With holiday season in full swing, the office kind of shut down.

It was our slowest time of the year, and I wanted to let everyone work remotely from back home with their families. Our company wasn’t just a business, we really looked at our employees like they were our brothers and sisters. I wasn’t going to be the type of boss who made people stay until five o’clock on Christmas Eve.

But down time also meant busy time for me. For two weeks, I’d been up and down the East Coast, attending seminars and visiting with other leading horse researchers to get some insight for our company and the practices that we put into place.

Which meant that since before Thanksgiving, I’d only seen Blake maybe three times. She’d spent Thanksgiving in Texas with Carolyn and her family, and I’d called her that night to tell her all the ways I was thankful for her.

When we were together, those visits had been spent in bed, working out all of our passion and missing each other. I’d stayed awake long after she’d gone to sleep, scratching her back as the moonlight painted white streaks in her light hair.

I missed her so much, and the phone calls and text messages hadn’t been enough. So as my car rolled back into town, I didn’t even bother stopping at my rental house. Nope, I headed straight for the beach highway, straight for the woman I loved.

The tires on my car were probably still rolling when I jumped out and bounded up the steps, running for Blake. Before I even got to the top step, the door was thrown open and there she stood.

Blue eyes, happy and twinkling, stared me down. I couldn’t wait another minute to taste those full, peach-colored lips. Maybe it was because I hadn’t seen her in a few weeks, but God, she was practically glowing.

I grab for her, picking her up and kissing her as her legs come around my hips. Walking us into the house, I press her up against the wall as I did the night that the injured horse laid outside her porch in the sand.

“God, I missed you.” My hands explore her face like I haven’t seen her in years.

It’s true. My body has ached for her, needed her touch and smell so badly that I’d lie awake at night, willing her to fill the other side of the bed.

“I guess that means you’re getting used to my snoring,” she jokes as I put her down.

“I did miss that heavy breathing in my ear at two a.m.” Rhett bounds up to me, licking at my boots. “Hey, big guy … yes, I missed you too.”

Blake kisses me again, a peck on my mouth. “Are you hungry? How was the drive home?”

I stretch my neck and pull at it. “Tiring and long, but I’m happy to be home. Happy to come home to you. I ate some fast food on the road. But I could use a massage.”

She raises an eyebrow at me. “It just so happens that I am an expert masseuse. But only if you come into the bedroom.”

God yes, that sounded like just the medicine I needed right now. Dropping my bag in the foyer, I take her outstretched hand and follow her up the stairs to the bedroom.

“What have you been up to while I was gone?” I rub her arm with my fingers as we walk.

“Lots of last minute fourth quarter filing, and just getting people’s books in order before the holidays. I signed two new authors for book covers, so I’m having a ton of fun working on those. Just missing you, basically.”

We made it to her master bedroom, an oasis of beige and white that always instantly relaxed me. It was her sanctuary, she’d told me, but it had also become mine. The main reason being, it had her.

The minute we walked in, I couldn’t help but bundle up all of the excited energy I have inside, and throw her on the bed.

“God, you’re gorgeous.” I frame her face with my hands and just look into those pale blue eyes.

Blake’s face gets serious, her smile slipping a little. And then she sits up. “I have to … tell you something.”

The worst comes to mind, she’s sick or she doesn’t want to be with me. My heart begins to gallop, and it’s telling that this woman holds the fate of my soul in her hands. Blake Sayer can make me fly, or make me fall, in the matter of seconds. But maybe that’s how love worked, you weren’t in control of your emotions or feelings anymore. The person you fell in love with dictated that.

“Are you … okay?” My voice was tight.

She smiled, a small gesture only to herself. “More than, actually … I’m pregnant.”

I was about to say thank God after she said she was more than okay, but then she’d paused. And she … she was pregnant? My mind went completely blank for a second, and then a million short words crossed my mind, like it was malfunctioning.

How? When? Mine? Happy. Shocked. Scared.

Every single thing a person could experience in terms of emotional range, I think was going through me. My jaw was hanging open, and I don’t think I’d blinked in a minute because my eyes began to burn.

“Carson?” Blake’s voice snapped me back to reality, her eyes searching mine for any sort of response.

Pushing past all of the chatter in my brain, I closed my eyes and truly dug down to find the one thing I felt. And when I focused, and really came up with it … I was so purely happy that there wasn’t even a word for it.

“I can’t believe it.” A million-watt smile split my face, and I hugged her against me, hard.

“Does that mean you’re … not mad?” She laughed into my ear.

Holding her shoulders and backing her up, I studied every aspect of her face. My eyes tracked down to her stomach, which looked no different and so different all at once.

“Mad? Blake … maybe I’m a little shocked, but I could never be mad. I love you, and it wasn’t planned, but I plan on a future with you. My life and yours were intertwined way before this. Anything else, this pregnancy, is an added bonus.”

We just stared at each other with big goofy smiles on our faces for a long time.

“I can’t believe I’m going to be a mom.” She looked at her stomach as if we could see or feel the tiny person inside yet.

“I’m going to have to read so many dad books.” I laughed.

“You’re going to be an incredible father.” Blake’s hand meets my cheek, and I can’t help but lean into her touch.

“Where will we put the nursery?” The thought that we don’t live together pops into my head.

She lies back on the bed, looking at her ceiling.

“How about for right now, we don’t worry about the details? I feel like, for the past ten years, we’ve been mired in them, obsessing over them. Right now, let’s just bask in the glorious present, and be happy for exactly what we have and who we are in this very moment.”

The girl I’d once known, the fly by the seat of her pants impulsive child, had just made a reappearance. And I could not be happier.

“That sounds like the most perfect of plans to me.”

Lying back with her, I pushed an arm under her head, and laid a hand on her stomach.

Together, we looked up at the ceiling for hours, quietly thinking about the life we had just made, and the one we were about to start as a family.