can.”
She reached out for his hand. “Zeke —”
It was then that she noticed his left hand was wrapped in white gauze.
“What happened to your hand?”
“Burned it.”
“Burned it on what?”
“Um…”
She lifted both brows. “Zeke?”
He rolled his eyes. “I was making grilled cheese again.”
She laughed and then pressed her lips together. “What? Why?”
“I was going to feed you before we went to the bar. I didn’t know if you’d want to eat with everyone around.”
God, he really was a good guy. “Grilled cheese is not working out for us.”
“It’s really not.”
“Are you all right?”
“Probably,” he said.
Probably wasn’t good enough. Jill realized that she should take a look at it. She was a doctor, after all. No, not of human medicine, but she did know what to look at when it came to burns.
She hadn’t seen a burn in a really long time and had never treated one on a human being, but she was willing to look at Zeke’s. After all, this man had put up a fence to keep Chuck out of her yard—actually the fence extended all the way around her house and his so it was one big yard that she could walk across without worrying and without carrying her lasso-thingy. And he was not only willing to co-parent with her but was happy to do far more than his share. Though she kind of hoped his mom would do the baby’s laundry. And that Cora would be in charge of grilled cheese.
“Let me look at it.”
He shook his head. “You don’t have to.”
“No, really.”
He reluctantly let her take his hands and unwrap the gauze. The burn looked kind of nasty. It was second-degree at least. “We should clean this. And put something on it. I can rewrap it then.”
“Okay, do you have stuff to do that?”
She didn’t. Of course. “No, do you have some stuff?”
“No.”
“Do you even have Band-Aids at your house?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You realize that we’re talking about having a child and neither of us even has first-aid supplies in our homes?”
“But we can get some.”
Of course they could. That wasn’t really the point. The point was neither of them was used to taking care of themselves and, even more importantly, other people. “What were you planning to do about this?”
“I’ll let Cora and Michael look at it. Cora will have some cream for it.”
Jill wasn’t proud of the rush of relief that went through her, but she did acknowledge it. It was definitely not nurturing of her, but it was nice to know that there were plenty of other people who could step in when she and Zeke had no antibiotic ointment. Or food.
“Okay, let’s go get you taken care of. Maybe we can take care of your burn before we tell everyone about the baby?”
“Fine, but we are telling them today.”
Yeah, she knew that. She also knew that the announcement was going to change her life.
But hey, what was the big deal? Just because in two months time she’d gone from her normal life to being a millionaire who owned eight endangered penguins and lived in Louisiana. And was pregnant. Adding a big, rowdy Cajun family to her life was just one more detail.
They headed for Zeke’s truck and he helped her up into the passenger seat. She smiled. She didn’t think he was even aware of all the times he was chivalrous. She figured it was just ingrained in him. But she did like it.
As he rounded the front of the truck, she looked down at the floor. There was a pair of brown leather flats on the floormat.
Zeke slid behind the wheel and she looked over at him. “Do you need to return these to someone?”
The stab of jealousy was surprising. Not only that it occurred, but how strong it was.
They hadn’t talked about being exclusive. If they had, she probably would’ve told him to go ahead and date whoever he wanted. Maybe. Or would she?
In all the talk about the baby and what their lives going forward would look like, there had been no talk of other relationships, or their relationship in detail. They’d mostly talked as if they’d keep living next door to one another. Which sounded great to her. Though, lately it seemed she spent more nights sleeping over in his bed than her own. And somehow her box of cereal had ended up at his house. She figured it just made sense to have it near the milk.
But they hadn’t discussed moving in together. Of course, the whole