Claiming The Rancher's Heir (Gold Valley Vineyards #2) - Maisey Yates Page 0,35
guess that’s it. For now.”
“For now. The wedding will be in three days.”
“Are you going to invite your family?”
“Hell no,” he said. “Just you and me.”
“Don’t we have to have a witness?”
“Bring your sister.”
“Okay.”
Then she stood up, and the two of them walked to the counter. Creed paid the bill.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said.
“You’re feeding my baby.”
She looked around, feeling a little embarrassed. It wasn’t like they would be able to hide it in the upcoming months. “I guess it can’t really be a secret, can it?”
“Why does it have to be?”
“It doesn’t,” she said.
He had been treated like a secret before. And Wren wasn’t about to do to him what Louisa had done.
Wren couldn’t hate Louisa for it, though. She’d been sixteen. Who hadn’t done a host of stupid things when they were sixteen? It was just that when Wren had done stupid things, they hadn’t affected someone else for the rest of their life.
“It really doesn’t,” she affirmed.
Then the two of them walked out of the restaurant together, engaged.
It was so strange, because just a few weeks ago Wren had the sense of being on a different path from the one she had been on before. But she hadn’t imagined that the path would lead here.
But this was one of those moments where she had to change.
It was actually a good thing. Because she needed a change anyway.
The only way to handle all of this change was to keep on going.
So that was what she would do.
The fact that she had to keep going with Creed... Well, they would figure it out.
They had no other choice.
Eight
It was his wedding day.
He hadn’t ever imagined a wedding day. Hadn’t figured he would ever get hitched. But then, what he’d said to Wren at the diner had been true. He had never planned to be in a situation where he got a do-over on the biggest regret of his life.
A slug of something hard hit him in the gut. It wasn’t really a do-over. Because it wouldn’t give him time back with his son. His son whose name he couldn’t even think.
Because it wasn’t a name he would’ve given to his kid. And it served as a reminder of the ways in which Creed wasn’t part of his son’s life.
But that didn’t matter.
Today Creed was going to make sure he never missed out again. And the more he’d thought about it over the last few days, the firmer a conclusion he’d come to.
Sure. He could understand where Wren was coming from—she had the idea that they might be able to exist in a middle ground. And that the middle ground would be better than trying and failing at having a marriage.
But what she didn’t understand about him was that he didn’t do middle ground. He was all in. Or not in at all.
If he decided to make a marriage, then he was going to make it. And there would be no living separately. No other relationships.
No amicable divorce when the year was up.
He wanted to be in his child’s life. He didn’t want to have regrets. A real marriage was the simplest way to that path he could think of.
He would talk to her later.
After their wedding night.
As it was, he’d gone and dressed up for the occasion. Because she had liked it so much when he had dressed up for their winery event, so he was sure she would like it for this.
She’d said she would meet him at the courthouse. He assumed she was driving there with her sister.
And when he arrived, Wren was standing in front of the red brick building, wearing a simple white dress that fell just past her knees. On either side of her were her sisters. And her mother was there too, looking pale and drawn.
“Well, I didn’t realize the whole family would be joining us,” he said.
Wren grinned at him, then took hold of his arm, leading them ahead of her sisters and mother. “I had to bring them all,” she said. “And they don’t know the whole situation.”
“Meaning?”
“They don’t know that it’s temporary.”
He nearly said right then that she didn’t seem to realize that temporary was off the table. But he decided to save that for after the vows. Instead, he bent down and brushed a kiss across her cheek. The action sent a slug of lust straight down to his gut.