AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You want some coffee?” He asked the question slow and deliberate.
“Yes. It is okay for me to have a single caffeinated beverage at this stage of the pregnancy. I looked it up.”
“Okay then,” he said, opening the door and ushering her inside.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in his house. Maybe when she was a kid? Back before it was his. When his dad had still been here. Maybe her dad had brought her over to discuss some business? It was a foggy memory. She would have been maybe four or five.
The place was...rustic.
Not hugely messy, but she could just tell that it wasn’t all that lived-in. It was a huge house, and she bet Gus didn’t make use of half the rooms in it.
They walked into the kitchen, and she stopped.
There was a long wooden table with benches at it, and the tabletop was covered in paperwork, envelopes, maps, all kinds of things. Like it hadn’t actually been cleared off in weeks.
“Find a spot,” he said, gesturing to the debris.
She did, down at the end.
He brought her a little blue speckled camp mug full to the brim with piping hot coffee.
“I need cream and sugar,” she said.
“I could stick my finger in it?”
If she hadn’t felt so tense she might’ve found that riotously funny, as she stared up into his completely unsmiling, craggy face.
“No thanks, Gus,” she said. “We wouldn’t want to oversweeten it. I’ll just take regular sugar.”
He grunted, went to the fridge and opened it up, grabbed a carton of half-and-half and put it down in front of her. Then he did the same with a bag of sugar.
“You don’t have a sugar shaker?”
“I do not,” he said.
“Spoon?”
He opened up the silverware drawer, grabbed a spoon and chucked it to her. She caught it, then took a small scoop of sugar out of the bag, put it into the cup and stirred, putting half-and-half over that and watching it bloom into a milky flower.
“So the wedding...” she started. “Actually, the whole marriage. Why do we need to getmarried?”
He leaned against the counter, the muscles in his forearms shifting. “Alaina Sullivan, I have known you since you were born. Which means you’ve known me since you were born. You oughtta know, I would never get a woman pregnant and not marry her.”
“Really?”
He frowned. “You can ask me that?”
“I don’t know, Gus. I don’t really know anything about your personal life.”
He was...mysterious. He wasn’t a player, not like his brothers. He didn’t go out much. It was common to go to Smokey’s and see Brody and Lach, and before they were in relationships, Tag and Hunter too.
But Gus kept to himself.
Hecouldbe fun.
During the annual Game Day on the ranch, he played just the same as everyone.
“Because I don’t have one. Not at Four Corners, I don’t, and not in Pyrite Falls. I don’t screw around in my own backyard. But I guaran-damn-tee that if a woman contacted me and said that she was pregnant with my baby, I would be on the way to get her and take her straight to town hall. I don’t shirk my responsibilities.”
