Page 121 of The Rough Rider

“Which room?”

She was a little bit embarrassed for them to know that she still had her things in a separate bedroom.

“You know, I’ll figure that part out in a bit. Thanks for all your help. You guys can...go back to what you were doing.”

“Thanks,” Fia said. “Because I actually do have some things to do, since I’m in problem-solving mode.”

“Sorry,” Alaina said, irritated that she was at odds with her sister over something, but not feeling...not feeling as precarious as she might have in other situations.

Her sisters all left, but Elsie hung back.

“Why didn’t you want them here?”

“Oh, it’s...it’s dumb.”

“Why is it dumb?”

Elsie knew. That was the thing. She knew the McClouds, and all their pain. She was Alaina’s best friend, but even deeper, she loved Hunter, and she knew his pain. So in that way she knew something about Gus.

“It’s just that I didn’t know which room to make the nursery. And... I’m thinking maybe it should be this room across from the master bedroom. But it’s my room.”

“Oh.”

“I just didn’t want them to know that Gus and I didn’t share a room. I mean, we’ve been sharing a bed. But we didn’t really talk about consolidating that. And sometimes I think he still wants his space.”

“Well,” she said. “He can get over it.”

“I need to talk to him first.”

“What about this room?”

It was a room she hadn’t been in. But they walked down the hall, all the way to the back of the house and pushed open the door. The room was dim and stacked with boxes, and she looked around. She opened the first box, and saw that it had some comic books. Water damaged, but in okay condition. There was another box that had some toys. Little ones. Army men and planes.

“This one,” Alaina whispered.

“Then let’s get to work,” Elsie said.

WHENGUSWALKEDin the door he didn’t even recognize the place. It was full of shit. Shit he’d never seen. Ever. And he had no idea where it had come from.

Oh right. The shopping day. There was...a weird TV cabinet, sitting against the back wall, that had a bunch of fall decor placed on the top of it. And he couldn’t deny that it looked cool; he just had no idea why there were now two TVs in the room. And one not even where anyone was sitting, like it was a damn decoration.

Decorations.

There were decorations.

It made him want to crawl out of his skin, and he didn’t even quite know why.

“Gus,” Alaina said, bounding down the stairs, her hair bouncing. And his heart leaped up into his throat as she basically flew across the room and threw herself into his arms, kissing him until he couldn’t think about how many TVs were in the room. Until he couldn’t think about anything.

“You’ve been busy,” he said.

“Yes. And I forgot to cook dinner. But we still have a bunch of leftovers.”

His stomach growled, but he ignored it. Because she was happy. And hell, he didn’t contribute to the cooking, so he couldn’t complain. He was going to have to learn how to do that.

He’d get around to it.

“I want to show you something,” she said.

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