Her warm welcome and words caused tears to burn my eyes. “I am, too.”
When I pulled away, there were quick hugs from Deacon and Bishop, and then a lingering one from Alexandra, whose enormous belly looked like she was ready to deliver at any moment. When I said as much, she shook her head. “I still have six weeks if you can believe it.”
“He’s going to be a very big boy.”
Alexandra smiled as she patted her stomach. “He already feels enormous when he’s kicking me.”
I then turned to a very impatient Willow who I was surprised had waited this long to give me a hug. “Wait until you see Poe. He’s huge!” she said, after she’d clung to me for several seconds.
“Thank you for taking such good care of him!”
“It was mainly Uncle Rev who took care of him, but I had to help because he was such a mess over missing you.”
I couldn’t help the laugh that erupted from me at the pint-sized girl talking about relationships like a grown woman. WhenI looked at Rev, he appeared to want to strangle his niece. “Well, I missed him pretty bad, too.”
“I figured you did.” She grinned up at me. “Did he tell you he loves you?”
“Willow!” Alexandra and Deacon admonished.
“What?” she questioned innocently. “You guys said you wondered if he did earlier.”
While Deacon and Alexandra gave Rev and me sheepish looks, I couldn’t help laughing at the situation. “Yes, he told me he loves me, and I told him I love him.”
“Are you gonna get married?” Willow asked.
Now it was my turn to be speechless. Although there had been no proposal or discussion of marriage, the idea of Rev and I living the rest of our lives together seemed to be a given. While it seemed that we knew each other down to the deepest and darkest parts, there was still a lot of relationship building we needed before we thought of marriage.
“I think it’s time we got you something to eat,” Alexandra suggested.
“Yeah, that’s a helluva good idea. Let’s stick something in her mouth to shut her up,” Deacon muttered under his breath.
Once Willow had been ushered over to the food table, Rev and I exchanged a glance. “Well, um, that was…intense,” he said.
“Very. Who would have thought we would get the marriage question already?” I said, giving a laugh to try to ease the tension.
“I meant more the inquisition by Willow.”
“Oh,” I murmured. What did he mean by that exactly? Had he been thinking of marriage? I swallowed hard at the thought.
With a smile, Rev said, “I think I could use a drink.”
“You and me both.”
He took me by the hand and led me over to the bar. This time I settled on a Corona, rather than my former buddyJack Daniels. The house band went up on stage, and it wasn’t long before they were cranking out tunes, including some rock versions of Christmas Carols.
After finishing our beers, Rev steered me over to the kitchen. The old ladies and other women had put on quite a spread full of food. “All this for me?” I asked, as I was handed a plate.
Kim grinned. “Of course. Especially since you decided to come home on the night of our annual Christmas party.”
I laughed. “Lucky me that I didn’t keep Rev gone another day.”
Sweeping a hand to her hip, she said, “Yeah, about the trip home, missy. It doesn’t usually take over a day. Just what caused you all to be so late?”
As I spooned up some lasagna, I couldn’t fight the warmth spreading across my cheeks. “We just had to stop a lot because it was so cold,” I finally answered.
“Mmm, hmm. I bet I can imagine just what kind of warming up went on too.”
“Easy there, Kim,” Rev cautioned.
