Claiming The Rancher's Heir (Gold Valley Vineyards #2) - Maisey Yates Page 0,42
do all this with a clear head. Had wanted to make plans for the baby, for how they would conduct themselves...
She’d wanted to do it all in a lab-like environment. As if they were talking heads who could divorce feeling and desire from everything else.
But they couldn’t do that.
He’d set something free inside her and she didn’t want to deny it. Didn’t want to put it back. He’d asked for permanent and she didn’t feel like she could answer him.
Was afraid to.
But she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t fantasizing about it.
They had been sleeping together, talking to each other, eating cheese in bed. They’d talked about Christmas, and not just in the context of the event they were planning.
Their memories of it. The way they liked to decorate.
She liked it sparkly. He liked it homespun.
She liked a full turkey dinner. His mom had always made spaghetti, lasagna and bread.
They opened a present on Christmas Eve. He was scandalized by the idea. Christmas morning only.
She liked fake trees because they were perfect and didn’t shed.
If he’d had pearls, he’d have clutched them. He’d been subjected to the virtues and tradition inherent in going to the woods and getting your own tree.
Another discussion they’d tabled for later, in terms of how they’d raise their child.
It was so difficult for her to reconcile the man that she was involved with now with the one she had first kissed all that time ago.
She could hardly remember hating him. She didn’t hate him now. Not even close. She couldn’t hate him. Her feelings were starting to get jumbled up, and it was frightening, to be honest.
But no more frightening than when she came home and saw that a real estate sign had been put up at his ranch.
“What is this?” she asked.
“I’m selling this place. Because I want us to pick out our own place.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Wren, you told me you didn’t know who you were. And that you were going from a house designed to your father’s taste to one better suited to mine. I don’t want you to feel that way. I don’t want that for you. I don’t want that for us.”
“So you put your house up for sale without talking to me about it?”
“I didn’t go out and buy a house without talking to you. That would have defeated the purpose.”
She looked at him, and boggled. Because as much as she was coming to feel affection for him, he was still a big, stubborn, hardheaded fool.
And she cared about him an awful lot.
“I can’t believe you would do this for me. This is your place. Your ranch.”
“That’s the only requirement I have,” he said. “I do need to have property, or I need to be close enough to property I can lease.”
“Don’t be silly. That would be inconvenient.”
“I don’t care about the house,” he said. “It can be whatever you want it to be. We could build too if you want, but that would take a lot of time.”
“We need a place sooner than that.”
They didn’t waste any time. They started to house hunt after that. They went overboard looking at places, and Wren felt giddy with the independence of it.
That she was choosing a place. A place to call her own. One that would be shaped around this life she was sharing with Creed and...
She wondered when she had accepted it. That they were going to make a try at this together.
That she wasn’t going to leave him after a year. Or when the baby was born, or whatever she had told him all those weeks ago.
Because she knew now that she wasn’t going to do that. That there was no way. Because she knew now there would be no separating the two of them. They were forming a unit, as strange as it was.
And somehow, Wren found that their unit didn’t compromise her desire for independence. Rather, it supported it.
He supported it.
There was a strange sort of freedom, having this giant brick wall on her team. She couldn’t fully explain it. But there it was. True as anything.
The house that stole her heart surprised her.
It was a white farmhouse with red shutters, new, but styled in a classic way. She could see how their Christmas styles might even meet here. A little glitter, a little rustic.
The kitchen had gorgeous granite countertops and white cabinets. Light and airy, but not too modern. Perfect for Christmas Eve lasagna, and Christmas turkey.