.
“Kasey,” he said, sighing heavily as he ran his hands over her hips.
“You are not going to work for your uncle doing construction,” she said sternly with a violent wave of that finger and a glare that was so damn adorable that he couldn’t help but chuckle.
“No? Then how do you suggest that I support you and the kids?” he asked, as he allowed himself for the first time since Mikey had unknowingly broken the news to him to drop his gaze to her stomach, which unfortunately at the moment was concealed by the large tee shirt she was wearing.
“I can take care of myself,” she said with a stubborn shake of her head that he ignored as he slid his hand beneath her shirt and after a slight hesitation, placed it on the swell of her stomach and found himself smiling.
“How far along are you?” he asked, wishing that he’d left the lights on so that he could get a better look.
“Three months,” she said, worrying her bottom lip and apparently giving up on her crazed lecture to wait nervously for his reaction.
Nodding, he couldn’t help but run his hand over her stomach, memorizing the shape as he tried to wrap his mind around this. They were having a baby, he realized, chuckling as he sat up so that he could wrap his arms around her.
“Why didn’t you tell me, sweetheart?” he asked, keeping his hand pressed against her stomach as he kissed her forehead.
“I wanted to tell you in person,” she said with a small shrug as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and leaned into him.
“And I haven’t been back for a month,” he said, pressing another kiss against her forehead as another thought occurred to him, one that he told himself that he should ignore, but…
“Why didn’t you tell me the last time that I was here?” he asked, leaning back so that he could look in her beautiful blue eyes as he waited for an answer.
“Would you believe that I was looking for the perfect Hallmark card for just such an occasion?” she asked, looking hopeful.
“No,” he said, chuckling as he leaned in and kissed her, unable to help himself.
Her shoulders sagged with a muttered. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Well,” he said, reaching up with his free hand and ran his fingers through her hair, mussing the short damp locks, “having Mikey make the announcement after I walked in to find you curled up in Eric’s arms was definitely a way to do it.”
She closed her eyes on a wince. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Me, too,” he said with a chuckle as he kissed the tip of her nose. “Next time you have something to tell me, don’t do it in another man’s arms.”
“Well,” she said, opening her eyes and clearing her throat as she shifted on his lap, clearly trying to find the words to tell him something.
“Out with it, woman,” he said, leaning in to kiss her.
“Twins,” she blurted out, clearly taking him at his word.
“What?” he asked, not sure that he’d heard her correctly.
“Twins. We’re having twins, because apparently if you’re a twin the chances of having twins is slightly higher,” she said with an accusing glare that had him biting back a smile that would probably get him slapped.
“I see,” he murmured.
“If it makes you feel better, I don’t know what sex they’re going to be,” she said with a hopeful smile that had him nodding, admittedly still focused on the twin announcement.
“I also didn’t tell Mikey. She must have overheard me talking to Sara, who only knew because she walked in on me changing a few weeks ago and figured it out. I wanted you to be the first one to know,” she said, reaching up to trace his jaw with her fingertips.
He should have been here sooner, he realized, slowly exhaling as he thought of all the ways he’d fucked this up.
He’d left her to go back to a job that he hated, which really made a lot of fucking sense. He’d left the woman that he loved for a job that he fucking hated so that he could crash on his cousins’ couch, because he was a fucking idiot.
“Yummy?”
Shaking his head, he said, “I’m just thinking.”
“Well, could you possibly do it without that scowl on your face, because it’s kind of terrifying,” she said, running her fingers through his hair.
“Sorry,” he said, realizing that he was going to have to marry her.
“Yeah, that glare isn’t any less frightening, Yummy,” she said, scrunching her face up adorably.
“Sorry,” he repeated absently as he thought about it and realized that he didn’t have to do anything.
They didn’t need to get married, but he wanted to.
For the past month he’d been toying the idea of asking her to marry him, but he hadn’t wanted to rush this. He needed to take his time with her, to do this right, which meant that he was going to have to ignore the impulse to throw her over his shoulder and take her to New Hampshire so that he could marry her before she had a chance to run away.
Patience.
He needed to tap into the one thing that he had an abundance of to stop himself from fucking this up, because something told him that it wouldn’t end well if he tried to drag her off for a typical Bradford wedding. He needed to take his time and do this right.
Baby steps, he told himself even as he imagined how good it would feel to know that she was his.
“Is there a reason for that predatory look on your face, Yummy?” she asked, shifting on his lap so that she could reach the bottle of cold apple juice that he’d brought her only to hand it over to him so that she could grab one of the bags of junk food.
With a satisfied sigh, she placed the bag between them and began rummaging through it while he sat there, holding her drink, and unable to help but smile as he watched her.
“If you don’t want to lose a hand, I’d take it off those Twinkies, Yummy,” she drawled with a look that had him quickly dropping the Twinkies and moving his hand away from that bag before the woman glaring at the misguided appendage could tear it off and shove it up his-
Holding up her juice in offering with the hopes that she wouldn’t follow through with that threat that her eyes clearly conveyed, he said, “So, you were saying?”