Page 61 of Snowed In with Three Mountain Men

“I didn’t want to ruin everything,” she whispers. “But…”

“What the hell makes you think that this has ruined everything?” Callum cuts in sharply, his gaze narrowing almost angrily as it lands on her. She looks over at him, her eyebrows raised.

“I mean…having a baby, it’s not what any of us planned…”

“Yeah, and we didn’t plan to have you crash into our lives the way you did either,” he points out. “But it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us. Who’s to say that this baby won’t be the same?”

I nod. As shocked as I am, there’s nothing I want more than for her to be happy. Nothing will convince me that she’s not meant to be here with me—that she’s not meant to fill out our family, our cabin, our lives. And if that means adding another member to our family…shit, maybe it was meant to be.

“But…but we don’t even know who the father is!” she protests, as though she’s groping around for some reason this is a terrible idea.

“Does that matter?” Dax remarks with a shrug. “I don’t care who actually—I mean, it doesn’t matter to me who got you pregnant. Our DNA is the same anyway, it doesn’t make any difference to me.”

“Me neither,” I echo.

“Me three,” Callum agrees. “I don’t see why that would be a problem.”

She falls silent, still searching for some way to make a problem out of this. But she knows, even as she sits there before us, that she’s not going to find it. Even though this clearly comes as a shock, all of us are ready to step up and do the right thing, to become a father to this child.

“So, what…?” she begins, chewing on her lip. “We go back to the cabin, we raise this child together, we…we start a family? Three dads, one mom, and a baby?”

Callum cocks an eyebrow. “You know, that sounds pretty good to me,” he replies. “I’ve always wanted kids.”

“Me too,” Dax adds, surprising me. I’ve never thought of him as the paternal type, but clearly, the time he’s been spending in therapy has unlocked something in him that he didn’t even know about himself before.

“Yeah, I can see it,” I agree. “Teaching them to garden, to read, to cook…”

“Running them down to school in town when they’re old enough,” Dax remarks. “We could take turns doing the school run.”

“The school run,” she laughs, and she closes her eyes for a moment, a tear leaking down her cheek.

“What? What are you crying about?” Dax asks with concern, and she shakes her head.

“I’m sorry, I’m not—I’m not sad,” she assures him quickly. “I’m just…I never thought I would get to do something as normal as a school run. It—for so long, my life felt like it was totally out of my control, and now…”

She looks between us, her voice hitching in the back of her throat before she continues.

“Here the three of you are, telling me that you want to help me raise a child. And it’s…it’s a shock.”

“The good kind of shock?” Callum asks with concern, and she laughs, wipes away her tears, and then nods.

“God, yes,” she replies. “The best kind of shock. I mean, it’s going to take some getting used to, the idea that I’m going to have a baby, but…”

She gazes down at her stomach and rests her hands there for a moment, as though cradling the little unborn child within.

“But I want this,” she murmurs. “I want it with all of you. And I want this baby’s life to be filled with so much love that they don’t know what to do with all of it.”

“And it will be,” I promise her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and squeezing her in close. “It will be, Charli.”

“We’re going to have to build an extension onto the cabin,” Dax muses.

“Does that mean I’ll finally get my own room?” she asks, with a slightly shaky laugh.

“Hey, and make me miss out on sleeping next to you every night? Not likely,” Callum protests, kissing her. Just as his lips meet hers, the doctor returns, and he pulls back swiftly, clearing his throat. God knows that we don’t need any questions about what’s going on between us—that cabin has been a welcome respite from all the demands that normal society would have on us, and none of us are particularly interested in the scrutiny about our nontraditional relationship.

“I brought another test, if you’d like to take it,” the doctor tells her, proffering her a small plastic strip.

“Sure,” she replies, still a little shaky, but able to reach out and take the test from him. “I’ll take this. Maybe we could…uh, have a talk about what comes next, if it comes back positive?”

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