But Wren just gave Tommy an easy smile. “I plan to.”
Tommy gave her a long look, and Grant braced himself for the words that might come out of his mouth. If he got too disrespectful, he was going to have to say something, and that could get ugly. Grant didn’t want ugly. Not only was he Tommy Kincaid—father and father-in-law to a lot of his friends—but they made good burgers. And when he wasn’t insulting Grant’s girlfriend, he genuinely liked the guy.
“I’m glad to hear it” was all Tommy said when he finally spoke. “You pretty up the place.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Lydia yelled from the hallway to the kitchen. “Oh hey, Grant. You calling it a night already?”
“Yeah, we’ve got plans.” Plans to go to bed, judging by Wren’s sleepy expression.
“Anything fun?”
“No, we made plans to be boring and not fun at all.” When she paused in the act of handing him the slip to sign to give him a look, he chuckled. “Hey, I meant to ask you earlier, but I swear you never stand still. How’s the baby?”
She laughed and put her hand over her stomach, which still looked pretty flat to Grant. “So far so good.”
Then she knocked her knuckles on the wooden bar and winked.
Once they were outside, Grant took Wren’s hand and they walked slowly down the block to where he’d parked.
“I’m sorry about Tommy,” he said. “He can be an ass sometimes.”
“He can. But I bet under that crusty shell, he’s worried about you.”
“Maybe. I mean, I know he cares about us all in his own way, but that doesn’t give him the right to call you out like that. It was rude.”
She laughed. “Sometimes I think he doesn’t really know how loud he is.”
“All the Kincaids are loud. When Jackson was born, he had a cry that was probably just a few decibels shy of shattering glass.”
“It’ll be fun, Lydia and Jamie having babies around the same time.”
He laughed. “Yeah, you can say that because you won’t be trying to fight fires with the sleep-deprived dads of those two babies.”
After unlocking the Jeep, which he’d remote-started once they were in sight of it, he helped her in and went around to the driver’s side. As he got in, he was struck by the sudden visual of trying to hoist a very pregnant Wren into the passenger seat.
That wouldn’t really work. And her car was ancient. If—when—they had a baby, he wanted them so wrapped up in safety cages and airbags nothing could hurt them. They could trade hers in toward a newer family-friendly and very highly safety rated model.
“Grant?”
He shook away the thoughts and climbed into his seat. “Sorry.”
“You looked a million miles away. What were you thinking about?”
Looking into her blue eyes, he almost said it. I was imagining you very pregnant with our first child and shopping for a minivan.
“Oh, nothing,” he said out loud. “Talking about work made me think of something I need to do. That’s all.”
“You were smiling.”
“With Aidan and Scott having babies, I was thinking—” At the last second, he chickened out again. “It might be fun to have a baby shower at the house for them when it’s almost time. Just the guys.”
She smiled. “That does sound fun. If you need any help planning it, just let me know. And...I’ll call Olivia.”
Laughing, he put on his seat belt. But then he realized they hadn’t talked about what came next. “So, where to?”
She rolled her head against the seat to look at him. “I’m exhausted. And you have to work early and I have to do laundry in the morning, so I should probably go home.”
Every time she said home and didn’t mean his apartment felt like a fresh papercut to the heart, but he smiled and put the Jeep in gear. “I thought you were going to fall asleep at the table if I didn’t get you out of there.”
