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“My boobs hurt, I’m tired and a little nauseous. It was why I booked an appointment with my doctor when I went to Denver earlier today for that meeting with the school board. Figured I may as well kill two birds with one stone. I had suspicions that I might be. And Pasha said that those were definite signs of being pregnant. But I didn’t want to get your hopes up until it was confirmed. But … “ She shrugged. “It’s confirmed. We’re going to have a little cowboy or cowgirl in about eight months.”

“Rancher,” he corrected, dropping his brows and mouth into a scowl for a half-second, before breaking into a big grin again.

“Right, rancher.”

“So eight months?” he asked, sitting back down to face the tree and drawing her into his embrace again between his legs. His palms fell to her flat stomach and her hands covered his. “About that. I’m roughly five weeks along. So … baby will be born late January. But an ultrasound will give us a more definitive date.”

“And when do we get one of those?”

“We’ll have one around eleven weeks, when they can hear the heartbeat, then another around twenty weeks, which is when we can find out if we’re having a cowboy or cowgirl.”

“Rancher.”

She giggled. She loved to tease him and call him cowboy, even though if someone else called him cowboy, she was the first to correct them and say he was a rancher.

“Do you want to find out?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I’m open to the surprise, or to finding out. We can make that decision closer to the day. Though, on my drive home today I kept envisioning a little girl with wild, dark wavy hair like mine and bright blue eyes like yours running through the field with the goats and an enormous grin on her face.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “But then I also saw a little boy with dark hair and blue eyes in overalls using an overturned bucket to climb into the goat stall and get up to all kinds of mischief.”

“Well, we’re definitely not stopping at one kid. So with any luck, we’ll have both of those kids. Or, we’ll have a house full of boys, or a house full of girls.”

“Which we will definitely not raise the way my parents raised their house full of girls.”

“And, I got guns and acreage where they’ll never find the bodies.”

“Of our children?” she asked, shock in her voice as she craned her neck around to face him, horror in her brown eyes.

He shook his head and grinned. “No, of the people that try to hurt them.”

“Oh.” She nodded and turned back to face the tree. “And I’m very good at shoveling.”

“That you are.” Chuckling, he pried his hands out from beneath hers and gently, this time, slid back from where he sat. He laid her down on the blanket and covered her with his body. “This won’t hurt the baby?”

She grinned up at him and looped her arms around his neck. “Not in the slightest. Happy mom, happy baby. And this makes mom very happy.”

He cradled her face in his hands, brushing her wild hair off her cheeks. “You make me happy. This life makes me happy and the fact that we’re having a baby, I didn’t think I could ever be this happy.”

Her swallow was hard and fresh tears welled up in her eyes. “Me too. I love you, cowboy.”

He smiled down at her. “And I love you, and I always will.”