Page 46 of The Cowboy's Secret Babies

And they didn’t mean that the same way. She knew that. But she remembered what Charlotte had told her. And she basked in the warmth and light of his kitchen, her boys jumping and squealing all around her, and that light in his gaze; the promise of everything she’d ever wanted.

Almost everything, anyway.

But maybe that was enough.

She told herself it would have to be enough.

Chapter Ten

They spent afew days debating how they should do it. Whether they should do it up, do it quick, or try for something in between.

“I don’t know about a big thing,” Rosie told him one night while they were sitting on the couch in his Airstream, the boys tucked into bed in back. He had her feet in his lap, massaging them. Ryder took maybe too much pleasure in it every time he hit a tight spot and she tipped her head back, groaning with the kind of pleasure he normally only heard when he was inside her. She sighed as he switched what he was doing from one foot to the other. “After all, this is kind of a cart before the horse situation.”

“If you want a big party,” he said, fixing his gaze on her intently, because he didn’t like to think that she wanted something but thought she didn’t deserve it, “with the dress and the wedding party and the blowout reception with everyone you’ve ever met, then that’s what we’ll do.”

He wasn’t used to this kind of thing. He had always avoided intimacy of any kind, so already, Rosie was breaking new ground with him. They parented together. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other any time—every time—they were alone.

As far as he could tell, they were practically married already.

But Rosie had already been through a little too much on her own. He couldn’t change that. What he could do was make sure that if she wanted the whole big thing for their wedding, she would get it. He would give it to her.

And he did not choose to examine the fervency he felt when it came to that.

“Let’s just be married,” she said, and he liked the way she smiled at him then. It wasn’t that pageant smile she could trot out at a moment’s notice, the one that made him think of plastic. This one was real. It felt likehis.

Ryder was still surprised at how fervently he wanted her to be his, too.

“We can just be married,” he told her.

And there in the cozy main room of his trailer, that seemed to hum between them like heat. Like the low note of a song only the two of them knew.

That was how, the following Thursday, they dropped the boys off with their delighted grandparents. They left them with Belinda already dancing around the kitchen and teaching them her favorite songs—songs that Ryder found himself humming immediately, because she’d taught them to him, too—while Zeke was so delighted that he seemed a lot like a man in blazing good health.

Shockingly so, in fact.

Then Ryder and Rosie drove up to Livingston, an hour up the interstate, and met Wilder and Cat there.

They’d discussed that, too. What it came down to was that while Rosie loved her family, she didn’t need them at the ceremony. But Ryder couldn’t see himself doing life-altering things without Wilder.

Is this a twin thing?Rosie had asked, smiling up at him. They’d taken the boys on a long walk, clomping around in the snow on Ryder’s property. That meant they were now carrying two exhausted toddlers back to the trailer, all red-cheeked and sulky, bordering on full meltdowns—so they were keeping up a brisk pace.

Ryder didn’t find them any less cute when they were being little monsters. He thought that had to be the genetic bond doing its thing, because he’d certainly never foundother people’schildren all that adorable before.

That or he was well and truly cooked when it came to Rosie and these two small creatures they’d made. But that wasn’t news.

He’d looked at them, lower lips trembling and tantrums approaching like a storm over the mountains. Then he looked at Rosie. His sparkling-eyed, happy-looking Rosie, out here in the snow. And he couldn’t have said what it was that clutched at his chest, then.

When you’re twin, he told her with exaggerated seriousness,everything is a twin thing.

Ryder liked the way she laughed. He liked the way the breeze played with the ends of the hair she’d tucked away beneath her warm, bright hat. He liked the way the cold brought out the color in her cheeks and how she managed to be a beautiful, delicate-looking thing while also being practical and hardy.

Before Rosie, Ryder had always been under the impression that women were one or the other. Something he’d mentioned to her exactly once, and had received a nice long lecture on the topic of women, society, and expectations.

At least, he had thought then, he could pride himself on the notion that he was not a man who had to learn a lesson twice.

Or so he hoped.

In Livingston, the notorious wind was kicking hard. Rosie had worn a pretty dress beneath her coat and now, as they walked hand in hand into the registrar, she wrinkled up her nose at him. “I haven’t worn a dress in a very long time,” she told him. “And now I remember why. I canfeelthat wind.”

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