Page 51 of A Baby to Make Her His Bride

“Do you really want to marry someone you don’t love?” she asked him with anguish. “Take it from me, Jasper, it’s not great.” She was shaking, her whole body chilled, but sweaty. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“This is cold feet. Let’s sit down—” He yanked out a chair. “Let’s talk this out.”

“No. I’m literally...” Her stomach was curdling. The chill on her skin deepened. She hurried away, rushing to where she’d seen the door to the ladies’ room earlier.

Jasper started after her, but decided they could use a minute to cool off.

He looked around and saw...

He swore and rubbed his eyes.

He saw how much care she’d put into this wedding. How much it meant to her. He saw love.

He also saw a culmination of everything he’d been seeing and hearing since their return to Canada. Just this morning, he’d heard it again from one of his old college buddies.

“You’ve really got it all, eh? You’re living the dream.”

He was. He was at the top of his professional game, had a beautiful fiancée, a wedding planned and a baby on the way. What more did anyone need?

Love. Of course Vi wanted love.

He could barely accept it from her, though, let alone offer it. Which would crush her if he dared to say it, but all of this was so much more than he deserved. Not when—

“What kind of wife do you want?” Saqui had asked him one day while they were hiking into a valley.

“Are you placing an order?” Jasper asked dryly.

“Online,” Saqui said with a swish of his finger to indicate swiping. “But they keep sending the wrong one.” He grinned his mischievous grin.

“Yeah?” Jasper chuckled, expecting Saqui was working up to a tall tale on his dating antics. “What are you looking for, then?”

Saqui took him seriously, pressing his bottom lip with thought.

“Someone who thinks about things. Pretty would be nice, but she has to be kind. And she has to like dogs. I want her to make me laugh. She had better cook,” he decided with a grimace.

That made Jasper chuckle again because they had established that Saqui was a terrible cook.

“Why are you so eager to marry?” Jasper had to ask. “Are you saving yourself for your wife?”

“No,” Saqui chuckled. “But I want to hurry up and meet her. This...” He scanned the hillside they were scaling. “What we’re doing is interesting, but it doesn’t mean anything. This isn’t my life.Shewill be.”

Whenever Jasper thought about that conversation, he thought about the poor girl out there somewhere who would never get to meet the man who had been so anxious to find her.

“Where’s Vienna?” Amelia asked, yanking Jasper out of his agonizing memories.

Amelia and Hunter were Vienna’s matron of honor and escort down the aisle. Jasper’s father, Tobias, would stand up for him as best man and two of Jasper’s cousins were coming in with his father in the morning to be groomsmen.

Would the wedding even go ahead? Jasper’s heart lurched.

“She went to the ladies’ room. Would you check on her for me?” He was starting to suspect she’d left altogether.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, unable to look at Hunter when Hunter asked gravely, “Is everything all right?”

“We had an argument,” Jasper admitted.

“About?”

Cold feet, he wanted to say, but that wasn’t true at all.

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