Page 51 of The Cowboy's Christmas Baby

And until this very second, he hadn’t realized how much he regretted not being a part of Iris’s birth. He’d missed out on the months of anticipation, and the labor and delivery. He hadn’t gotten to bring her home from the hospital or experience the terror-filled days of learning what it meant to have complete responsibility for a fragile human life. He hadn’t gotten to see a lot of her firsts, either—the first time she smiled, the first time she rolled over, the first time she sat up on her own. If he had one regret where she was concerned, it was that she wasn’t the result of two people loving each other.

Not the way this new baby would be.

“Are you okay with this?” Tate asked, sounding anxious, no longer laughing, and he realized he was ruining her big Christmas Moment.

His head cleared. “Am Iokaywith this this?” He lifted her off her feet and spun her around. “Sweetheart,okaydoesn’t begin to scratch the surface as to how I feel about this.” He kissed her until they were both short of breath. “What was the nursing home all about, though?” he asked once he was sure he could speak without his voice cracking. “I hope there’ll be a few more stages between high school and that.”

Tate placed her hands on his face and rubbed her thumb against his scarred cheek, something he noticed she did whenever she was pulling her feelings together in an attempt to explain them.

“The stages in between won’t be ours. Those belong to Iris and whoever this is,” she said, dropping one hand to her stomach. “They’ll have to go out on their own at some point and we’ll have to accept it. It’s where we are with our families, right now.”

Where they were with his family was good, but with her parents wasn’t great. Miles found it hard to get past the way they’d checked out on Tate and Ford, as if they’d only had one child who mattered—but that relationship was between the Shannahans, and he’d mind his own business.

“You have no idea how much I love you right now,” he said, turning back to the moment. “But did you really need to send me out in a snowstorm for three hours just to put on a T-shirt?”

“I trusted you to have enough sense to get off the roads if you didn’t think it was safe.” Tate hugged him around the waist and kissed him. “There might be something special in the bedroom for you this evening to make up for it,” she added. She looked at him in that way that made him feel 100 percent pretty and like the luckiest man in the world. She didn’t need to say it to let him know he how much he was loved.

Three Dog Night launched into “Joy to the World” at the tops of their lungs. Iris dropped the stereo remote. Her startled expression had them both laughing.

“Merry Christmas,” Tate said.

Best Christmas ever.

The End