Page 36 of Hard to Love
Cal’s hand immediately covered Delaney’s lower belly.
Greer’s right wrist went limp, and coffee splashed to thefloor. “You’re…? No…no way.”
“We aren’t telling anyone yet,” Cal said, his hand protectively wrapped around what Greer could now see was Delaney’s subtle baby bump.
Greer hitched her chin in their direction. “Then you’d better stop with the hand over the secret thing.”
“Shit.” But he didn’t move his hand a millimeter.
“How far along?” Greer asked, grabbing a paper towel and wiping up the mess.
“Not quite twelve weeks.” Delaney patted Cal’s hand, pressed a kiss to his cheek, then stood.
“And?” Greer said.
“And what?”
“How are you feeling?”
“Scared out of my mind. Like I have no idea what I’m doing.” Delaney chuckled as she said it but then dropped back to an empty chair, thunking her coffee cup to the table and bowing her head. “Cal, what were we thinking?”
Quickly, he crouched down in front of Delaney’s chair and lifted her face. “We were thinking we love each other. We were thinking it might be better to do this sooner rather than later.”
Her cheeks pale, Delaney looked over his shoulder at Greer. “We were thinking we’d better pee or get off the pot. Otherwise, I might chicken out and never do it.”
Greer couldn’t help but laugh. Between Alex’s not-shitting-where-he-eats comment, and now this, romance was taking on a whole different meaning. But that pee-pot expression had been one of her dad’s favorites, and her heart hurt with the knowledge that he’d never hold his first grandbaby.I will be the best aunt to this kid, Daddy. I will tell him or her all about his wonderful grandmother and his grizzly, grumpy granddaddy.“Does anyone else know?”
Cal hit her with an I-know-six-bazillion-ways-to-blow-up-shit stare. “Youweren’t supposed to know yet.”
“I’m the aunt. Besides, I can keep a secret.” And she would. But oh God, the way her brother was now cradling Delaney’s face in his hands, whispering something to her that was talking down the panicked look in her eyes… That. That was love. And something more. That was a look that said he would do whatever it took to keep her happy, to keep her safe, to keep her sane.
Had Alex Villanueva ever made that kind of promise to a woman? And why were Greer’s ovaries clenching at the thought?
Biology. It was all just attraction, nothing more. Because she couldn’t afford to fall for a man who didn’t believe in prophecy boots and wasn’t interested in sticking around. But she just couldn’t shake the feeling that Alex’s arrival on the day she received her own boots meant something. Something very important.
“Delaney?” Her voice was trembling, but she couldn’t help it. “Have you made the second pair of boots?”
Delaney looked away from Cal, her face now flushed and a tiny smile on her mouth. “What?”
“The boots for my soul mate. Do you know who they’re for?”
“I…ah…well…”
Cal jumped to his feet and turned a glare on her that was hotter than her furnace and sharper than one of Delaney’s skiving knives. “Greer, what the hell? Why would you ask her that?”
“Because I want to know.”
“Well, so did I,” he said, “but when I brought my boots to you asking you to read them, you wouldn’t tell me a damn thing.”
“This is different.”
“How?”
Because…because Alex wasn’t a good bet in the soul mate department. In fact, he’d scoffed at the whole concept.
But Cal had a point. No one was supposed to know when the boots were coming, when the second pair would show up, or who they would be handed to.
“Cal—” Delaney’s voice was quiet and completely calm, “—this is between Greer and me.”
