the day the Country Christmas opened.
They hadn’t even erased it from last year yet.
“Are you ready?” Mildred turned around, pure excitement in her eyes.
“I suppose,” Libby deadpanned, and Mister chuckled at the two sisters. They got along really well, and Mister sure was glad he and Libby were able to get married soon after Mildred. Libby didn’t like sleeping in the house alone, and Mister didn’t like doing anything without her at his side.
“Okay.” Mildred lifted the first whiteboard and flipped it around. She balanced it on the tray of the one mounted to the wall and stepped back. “Ta-da!”
It read, Coming soon to a family ranch near you…
“Oh, boy,” Mister muttered.
“It could be a girl,” Libby said, and his confusion pulled his eyebrows down as Mildred lifted the other whiteboard.
“What?” he asked.
“Christmas…babies!” Mildred yelled, drawing his attention again. The second whiteboard had cartoons drawn on it, all of them babies. A baby reindeer. A baby Christmas tree—complete with a diaper on it. Baby Santa Claus, which made Mister start to laugh and laugh.
Mildred pointed to a date on the whiteboard, and it read February tenth. Pieces started to click in his head, and he glanced down to Mildred’s midsection. It was impossible to tell if she was pregnant or not. February was still six months away.
Then, Mildred moved over to the other side of the board and pointed to April first. She bounced on the balls of her feet, her mouth about to burst open with something.
Mister didn’t know what was going on, but he got to his feet. Libby did too, saying, “Babies, Mildred? How will we do a show for babies?”
“We can dress the horses up like babies,” she said.
Mister said nothing, because this was the worst idea for a Country Christmas Festival he’d ever heard. Especially compared to last year’s Rodeo Extravaganza.
“We can have a baby petting zoo,” Libby mused, approaching the whiteboard. Mildred went back to the other side of it.
“Baby monster trucks.” She picked up a marker and circled the February date. “I’ll be huge, and you won’t be small.”
“I’ll still have three full months,” Libby said.
Mister looked back and forth between them, landing on his wife’s face when she finally faced him. “Liberty,” he said slowly.
She opened her arms to him, tears filling her eyes. “We’re going to have a baby, Mister,” she said, and he simply stared at her.
He was going to be a father. Him. Have a baby. A tiny human that came from part of him. “Buckets,” he said, rushing toward his wife. He gathered her into his arms and held her tight. “You’re not kidding.”
“Not even a little bit,” she said. “I just found out a few days ago, and Mildred said we should surprise you.” She pulled away. “Are you surprised?”
“Stunned,” he said, happiness filling him from top to bottom and front to back. He looked down at her stomach too, but she had to be barely pregnant. Still, he put his hands on her belly and could feel the life pulsing there.
He met her eyes again and said, “I love you so much,” just before kissing her.
Bear smelled the evidence of his wife’s baking as he walked in the back door. “I’m home,” he yelled, but no running feet, no baby shrieks of delight, and no Sammy responded. She and the children obviously weren’t home.
He’d sent Link to Cactus’s just now, as Willa needed some help with their garden, and Link was good for another hour of work.
Bear, however, was not. Exhaustion pulled through him, and he hoped the chocolate he could smell was for him. Knowing Sammy, she’d probably taken all of the brownies around to various people on the ranch.
He swiped up a note on the kitchen counter that said, Went to see your mother and Aunt Dawna. The cake is for you.
“Praise the Lord,” he muttered, smiling at his wife’s loopy handwriting. He moved toward the two-tiered cake on the other counter, the frosting a bright white that looked creamy and sugary from several steps away.
She’d decorated the top, and that was going the extra mile for their family cake. Most of the time, Sammy didn’t have enough frosting to even finish icing the cake they ate for dinner. Not tonight.
A wad of balloons rose from the bottom of the cake toward the top, and some writing went over the strings.
“Surprise, surprise, how about five?” he read, and sure enough there were five balloons on the cake.
Bear wasn’t the quickest cowboy in Texas, but