Page 115 of The Coppersmith Farmhouse (Jamison Valley 1)
“Huh. I’m not telling.”
I laughed into his bare chest.
“We need to make a deal, Freckles. No more winter sleepovers. Have them when there isn’t snow on the ground so I can take off and go camping. Avoid the torture.”
My laughter continued. “I can do that.”
“And we’re putting a maximum female capacity in place. No more than a four to one ratio, women to men,” he said. “Includes kids.”
“So, I’ve got some baby news,” I said when my laughing subsided. “I hope you’re excited. I am.”
His body tightened, causing me to jerk my arm off his torso and hold it in mid-air.
“You’re pregnant?” he asked.
“Huh?” I said. “Oh, no. Not me. Maisy. Maisy’s pregnant. And Everett dumped her on Christmas. Then he asked her to have an abortion. Can you believe it?!”
He didn’t answer. He just stared at the ceiling with a clenched jaw.
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I knew he wasn’t an Everett fan but I didn’t think he’d get this upset. I put both hands on his pecs and shook his chest. “Jess? What?”
“I thought your baby news was you telling me you were pregnant,” he said.
“Ah . . . no.” I replayed the last minute in my head.
He’d thought I was telling him that I was pregnant and his whole body had tensed. Every muscle. Did he not want kids? I already had Rowen but that didn’t mean I hadn’t thought about having more kids one day.
He was great with Rowen and would be great with a child of his own. I wouldn’t push him into having kids if he didn’t want to but I would be disappointed. I had been an only child and I didn’t want that for Roe.
“Do you not want kids?” I asked.
“What? Where the fuck did you get that?”
“Well, you got all tense. And you just said you thought it was because I was telling you I was pregnant. So . . . there,” I said, waving my hand in the air.
He sighed and relaxed. “I tensed because I was holding back from rolling you over and celebrating. If you were having my baby, I’d do some serious work to show you how happy that would make me. But we can’t have sex tonight because there’s a hoard of girls downstairs. So I tensed. And then you said it wasn’t you.”
“So you want to have kids?” I asked.
He brought his fingers up to my face and ran them across my jaw. Then his hand traveled over my hair and to the back of my neck.
“Baby, the way we’re going, I’ve got a kid. She’s downstairs. And yeah. Adding a couple more to our family is something I sure as hell want to do someday.”
My heart swelled so big I was sure it was going to burst. Jess had said a lot of wonderful things to me before. Saying I had true beauty. Saying he loved me. But saying that Rowen was his kid topped them all.
It was everything.
“I love you, Jess,” was all I could say as a huge smile spread on my face.
“I take it you’re good with having a couple more babies?” he asked, grinning.
“I love you, Jess,” I repeated.
I was definitely okay with having a couple of Jess’s babies.
“Stop saying that, Georgia. I just told you I can’t fuck you. Stop making me want to.”
