What Lovers Do(92)

“You have four kids, right?” Deb asks.

I start to speak, but Shep’s on it. As long as we stay on the topic of our family, he’ll talk all day like … dare I say a Midwesterner?

“Five.” Shep puffs out his chest. “Three girls and twin boys. They’re all very close in age. Sophie just couldn’t stay off me.”

Tony barks a laugh, and Deb tries to control her sniggering, but she fails. I keep my gaze on my husband, my mouth turned up into a knowing grin. We did have our kids close together. Fourteen months after giving birth to my nephew, Evan, Shep and I welcomed our first girl. I’ll never forget the day I told him that I was pregnant, that he was going to be a dad.

“I think you should hire another employee,” I said while Shep restocked the glass case with dog treats like cookies, biscuits, and small cakes.

“I don’t need another employee,” he mumbled as I inspected the new display of dog toys.

A couple and their beagle slid past me and smiled.

“You do if you’re going to get a different job.”

He glanced up, a single eyebrow lifted. “I don’t want another job.”

I shrug. “You do.”

He scoffed, closing the glass case. “And what job could I possibly like better than this one?”

“Dad.”

“Dad?” He glanced around. “Whose dad? What dad? Babe, what are you talking about?” He chuckled.

I borrowed the phrase from the great squatter, Jimmy, “I think you’ll crush the stay-at-home dad gig. Don’t you?”

The couple with their dog set several items on the register counter. Just as Shep started to ask for their phone number, his lips parted, and his unblinking gaze slowly lifted to mine.

“Are you … pregnant?” he said, barely a whisper. Just the possibility seemed to steal his breath.

Digging my teeth into my lower lip, I nodded.

And only my very best friend could infuse the worst joke ever into that moment. “Is it … mine?”

I giggled and nodded again.

“Go. Go …” He threw the couple’s items into a bag. “They’re … uh free. On the house. I … I’m going to be a dad!”

The couple smiled, taking the bag he shoved toward them before Shep jumped the whole counter and took me in his arms. My feet lifted off the floor as he kissed me and twirled me and kissed me some more. It wasn’t until he finally set me back on my feet that I realized the tears on my cheeks weren’t just mine, they were his too. Just another magnificent day in Shep World.

Our house has been filled with kids and dogs and so much love. And while Jimmy thought he would crush the stay-at-home-dad gig, Shep proved to be the master at that role. He kept the pet store but rarely took a shift unless someone was sick. He had kids to raise, dogs to train, and best friend code to follow.

To this day, he still has that wrinkled piece of paper that he occasionally pulls out of a drawer and reads with his reading glasses. Then he glances up at me while I’m crocheting something, and he says, “I still can’t believe you said all these words when you only meant to say three.”

I hold his gaze for a few moments. Even our stare-offs are competitive. He waits. And I surrender. I no longer care to fight with him; I only fight for him. “I love you.”



The End





PREVIEW OF ONE





CHAPTER ONE





10,000 Lakes and One Mythical God





Three months after landing in Minneapolis, a Greek god moved into the apartment across from mine. Okay, maybe not an actual god, but close. The view from my peephole might not have been entirely accurate. Nevertheless, my eyeball remained glued to it with no signs of blinking; I had a peephole addiction—along with Netflix, marshmallows, and cinnamon.

“It’s not gonna fit,” I narrated the situation to myself.

Two scrawny, pale-skinned boys danced with an oversized, black leather chair, working to maneuver it through the doorway. Apollo stood just opposite my door with his tree-trunk arms crossed over his chest. The guy could carry the chair on his pinky finger with Beavis and Butt-Head sitting atop, yet he gave them nothing more than a slight head shake.

My mumblings continued. “Turn it the other way.”

“Don’t scratch the legs,” he said, eliciting a whole new round of sweat from the movers.

Left. Right. Up. Down.

“Gah!” Enough was enough. I threw open my door. “Flip it the other way. That’s the only way it will fit.”

After a few seconds of frozen silence and three who-the-hell-are-you looks, the moving guys angled it back out, flipped it, and had it inside the apartment in less than ten seconds.

I turned. He wasn’t a god.

Stupid peephole.

He was a mountain of muscles wrapped in dark skin perfection.

“Men are supposed to have better spatial abilities than women, but I have yet to witness it firsthand.” I shrugged and smiled.

His eyes shifted down to mine, arms still crossed over the continent of his chest. He quirked an eyebrow.

“I’m a man.”

No words had ever been truer. The man before me stood close to 6’5” and maybe 275 pounds, with calves the circumference of my waist. A solid rock with a few scattered tattoos on biceps partially covered by his gray T-shirt. And that voice … it vibrated my body in all the places that weren’t already awakened by the slight scent of spice, which had to be something lingering on his skin. Whatever it was, my nose approved.