Chapter 20
“Are we limited to only five acres?” Bo asked.
“Family can choose anything they want,” Knox answered.
“Then we want ten acres,” she said. “We’ve planned a sprawling ranch-style house, and we want plenty of room for kids to run and play.”
“You said you were thinking about the places facing the road for easy access, but we’d like to have a strip toward the back,” Maverick held Bo’s hand as the four of them slowly made their way across the pasture filled with blue bonnets.
“I’m fine with y’all choosing any place you want,” Knox answered. “But you might want to choose a place far enough away that Cheeto, my rooster, or all the construction noises won’t wake you at the crack of dawn.”
“You have a rooster?” Bo asked.
“Oh, yeah, and a kitten named Bally,” Knox answered. “They were thrown out at the worksite and chose my trailer to make their new home.”
“I’m just glad that whoever dumped them on the building site brought a cat and a bird. If they’d thrown out a baby elephant and a monkey, Knox would have probably taken them in,” Lottie said.
“Not in the trailer,” Knox argued.
“I can’t wait to get a cat,” Bo said.
“And a couple of dogs,” Maverick added.
“This is it!” Bo stopped walking at the southwest corner of the property and plopped down on the ground. A slight breeze whipped her strawberry-blond hair to one side. She tucked it back behind her ears and seemed to take in everything around her.
Lottie took a picture of Bo. “You look like a cover model for a romance book, sitting there with all these pretty blue flowers around you. I know Mary Jane would love to have a copy of this.”
“I’m pretending that I’m sitting in my bedroom right here,” Bo said. “I’m looking out at all the trees through the sliding glass doors that open out onto a patio. And I’m listening to the birds when I wake up every morning.”
Maverick sat down beside her. “I thought the first thing you would see was me propped up on an elbow and staring at you, not trees.”
Lottie snapped half a dozen pictures of them together. “I’m putting this on the wall of our rec hall and adding to it as we build more houses.”
“We’ll be the first ones with our photographs on the wall, Maverick,” Bo said. “And I love that you’re always the last face I see before we go to sleep, and the first one I see in the morning. And after we move into our new house, I will look at trees right after I get my good morning kiss.”
People didn’t really turn green with jealousy, but if they did, Lottie figured she looked like a leprechaun with so much envy pouring out of her skin.
Bo and Maverick were way further down the path than she and Knox, and she needed to be patient and let things work out like they were supposed to.
But at that moment, she didn’t want to wait four months for it.
Lottie sat down a few yards from Bo and didn’t even realize that Knox was taking pictures of her until he eased down beside her and showed them to her. “Look how beautiful you are,” he whispered.
“Only in the eyes of the beholder,” she said.
“Hey, you are sitting in my living room, which means you are our first guests. Welcome to our home,” Maverick said.
“Thank you. When it’s a reality, I’ll bring the first bottle of wine,” Knox told him.
“Oh, no!” Bo disagreed. “That’s Ophelia and Jake’s job. They own the winery. Y’all can bring chicken eggs.”
“Count it as a promise.” Knox grinned. “Now, tell me, how do you want your acreage? In a rectangle or a square?”
“I’m thinking that since we’ve designed a sprawling ranch-style house, we’ll want it rectangular. How many feet across the front of five acres wide and two deep is that?” Bo asked.
“There’s a little more than two hundred feet across one side of an acre.” Lottie stopped and did the math in her head. “That means you will have four hundred feet on each end, and a thousand feet across the long end.”
“That sounds great. Like Bo said, we need room for…” Maverick paused.
“Our kids to run and play. We might even install a small swimming pool in a few years, and definitely a barn to store stuff in before that,” she finished for him.
“We are waiting for Mother’s Day to make the big announcement, but we are pregnant, and evidently, I got the twins gene because we’re having two at once.
We want plenty of running room for our children, and we can’t thank you enough for letting us pick out our place first.”
“And giving us the piece of land that we want,” Maverick said. “But now it’s time to talk money. How much is five acres as opposed to ten?”
“You are the only ones in the family who don’t have a real house. So, consider this your wedding gift,” Knox answered.
“Well, damn!” Bo laughed. “We should have said we wanted fifteen acres.”
“More than ten would have cost you,” Knox teased. “And congratulations on the babies. Rae won’t have a thing on you now.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Maverick said.
“Thank you isn’t enough, but we’ll make it up to you some way,” Bo added. “And, Brother, Rae got her two girls when they were already sleeping all night and potty trained. I don’t know how Mama did it with two sets of twins in only a year,” Bo said.
“My mother said one set was a handful,” Knox said, chuckling, “but I loved having a brother my age and one that was a little older.”
“Actually, I’m glad we aren’t having triplets,” Maverick added. “At least for this first time. Three might be nice next time around.”
Bo air slapped him on the arm. “Five babies, all under the age of three? Who’s going to help run the bar?”
Maverick scooted over and wrapped his arms around her. “We’ll turn the storage room into a nursery and hire a nanny. Or we will hire a cute little bartender, and you can be a stay-at-home mommy.”
“Storage room and nanny, yes. But cute little bartender…” She shot him a dirty look. “Over my dead body.”
Maverick laughed. “I didn’t figure that would float too well.”
Building a new home from scratch, having babies, and planning a big family—all things that Lottie had dreamed about more than once, but had completely given up on after her last relationship went down the tubes.
Later that afternoon, Lottie looked back over her shoulder and watched Knox close the gate and reset the alarm code. “I don’t want to leave,” she muttered under her breath.
Because you love this place, or because you are falling in love with Knox? the niggling voice in her head asked.
“Maybe a little of both,” she answered, “and I’m still waiting for that other shoe to drop.”
“I love my work at Swan Song Estates,” Knox said as he got into the truck, “but I already miss this place. It’s my first home that’s not on wheels since the tornado wiped out our house on the farm. And to be honest, that was Brodie’s, not mine.”
“I’m trying to picture what it will look like with ten more homes out here,” Lottie said.
“So am I, and…” He paused and turned out onto the highway headed toward Nocona.
“And what?” Lottie asked.
“At first, I thought maybe I would extend it to a few more, but now I’m thinking that will be all that we offer. I don’t want to get so fenced in that it scares the squirrels and deer away…” Another long silence. “And I want lots of room for children.”
“Folks are going to say that you got wedding fever from Tripp and baby fever from Bo and Maverick.” Lottie wasn’t sure she had not been afflicted with the same thing. That’s why the trip to El Paso would be a good thing.
“Maybe the baby fever, but not the wedding,” Knox said. “I was determined not to let Aunt Bernie use me for a statistic, and then this gorgeous woman sat down beside me and asked me to be her fake boyfriend.”
“Oh, really?” Lottie giggled. “What did you think of that?”
“We…ell…” He drew out the word. “I thought she was an answer to a prayer.”
Lottie whipped her head around to look at him.
He said, “I told Tripp that I was going to get a pretend girlfriend to keep Aunt Bernie from setting me up with blind dates.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “You rat! Why didn’t you tell me in the beginning?”
He raised one shoulder in a half shrug. “You only asked me to be your boyfriend. You didn’t ask me if I wanted a fake girlfriend. So, tell me the truth. Did you get baby fever when Bo said she was pregnant with twins?”
“Maybe a little,” Lottie admitted. “How about you?”
“Nope, not a little, but a lot,” Knox said.