“It’s not all too much?” she asked. “You were so determined to put the ranch first, before marriage and kids.”
He shook his head. “It’s just right, Trish. Between the two of us, working side by side, we can handle anything. Nothing will suffer. Not the ranch, and definitely not these babies.” He touched her stomach.
She trusted him. She knew Brett Lemmon was a man of his word. So she threw her arms around his shoulders to pull his head down for her kiss.
But he resisted. “Trish, I don’t want to rush you. You just got divorced. And you’re pregnant. And you were determined to raise your babies alone, to not share them with anyone.”
She snorted. “We both know you wouldn’t let me do anything alone. None of my partners will.” Just as they all helped with Lucy, she knew they would all help her with the twins. “But I don’t love you because I want your help,” she said. “I love you because you give your help to me even when you don’t want what I want.”
“I just want you to be happy,” he said.
“I know, and that’s why I love you so much,” she said. “It wouldn’t matter if I’d been divorced for three years or three months. That was never a real marriage anyway.”
“So it isn’t too soon?” he asked, his dark eyes brightening with hope.
She shook her head. “I love you now, and I will always love you,” she assured him.
“I love you,” he said, “and I will always love you.” Finally, he lowered his head and kissed her, gently and deeply, with all the love he’d just professed to her.
He felt the babies shift inside her stomach.
Chuckling, he touched her belly. “And I love them, too. I can’t wait to meet them.”
She felt a sudden rushing sensation and then a sharp pain. “I don’t think you’re going to have to wait long. They’re coming.” She knew this wasn’t false labor, because her water had just broken on his freshly mopped floor. Fortunately, it wasn’t too soon now for them to come. It was actually perfect timing.
Because now they would come into the world with a mother and a father who both loved them very much.
* * *
For the firsttime in a long time, Lem Lemmon had been feeling his age. Not so much physically—he and Feisty had just finished their morning walk—as mentally. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around Nolan Stokes’s big revelation at the ranch a few days ago. Sadie had invited the lawyer to the party to find out why he’d spied on their family, and his explanation had been a shock to say the least.
Lem had another grandson and apparently three more great-grandchildren. He couldn’t wait to meet them all and get to know them. To love them.
“He’ll come around,” Sadie promised when Lem’s call to Nolan once again went to voicemail. She reached across the patio table and squeezed his hand. “He’s just proud and stubborn.”
“He’s definitely a Lemmon then,” Lem said with a chuckle. Eventually, they did all come around.
Sadie chuckled, too. “Yes, he is. Good-looking just like his grandpa.”
He grinned at her. “Are you sweet-talking me, woman?”
“I know, not my style,” she admitted.
She was more likely to call him an old fool than good-looking, but insults had once been their love language, or at least that was how Lem chose to look at their past—when he bothered to look at it at all. There was so much going on in their present, and despite their ages, they had so much to look forward to in the future.
His cell rang and he quickly swiped the screen, hoping that Nolan was finally returning his call.
“Grandpa, it’s Brett.”
He felt a faint stab of disappointment that it wasn’t Nolan. But Sadie was right; he would come around eventually. Sadie was always right.
“Hello, grandson,” Lem greeted him, his heart filling with love.
“Grandpa, Trish and I are on our way to the hospital,” Brett said, and he sounded breathless.
Then a low groan emanated from the speaker of Lem’s cell.
“The babies are coming,” Trish said.
