Page 16 of Craving Cooper

“That the room next door to ours is going to make the perfect nursery.”

Nursery? I struggle to take that in for a second… but only a second.

“Are you telling me Laurel’s pregnant? Seriously, Brady… what’s wrong with you? Why have you let her carry heavy boxes all day?”

“Because she’s not pregnant yet,” he says. “We thought she was, but she wasn’t, and now…”

“And now you’re trying to make sure she is?” I say with a smile, which he returns.

“Yes, if you must know.”

“So this isn’t entirely planned? It’s more of an accident that didn’t happen, but which you’ve now realized you both want?”

“Exactly.”

“I’m guessing that means you were less than careful at some stage?”

“Maybe.”

I shake my head at him. “I thought you knew the rules, man.”

“I do. But one day you’re gonna meet someone who makes you lose your mind, and forget every rule in the book. And I wanna be around when it happens.”

“It won’t,” I say firmly. It never has yet, and I can’t see why that would change… even though he has, beyond recognition. “I didn’t realize you wanted kids,” I say, putting our focus back on him. I feel more comfortable that way.

“Neither did I until now. But Laurel wanted to have another baby… with Mitch.” I notice his slight hesitation and shake my head.

“Yeah… like that was ever gonna happen. He’d never have agreed.”

“On the contrary. He did.”

I can’t believe it. “He agreed? Seriously?”

“Yeah… at least in principle.”

“Because in practice he was knocking up Kaylee Prentice?”

He sighs, frowning. “Yeah,” he says. “Although I guess we’ll never know whether that was intentional.”

“I shouldn’t think it was… not when he was still married to Laurel.”

“No, but Mitch has never been very careful, has he?”

Addy’s presence in the world is testimony to that, and I shake my head.

“He was a real piece of work, wasn’t he?”

“Something like that. It’s been plaguing Laurel for a while.”

“Kaylee’s pregnancy?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “That, and Mitch’s motives.”

“In screwing around?”

“In all kinds of things. She’s still coming to terms with it all, and she keeps firing questions at me… like the other day, she asked me why I thought Mitch had proposed to her.”

“What did you say?” I ask.

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