Page 187 of Santa Daddies
“No, but we could bring our different personalities together, becoming more than just two flawed guys. She can have steadfast security and planning when she needs it, or adventurous freedom when she needs that. Instead of making her choose–punishing her for wanting both of us, why not offer everything?”
“Her father will hate me.”
“He might need time to understand.”
Loren pounds his fist into the arm of the plush chair. “This should never have happened.”
“That's what everyone says when they fall in love at the wrong time or with the wrong person. You can’t control love. You have to trust it.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Chances are, that’s off the table, but we can minimize the chance Bellamie gets hurt. You and I have worked through reallytense negotiations. We can get through this. And if you let your guard down… Imagine, the three of us together, one house, one relationship. We can live in our own little world.”
Not knowing if either of us got her pregnant, I hold back on talk of a family.
He walks to his easel and makes a bunch of notes. I should have expected as much.
After a few minutes, he says, “I need to think.”
Chapter Fifteen
Loren
Kace grants me time to go for a drive and think with just a promise to explain when I get back.
Ideas are all out of order, and I question my sanity when I drive back to my parents house and rummage through my mom's jewelry box to find Grandma's wedding ring. Mom had never liked it or wore it, but Grandma and Grandpa had the perfect marriage.
I recall the many times Bellamie played dress up with it, talking about her husband and all of her children, setting her baby dolls around the room. Being a mother has always been her dream, and Kace is right, we have to do what's right for us.
If our parents won't accept it, we’ll still have each other.
With the ring in my pocket and being eighty percent certain I have a plan to sort this out, I return to the Airbnb.
Kace looks up from scrolling through his phone when I enter. “What did you come up with?”
I grab a marker from the easel that has my huge planning pages and writeBellamieacross the top. Adding a line down thecenter, I writeKaceon the left andLorenon the right. “Name three specific things, other than physical attributes that you love about Bellamie.”
“Jumping right in with a test, huh?”
“Can you do it?”
“That’s fair.” He barely thinks before saying, “Crafts, kids, and kindness.”
My marker hovers over the page. It’s particularly annoying that he came up with three things that start with the same sound, but also that he nailed her. I turn to him. “How do you know all of that, other than kind of being generic on the last two?”
“Hold on.” He scrolls through his phone then shows me a picture of the stockings she was making for the foster kids.
“Why do you have a picture of that?”
“We were getting to know each other.”
I writecraftsunder his name. “One down. Kids… explain.”
“All she wants to do is be a mom. Her plan to open a daycare is just a way to focus her life on kids until she has her own.”
If he hadn’t said it so confidently, I’d think I’m calling his bluff. “A daycare?”
“Yeah.”
