Epilogue
DAKOTA
“ Y ou’re looking at the foosball queen right here,” my husband announced to our group of friends standing near the bar in our rec room.
We’d jokingly dubbed this the billiard room, since it held the pool table from Chaz’s bachelor pad and some full-size arcade games. We also had a separate smaller pool table with interchangeable tops for air hockey, ping-pong, and my new favorite, foosball. I’d been spending a lot of time here lately, working off the nerves that came with being weeks away from giving birth.
“I’m not going to argue with you on that,” Krebs, Chaz’s friend and fellow logging crew member, said. “She kicked my ass on it last week.”
I smiled and made eye contact with my husband. He was proud of me. Not just because I was giving birth to our first baby, a girl we were naming Emery, within the next month, but also because my property management business was thriving. My job was to manage homes for vacation rental owners. It wasn’t easy work, but it was flexible, and I loved the challenge of making sure each of my clients had as many five-star online ratings as possible.
“I guess this will be your hideout once the baby’s here,” Sean, another friend and fellow logging crew member, said.
“You betcha,” my husband of nearly two years said. “We already have the baby monitors staked out.”
He went over to the end of the bar, which was stocked with a variety of drink glasses, some liquor, mixers, and various accessories. I pressed the button on the fancy monitor he’d installed, and an image of the crib we’d set up in the nursery filled the large screen that had previously been playing sports on mute.
“Wow,” Krebs said, elbowing Dane, another crew member and friend who was standing next to him. “Fatherhood, right?”
“Fuck that,” Dane said.
Krebs ignored him and asked Chaz, “Can you hook me up when I’m a dad?”
The guys all looked at each other. It had been two years since Chaz and I met, but most of his buddies had met women and gotten married off soon after. But not Dane. He was the least likely to get married.
I had a feeling the love bug would bite, eventually. Seduction Summit, where we’d built this charming cottage on the lake, had a way of making a man fall in love. Even the grumpiest of guys.
I still wasn’t convinced Chaz was the grump everyone had billed him to be. But I acknowledged he was different around me.
The guys settled in around the pool table to watch two of them play while the women gathered around the foosball table. Chaz and I headed to the kitchen to grab some more snacks and beers.
I had the tray of snacks on the counter and was preparing to pick it up and take it downstairs when Chaz came up behind me, brushing my hair back with his chin as he kissed me on the cheek.
“You look really hot tonight,” he said.
I laughed, my hand automatically going to my stomach. “Oh yeah, nothing sexier than a woman carting a gigantic beach ball around in her stomach.”
I looked down. I missed being able to see my feet, but it would all be well worth it once Emery arrived.
“You know, I’m thinking about things we can do while the baby’s sleeping,” Chaz said. “The billiard room could become our sex dungeon.”
I smiled. Sex dungeon made it sound like we were into some kinky stuff. We weren’t, although I wasn’t against trying new things. In fact, this man was opening me up to my own sexuality one orgasm at a time.
“As the kids get older, it’ll probably be harder to find alone time,” he said.
I shook my head. “We’ll install something on their bedroom doors, so it alerts us if they open it.”
“And they’ll have sleepovers,” he added. “Our friends will likely start having kids soon. I’m sure we can do a swap every now and then. We take their kids one Friday night and they take ours the next.”
“Now that sounds like a plan.” I smiled, imagining all the possibilities.
We could drive down to Adairsville and have a true date night. Dinner, a movie…or when the weather got warmer, we could try out the new indoor miniature golf place in the shopping center. After it was over, we’d come home and make love, maybe in the shower or on the kitchen counter. We’d be so excited just to have the whole house to ourselves, all bets would be off.
“I love you,” he said into my ear.
The words surprised me. He said them all the time—I just wasn’t expecting them right now.
I leaned away from him so I could get a good look at his face and said, “I love you too. What brought that on?”
“Just watching you up there, I was overwhelmed with that feeling. The one I get all the time. I can’t imagine a life without you in it.”
“Me either,” I said. “And to think if I hadn’t had that misguided goal of becoming a baker, we would have never met.”
“I still like your baked goods more than anybody else’s.” He laughed. “And that’s not a euphemism.”
I smiled. That was all that mattered. I’d bake for my husband and my kids, as well as our friends when they visited, like tonight. That was plenty enough for me.
“Let’s get back upstairs,” he said, stepping away and scooping up the six-pack he’d set on the counter next to my tray of snacks.
I smiled at him as I led the way back to our friends. If only they knew what we were scheming about. I had a feeling we’d be making plenty of memories in that rec room. The fun hadn’t even begun yet.