I shrugged. “Don’t think. Know it. Which means if you’re having a baby, you’re having mine.”
She tossed up her hands. “You know nothing about me!”
“I know what your pussy tastes like. I know how quick you come for me.” She gasped and flushed furiously. “Fine, then tell me something about you besides why you wax your pussy.”
She narrowed her eyes at me–while I enjoyed seeing her cheeks pinken–and finally said, “I’m a lawyer. I work at my father’s firm running thepro bonodepartment.”
“Smart,” I said, impressed.
I hadn’t even gone to college.
She shrugged off the compliment, as if she didn’t think of herself as smart.
“Why do you want a baby so bad?”
She sighed. “I have always wanted a baby. I want to be a stay at home mom. My father, as I said, has his own law firm. Biggest in the city. My mother is a prestigious cardiologist. Best in the state. Their work is their life. I grew up with nannies who tucked me in. Hugged me. I knew what I was missing, that my mother wasn’t…isn’tmaternal. My father only had me because he was trying for a boy to take over the company.”
That sucked. I couldn’t imagine a childhood without my brothers and sister playing together anddriving each other crazy and having each other’s backs. It would have been lonely… and then having uninvolved parents?
“He’s not going to give you the law firm because you’re a woman?”
She laughed. “He’s never mentioned it. Never said I was on track for partner, either. I went to law school because it was expected. It was that or be a doctor like my mother and I’m not too keen on blood. There is no underachievement as a Montgomery. None of it was my dream. It just… it just took me a while to see that the only way I’m going to get that dream is if I take it into my own hands.”
“You mean turkey baster,” I muttered.
“It’s finally time to get what I want, even if it involves a turkey baster,” she continued, ignoring my snark. “Better than my ex.”
If she’d rather have sex with a turkey baster than her ex, then that said something about how much of a tool he was.
“I know it sounds bad after all those years of studying and work to become a lawyer–”
“Ma had nine kids.” I flicked my gaze off the road for a second. “You think she’s a trad wife or whatever it’s called now?”
She frowned and thought about it. “I… I guess not.”
“Ma and Pops met at a friend’s wedding, were married and pregnant with Trig a month later. While she never had a career off the ranch, she’s worked alongside Pops in turning the Wilder Ranch into what it is today. Maybe she didn’t toss bales of hay around or dig post holes, but she drove the tractor like a proandraised all of us.”
“I have no idea how to toss a bale of hay, let alone ride a horse. I don’t even know how to saddle one. You have cattle?” she asked.
I nodded. “A thousand head.”
“The beef I’m used to is on a plate medium rare.”
“Ma’s the glue of this family. The heart of it. I don’t blame you for wanting the same.”
I couldn’t help but smile at that. I could hear the potency of my words because I believed them. I never, not once, thought less of Ma because she never wanted to become a vet or a dentist or even a fucking florist. Her career was raising nine kids and that was one hell of a job. If that was what Sage wanted, then hell, she was even more perfect than I imagined, because I wanted what my parents had. What my siblings were building. I wanted someone to merge their life with me and settle on the ranch.Make a passel of kids to run wild like I had, and with a bunch of cousins.
“You’re smart. Driven and determined. Something happened to get you to call that sperm bank,” I guessed.
“Seeing the new babies only solidified my dream. That I was waiting on a man forthreeyears to be ready to have a baby. My ex strung me along. He said law school was too much work to have one, not thathewas the onehavingthe baby. Trying for the corner office took too much time.” She sighed. “My ex always had a reason.”
“Then, after all that, he cheated.”
She nodded. “With his paralegal, who worked a few floors below me. Got her pregnant.”
I blinked, processed what she was saying.
“Wait. Youworkwith the woman your ex cheated on you with?”
