“Oh, no!” Bo disagreed. “That’s Ophelia and Jake’s job. They own the winery. Y’all can bring chicken eggs.”
“Count it as a promise.” Knox grinned. “Now, tell me, how do you want your acreage? In a rectangle or a square?”
“I’m thinking that since we’ve designed a sprawling ranch-style house, we’ll want it rectangular. How many feet across the front of five acres wide and two deep is that?” Bo asked.
“There’s a little more than two hundred feet across one side of an acre.” Lottie stopped and did the math in her head. “That means you will have four hundred feet on each end, and a thousand feet across the long end.”
“That sounds great. Like Bo said, we need room for…” Maverick paused.
“Our kids to run and play. We might even install a small swimming pool in a few years, and definitely a barn to store stuff in before that,” she finished for him. “We are waiting for Mother’s Day to make the big announcement, but we are pregnant, and evidently, I got the twins gene because we’re having two at once. We want plenty of running room for our children, and we can’t thank you enough for letting us pick out our place first.”
“And giving us the piece of land that we want,” Maverick said. “But now it’s time to talk money. How much is five acres as opposed to ten?”
“You are the only ones in the family who don’t have a real house. So, consider this your wedding gift,” Knox answered.
“Well, damn!” Bo laughed. “We should have said we wanted fifteen acres.”
“More than ten would have cost you,” Knox teased. “And congratulations on the babies. Rae won’t have a thing on you now.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Maverick said.
“Thank you isn’t enough, but we’ll make it up to you some way,” Bo added. “And, Brother, Rae got her two girls when they were already sleeping all night and potty trained. I don’t know how Mama did it with two sets of twins in only a year,” Bo said.
“My mother said one set was a handful,” Knox said, chuckling, “but I loved having a brother my age and one that was a little older.”
“Actually, I’m glad we aren’t having triplets,” Maverickadded. “At least for this first time. Three might be nice next time around.”
Bo air slapped him on the arm. “Five babies, all under the age of three? Who’s going to help run the bar?”
Maverick scooted over and wrapped his arms around her. “We’ll turn the storage room into a nursery and hire a nanny. Or we will hire a cute little bartender, and you can be a stay-at-home mommy.”
“Storage room and nanny, yes. But cute little bartender…” She shot him a dirty look. “Over my dead body.”
Maverick laughed. “I didn’t figure that would float too well.”
Building a new home from scratch, having babies, and planning a big family—all things that Lottie had dreamed about more than once, but had completely given up on after her last relationship went down the tubes.
Later that afternoon, Lottie looked back over her shoulder and watched Knox close the gate and reset the alarm code. “I don’t want to leave,” she muttered under her breath.
Because you love this place, or because you are falling in love with Knox?the niggling voice in her head asked.
“Maybe a little of both,” she answered, “and I’m still waiting for that other shoe to drop.”
“I love my work at Swan Song Estates,” Knox said as he got into the truck, “but I already miss this place. It’s my first home that’s not on wheels since the tornado wiped out our house on the farm. And to be honest, that was Brodie’s, not mine.”
“I’m trying to picture what it will look like with ten more homes out here,” Lottie said.
“So am I, and…” He paused and turned out onto the highway headed toward Nocona.
“And what?” Lottie asked.
“At first, I thought maybe I would extend it to a few more, but now I’m thinking that will be all that we offer. I don’t want to get so fenced in that it scares the squirrels and deer away…” Another long silence. “And I want lots of room for children.”
“Folks are going to say that you got wedding fever from Tripp and baby fever from Bo and Maverick.” Lottie wasn’t sure she had not been afflicted with the same thing. That’s why the trip to El Paso would be a good thing.
“Maybe the baby fever, but not the wedding,” Knox said. “I was determined not to let Aunt Bernie use me for a statistic, and then this gorgeous woman sat down beside me and asked me to be her fake boyfriend.”
“Oh, really?” Lottie giggled. “What did you think of that?”
