Page 54 of The Cowboy's Secret Babies

Something he made sure to say at a big Stark family dinner, just to see all the cousins wince. It was glorious.

But later, when he found himself with the three Stark brothers, they all gave him a chin lift. He raised his in return.

“Long as she’s happy,” Noah said, all tough guy.

“Spectacularly happy,” Logan added. “Not just run-of-the-mill, everyday happy. This needs to be on a different level.”

“So happy it hurts,” Wyatt agreed.

The old Ryder might have laughed and told them to take their best shot. But this Ryder knew that these were men who took family seriously. Whatever it might look like to outsiders, they’d done their best to take care of Rosie and the boys.

That meant something to Ryder. It mattered.

“I appreciate that I have you three to keep me on the straight and narrow,” he told them, seriously. “It’s good to know that if I mess up, you’ll be right there.”

“Depend on it,” Wyatt said, but he grinned.

And when they all finished slapping each other on the back, Ryder was pretty sure that he was considered an honorary Stark.

Just as long as Rosie stayed happy, that was.

He encouraged Rosie to open that bookstore. “Why not build it in one of the empty outbuildings up at the lodge?” he asked. “Make that the permanent store. And while you’re at it, why not have a movable, pop-up store? Isn’t that the big thing these days?”

Maybe he shouldn’t have brought up the subject while they were packing up her house to move her and the boys into that Airstream with him. She looked at him over a pile of boxes and shook her head.

“You never seem like a dreamy type. And yet.”

“All I’m saying is that there’s going to be an Airstream available soon. It might as well be yours.”

“I just don’t think—”

“Baby,” he said, and calling her that always made her melt. He could see the way her eyes went unfocused. “Do you remember signing a prenup?”

Those gorgeous blue eyes of hers focused, then narrowed. “You know that I didn’t.”

“Then it’s all your money too.” He shrugged. “Might as well start spending it.”

When she made that face, he went over to pull her into his arms and lay kisses all over her face.

“It’s okay to have dreams,” he told her. “We’re having them together this time. It’s not going to be you on your own in this or anything else. It’sus. I understand if you don’t believe that. But you’ll see. I’m not going anywhere.”

She sighed against his mouth. “I do believe you. I really do.”

He tipped her face back and smiled down at her. “Good,” he said. “Because while we’re talking about the future and building out the things that are important to us, why not build out our family, too?”

Rosie looked up at him, and at first she looked something like stunned. Then, as she continued to stare at him, a wild kind of warmth seemed to take her over. He watched it dawn in her eyes like she was making her own sunshine.

“Really?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. “You want another baby?”

And he understood that once again, they were going back to the beginning. He wasn’t going to knock her up this time and leave her to it. They were going to talk about this. They were going to have a baby or they weren’t, but it was going to be something they did together. Every step of the way.

They just kept making this brand-new.

“Baby,” he told her, his voice low and dead serious, “I want everything. And this time, I’m going to be there for every single moment.”

Later, he would maintain that he got her pregnant then and there.

Because by the time they broke ground on his land in April, when the ground was a little less frozen, she’d already missed her period. And they were going to have to wait a while to be sure, but they were both pretty convinced that it was another set of twins.

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