If it had been up to her, she would have checked both items off her list long before the age of thirty-three, but Benji seemed a little slow on the uptake in that particular regard.
For a romantic man, a man who often surprised her with sweet gestures and heart-warming references to their future, Benji was eerily silent when it came to actually getting engaged. And for Sierra, it was souncouthto nag a man about a proposal. She wanted him to propose because he loved her and wanted that future as much as she did, not because she had whined until he’d given in to her like so many couples she knew.
So, she hadn’t said anything about wanting to get married. Not a single word – and it hadn’t always been easy for her.
But as she looked at the pregnancy test in her hand, as the reality of what was already growing inside of her dawned slowly, she couldn’t find any regret either. She wanted this future, and she wanted it with Benji – desperately.
But knowing it and wanting it didn’t stop her nerves. What would he say? What would he thinkand feel?
His childhood, his past, was something he never talked about, and while he might have seen Sierra as permanent, while he might occasionally reference all those things that couples did – kids and the house they’d buy and what their future would look like – he hadn’t taken those steps forward. So, sometimes, when she was feeling particularly insecure, Sierra doubted him. Not that he loved her. She was secure in his love. But that he wanted the same things that she did.
And a baby wouldn’t give him the option. She knew that to be true as well as she knew her own name. Because Benji was a man who took responsibility for his actions. He looked after his own – unplanned or otherwise.
So, even through the shock of discovery, Sierra was nervous. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, centring herself when the world suddenly felt so off kilter.
She took her time, but as soon as she was steady, she pushed to her feet and turned to face the mirror over the sink. She looked the same. She had the same long, honey-blonde hair, tanned skin, and her dad’s brown eyes. But she was intrinsically different too, and she thought it so strange how one tiny fragment of knowledge, a little information pathway in the brain, could drastically change how a woman saw herself. How she saw the world …
Everything was the same.
And yet nothing would ever be the same again.
Overwhelmed by the immensity of the shift, Sierra laughed. She shook her head, placed one hand over her flat stomach, said, ‘There’s no point in delaying the inevitable …’
She knew Benji’s schedule as well as she knew her own and so went down to the barn. On those days when he didn’t lead the afternoon and evening trail rides, he was either working on the barn’s endless to-do list or giving lessons to any resort guests who’d booked.
When she arrived, she saw him standing in the sanded arena with Spirit, one of their resort horses, on a lead rope. A little boy who couldn’t have been more than seven sat in the saddle. He was dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, and one of the resort’s cowboy hats. His little hands gripped the saddle horn tightly. His mom – Jamie, if Sierra remembered correctly from check-in – stood on the sidelines, filming the ride on her phone.
She smiled as Sierra came and stood beside her. Without stopping her filming, she said, ‘Codi was terrified at first. Didn’t want to get on but Benji somehow turned it into this huge adventure, and nowI’mterrified that I’m going to have to pay for a kid whose hobby is horseback riding.’
Sierra laughed good-naturedly. ‘I can imagine horses add up quickly in the city.’
Jamie rolled her eyes playfully. ‘I’m not even going to think about it unless I have to.’
‘That’s probably wise,’ Sierra teased in return. She stayed for the last fifteen minutes of the lesson, too distracted by her need to share the news with Benji to leave.
She watched as Benji patiently showed Codi how to hold the reins and then gently encouraged the kid to release his death grip on the saddle horn and give it a try. When Codi listened, when he picked up the reins and held them, his face comically frozen as if waiting for something terrible to happen, Benji made a huge deal out of it. ‘Dude, you’re riding a horse all by yourself!’
Slowly, Codi’s posture relaxed. He smiled, and with a small, self-conscious shrug, said, ‘Yeah. It’s kinda easy,’ to Benji.
Benji only laughed, but by the time he led Spirit back to the arena gate and the mounting block, Codi’s grin was huge. ‘Mom, did you see me?’ he shouted. ‘I rode all by myself!’
‘I did, honey! You did so good!’ Jamie gushed.
‘Benji showed me how!’
‘Did you say thank you to Benji?’
Codi turned his beaming smile on Benji. ‘Thanks, Benji. This was cool.’
‘No problem, little dude. If you want to ride any time you’re here, you ask your mom to tell the front desk to ask for Benji, okay?’
‘’Kay. I will.’
Because he was too small to reach the mounting block, Benji helped Codi down, and as the little boy ran to his mom and walked away, chattering excitedly, Sierra’s heart settled.
She allowed herself the nerves because this baby was unplanned, and in her mind, anyone who wasn’t nervous about having a baby – but especially one they hadn’t prepared for – probably didn’t know what they were getting into. She had been there for Mav when Poppy had been an infant, and it had been a baptism by fire.
But beneath the nerves, Sierra knew absolutely that this was her path: Benji, a bunch of babies, and the ranch. They’d just done it out of order. If the control freak in her, that little voice in her head that told her she’d diverted from the plan, was loud, she purposefully silenced it. She wanted this baby. She would adjust.
