Page 61 of The Ruby Dragon's Unconventional Mate

Twenty

Lars hummed, pinning something to his mood board. Samuel had brought him a stack of magazines from the bookstore. Everything from cottage core to baby’s first nursery to food magazines.

Which was so cool, because now he could start brainstorming the nursery so he and Bryant could talk about what they wanted for the baby.

He was starting to really show some, and he thought it was definitely time to get that ball rolling.

He felt better. Lars was so glad to be over some of the morning sickness. And some of the crushing exhaustion.

“What are you up to, baby?” Bryant wandered in, set his coffee cup aside, and came to slide both arms around him from behind.

“I’m making a mood board.”

“What for?”

“Well, let’s see.” Lars kept his voice light, even though his eyebrow lifted. “There’s cribs, there’s mobiles, there’s a changing table, there’s some rocking chairs, there’s a bunch of butterflies and birds. And there’s a little bitty dresser for little bitty clothes.So if you had to guess what the mood board was for, what would you guess?”

Bryant snorted. “Okay, okay, point taken.”

Lars waited for Bryant to start making fun of him, but what he said was, “Can I help?”

Oh. That melted him, bone deep, and he beamed at Bryant, patting the space next to him, making room for his mate. “Absolutely! I’d love your help. I’ve just been cutting out things and kind of putting them on here and seeing what looks cool and what doesn’t.”

Bryant settled down next to him and started looking through a magazine. “God, I didn’t know there were this many options for cribs. I thought they were just like boxes with slats in different colors.”

Lars chuckled. Such an alpha. “No, there are tons of options. I mean hundreds, thousands probably. I kind of like the white ones, but then part of me doesn’t want to let the baby chew on things that are painted.”

“Do you really think our baby’s going to chew on the crib?” Bryant asked, eyes twinkling at him.

“I think that the baby’s going to chew on the crib.” In fact, Lars was absolutely sure that Bryant’s child would chew through an entire woodpile when he was teething.

“Well, the white goes really good with the butterfly thing. Are you definite on the butterflies?” Bryant asked.

“I like the birds too, but yeah, butterflies, flowers, all the natural fun.”

“I kind of like these weird gnomes, too.”

Lars looked at them, pondered. “You don’t think they’re a little psychotic looking, like they’re going to come and murder people in their sleep?”

Bryant stopped and looked at him. “I have never once thought, oh, look, that gnome is going to murder someone in their sleep.”

“Well, obviously you haven’t been imagining well enough, because I can totally see it.” It wasn’t even that hard, to be honest.

Bryant chuckled, wrapped one arm around him, and patted his stomach. “All right, all right. I like butterflies fine.”

“Beautiful. I think it’s important to find a theme that’s wonderful. You should have seen Grant’s nursery when Jake brought him home. It was awful.”

“Really. He seems like such a good dad, so solid. What was the room like?”

Lars rolled his eyes. “He’d read somewhere that babies needed contrasting colors, so everything was black, white, and red. It was like walking into a slasher movie or some kind of, you know, strange constructivism painting, you know?”

Oh, man that had to be hard on the head. Right. No wonder that baby kept trying to pop in and out of different dimensions, trying to get away from the black-and-white triangle mobile.

“All right, point taken. So no black and white and red for this baby.”

“No, I want warm and natural and sweet.” He wanted something easy on the eyes.

“You do realize that having a nice, natural, sweet nursery almost assures that this baby’s going to be a ball buster, right?”

---