Page 12 of Autumn Feud With The Mountain Man (Ozark Mountain Men Falling For Love #1)

Thatcher

Seven years later.

Shelby groaned and shifted her belly.

That was my cue to treat her like a princess.

I rubbed her swollen feet and rumbled, “You know he’s going to be worth it.”

My woman was eight months pregnant and ready to have this baby.

We already had two girls, and the ultrasound told us this would be our first boy. We were going to call him Walter, after my grandfather, and Wilhem after her grandfather. So, he’d be Walter Wilhelm Woods.

That was a fancy-ass name for a country boy.

But I’d married myself a fancy-ass woman, so I’d known we weren’t going to name him something common like Bubba or Oakley.

Our two girls came running in, with Bandit on their heels. He was getting a little creaky in the joints these days, but he was still going strong.

Lizzie, our oldest—named after Shelby’s best friend, of course—told us, “Aunt Lizzie’s here!”

She loved having a dopple-ganger, and she thought her mom’s best friend was way cooler than either of us could ever be.

I knew it was just because ‘Aunt Lizzie’ fed them sweets when we weren’t around.

Shelby started to get to her feet, but I shook my head and ordered her to stay grounded. “No, ma’am. Get your ass back on the bed. Lizzie can come to you.”

And two seconds later, Liz was at the bedroom door. “Knock-knock. Can I come in?”

I stepped aside and left the room to give the two women some privacy. I knew how it went.

They needed some girl time, which meant gossip time.

Our youngest, Ella, ran and jumped onto my lap as soon as I settled down on the couch.

Bandit padded over to join us.

“You didn’t want to hang out with the girls?” I asked.

She shook her head and wrapped her tiny arms around my neck. “I didn’t want you to get lonely.”

My heart melted completely.

That’s something they don’t tell you. The second you become a father, everything changes. All the things you thought were priorities shift.

“Honey, I wasn’t lonely. You can go hang out with your mom if you want.”

She shook her head. “No. Tell me a story.”

So while the love of my life caught up with her best friend, and my eldest daughter listened in, picking up the ways of womenfolk, my youngest sat on my lap and listened with rapt attention as I started a new tale.

“Deep in the forest, hidden away, is a wild wood. And in that wild wood, the critters live. First you have the dragonflies,” Ella was currently obsessed with them, “Then you have the butterflies. And of course, the damselflies. So one day, Jimmy the Dragonfly was buzzing through the woods, and you’ll never guess what he found… ”

I told her the story until she got sleepy in my arms.

Then I got sleepy, too. And we both took a nap as the sounds of Shelby and Lizzie laughing drifted through the walls.

Could life ever be more perfect than this? I didn’t think so.