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“Can you email me a copy?” Mom asks.
“Me too!” Aspen agrees and pretty soon all of my sisters are chiming in to say they want a chart of the growth of my baby.
I cover my face with my hands. “Can’t any of you pretend to be normal in front of a guest at least?” I mumble.
“He’s no guest, sis.” Lyric throws his arm around my shoulders. “According to your mom, baby daddies are family.”
I shove him off of me. “Can everyone please stop using the phrase baby daddy?”
“Why?” Lilac glances back and forth between me and Cole. “Cole is the baby’s daddy. Or is there another man we should know about?”
“I didn’t know about this man,” Aspen grumbles.
“And I didn’t know you’re a big fat idiot who actually thought Lyric would—”
She shoves her palm in my face. “We don’t say her name,” she hisses.
Dad lumbers into the room with Rowan on his heels. “What were you two up to?” I ask in a desperate attempt to change the topic of conversation from baby daddies and pregnancy charts.
Dad winks. “Manly business.”
Mom snorts. “What kind of manly business can you conduct in the backyard? It’s too cold to grill.”
He kisses the tip of her nose. “None of your business, wife of mine.”
I expect Mom to lay into him. She hates it when she doesn’t know every single thing every person in town is up to. Thus, the whole knowing I’m pregnant thing. But she smirks at him. “We’ll talk later.”
“Ew. She’s going to use sex to force him to tell her everything. Save me.” Ashlyn buries her face in her hands.
Rowan picks her up from the sofa and pulls her into his arms. “I’ll save you.”
Ashlyn bites her lip and bats her eyelashes at him. “Will you wear a coat of mail and carry a sword?”
He leans close to whisper in her ear.
“What did you say? I couldn’t hear you,” Juniper says.
Ashlyn sticks her tongue out at Juniper. “Way to ruin a moment.”
“The only reason I’m here is to make fun of my sisters and eat some homemade grub. You can at least make it worth my while to leave my animals.”
“You do know the animals at the wildlife refuge aren’t your animals, don’t you?”
Juniper is in charge of caring for the animals at the wildlife refuge outside of town. The animals are mostly wild animals people thought would make great pets. But when they grow out of their cute and cuddly phase, they become dangerous animals and often end up at the refuge where Juniper coddles them.
Juniper frowns at Ashlyn. “They are my babies.”
“Yeah. Because bobcats are such cuddly babies.”
Cole tugs on my hand and electricity shoots up my arm toward my neck while my entire body warms at his touch. I yank out of his hold. I don’t need to have warm and tingly feelings about a man who’s going to leave me.
“Can we talk?”
“It depends. Do you want my entire family to hear our conversation?”
He glances over at my family who – sure enough – have halted whatever they were doing to observe us. He swallows. “We’ll talk later.”
I nod, despite having no intention of talking to him later. I may not have been very successful at avoiding him this past week, but I can do better. Besides, he now has the community center project to work on. Hopefully, he’ll be too busy to play hide and seek with me.
