“I know.”
“I want our family to grow, Renie. I want us to have another baby. I want to start working on that right away.”
“Maybe we should stop talking and start working on those fantasies I mentioned then.”
Renie woke up to the sounds of Jake and Luke clomping down the stairs to throw their stuff from their “camp-out” in their bedrooms, and they were arguing.
“Jeez, have they ever heard of inside voices?” shouted Billy.
“You better get used to a lot of noise if you’re serious about us adding to our family.”
“You know what I realized?”
“What’s that?”
“We’re both only children.”
“You just realized that?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I mean I don’t have any experience with sibling rivalry, and that kind of shit. Do you?”
“We’ll buy books.”
“Yeah, I bet my mama’s already thought of that. You should see all the books she bought me after I brought Willow home. She was on my case every minute to make sure I read ’em too.”
“Billy?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Let’s go. I don’t want to wait anymore.”
He got up and hugged her. “Sure, of course, we can go as soon as you want.”
Renie grabbed a duffel bag from her closet, pulled stuff out of dresser drawers, and threw them in the bag. “We can come back and get more later, but for now I want to have enough clothes with me so we don’t have to worry about it for a few days. Oh. Wait.”
Wait? What was wrong? Shit. He’d just started to get comfortable. He pulled her into a hug, and rested his chin on the top of her head. “Tell me.”
“It isn’t Thanksgiving yet. Maybe you need to get back to the ranch. I didn’t think…I’m sorry.”
“Everything you assumed was right. We aren’t goin’ to the ranch, until we decide we want to. I’m not on a timetable, baby. Willow’s here, you’re here, that’s all I need in life. Doesn’t matter where we are as long as we’re all together.”
Ben was in the kitchen making breakfast when they came upstairs. “Well, good morning,” he said.
“Good morning,” they both answered.
“I hear congratulations are in order.”
Renie held her hand out for Ben to see her ring. The smile she had on her face melted Billy’s heart. That was happiness, right there. If happiness had a look, it was on Renie’s face.
The ring had belonged to Dottie’s mother. The art deco designed featured a single, round, two-carat diamond in the center, ringed with eight small sapphires. Between each of the sapphires were more, small round diamonds. On the outside were diamond-filled leaf patterns.
“Wow. Gorgeous. You picked that out all on your own, Patterson? Didn’t think the cowboy had it in him.”
“You throw that word around an awful lot for bein’ pretty close to one yourself, Rice.”
“Stop! Are you two going to spend the rest of your lives calling each other by your last names? That’ll be as annoying as it is confusing.” Renie put one hand on each of their shoulders. “And Ben, the ring belonged to Billy’s grandmother. I’ve never seen anything this beautiful. I’m so honored to have it.”
“Yeah, okay, it’s nice. I’ll give you that,” answered Ben. “But, I’m not very happy with him right at the moment,” he said with a growl.