Flint counted the eight days—and nights—that followed in Jessie’s studio as his best. With his Uncle William’s wedding ten days away, even before that night, he’d decided to stay in Red Rock until after the wedding. And even before that night, Jessie had had more to do with that decision than anything else.
But never had he expected that time to pass the way it did.
Days were spent much as they had been prior to that night—he went on helping his brother by lending a hand painting the outside of Coop’s house and building a shed in the backyard—and he did some of his own work using his up-and-running website and getting the feel for how that was going to affect his business.
During the days, he saw Jessie here and there, and they had another rock-hunting outing with the kids plus a field trip with them to San Antonio for shopping, an animated movie and dinner. There was also a Fortune family picnic that Jessie and her family were included in, and so he got to have that day with her as well.
But the nights?
Flint lived for those.
After that first one in the studio, after they’d left it just before dawn to go their separate ways so no one would know they hadn’t been in their respective beds as usual, they’d let everyone know that Flint had found buyers for Jessie’s sculptures. From then on that gave them the excuse of meeting in the studio each and every night after the kids were asleep.
It wasn’t a lie that they were working together to come up with a logo for Jessie, that they were attaching the printed logos to the sculptures, that they were organizing and packaging the sculptures and getting them ready for shipment. They did use the first hour or two of those nights doing just that.
But when that work was finished?
The remaining hours of each and every one of those nights ended up being spent the way Wednesday night had been spent—except that they made love not only on the sofa but in the bed, on the floor, on the table and countertop, in a chair, in the shower, almost everywhere they happened to be when keeping their hands to themselves suddenly became too much to bear.
But when William and Lily’s wedding was a mere two days away, when the subject of Flint going home began to come up again and again with everyone except Jessie, Flint suddenly found himself in one hell of a funk.
He tried to tell himself that it was a result of how nice it was to finally feel a part of the Fortune family. That that made facing going back to Denver, to the way things had been before less than appealing. He tried to tell himself that the reason he wasn’t looking forward to leaving was that it was nice to have his cousins, his uncle, his brothers and sister nearby, to see them whenever he wanted, to have them drop in, to have impromptu lunches with them, with the Mendozas, at Red.
And it all made sense. The new connection he’d made with his family, with the Mendozas, with the Red Rock community was nice, so the thought of separating himself from it and going back to Denver where he had busy friends and acquaintances but no one close understandably didn’t seem like such a good thing now.
But in spite of all that? Underneath it? He knew that the bigger reason he didn’t want to leave Red Rock was Jessie.
And as he pounded shingles onto the roof of his brother’s new shed, thinking about his uncle’s wedding the day after tomorrow, about how there was no reason for him not to be on his way the day after that, the funk weighed heavily on him.
Never in his life had there been anything he didn’t want to do as much as he didn’t want to turn his back on Jessie and walk away.
Never in his life had there been a woman he felt about the way he felt about Jessie.
There had been plenty of women in his life, and yet there was no question that he hadn’t just plain needed a single one of those women like he needed Jessie.
And not even the possibility of a long-distance relationship, of making sure he came through Red Rock a whole lot more often, helped.
He wanted every day, every night to be the way they were now. He wanted to know that every day was going to end with the two of them together.
He just didn’t know how that fit with the fact that he was about as anti-marriage as any man could be. That after watching his mother run through too many men, after his own ugly lesson in the perils of marriage, he honestly believed it was not only a bad course to take, but also the worst course to take.
If Jessie were anyone else, the most he would suggest was that they try living together. But there were two ways in which Jessie wasn’t anyone else. First of all, she had four kids and parents who already lived with her. That was not a situation open to a just-living-together scenario.
Second of all—and even more importantly—Jessie wasn’t merely anyone else to him. And as unbelievable as it was, he wanted her to be a part of his life, of his future, in the most unbreakable way he could have. Which translated into marriage.
Which he didn’t believe in.
He hit a nail so hard that it bent in half rather than going through the shingle.
Marriage.
He’d sworn he would never make that mistake again.
But the thought of Jessie and marriage?
Regardless of what he’d thought of the institution before, when he put it together in his mind with Jessie, it somehow didn’t hit the same sour note.
Certainly she wasn’t Myra, he acknowledged. Yes, the physical attraction to Jessie was every bit as intense. But there was so much more to her than there had ever been to his ex-wife.
He admired Jessie. He respected her values. Those were not things he could ever have said about Myra.
Jessie was strong and resilient, loyal, trustworthy, reliable, dependable. There was nothing fly-by-night about her, nothing unprincipled or unscrupulous—like Myra. Like his mother, come to think of it.
And Jessie had even more qualities than the ones that reassured him that she wouldn’t end up stealing him blind and running off with another man or dumping him for someone down the road who seemed like a better ticket.
Jessie was fun and funny and loving and cute and sexy and caring and sweet and smart and talented and interesting. She was everything he’d ever found in any other woman, only she was all of it rolled into one.
She was everything to him.
That realization stopped his arm in midair, mid-hammer, when it struck him.
Jessie was everything to him.
It was true. Shockingly, surprisingly, stunningly true.
So Jessie and marriage? That was something that he could not only suddenly see as a possibility, but it was also something he discovered when he actually considered it, that he wanted. He wanted to marry Jessie…
And have every day for the rest of his life end with the two of them together… “Hi, Fwint!”
The sound of Adam’s voice made Flint glance down into the yard next door but the yard was empty.
“I’m up here.”
Flint altered his gaze and discovered the three-year-old looking out the bathroom window on the second level of Jessie’s house.
“Hey, Adam,” Flint called back.
“I see’d you up there. I gotta go potty.”
Flint laughed. “Okay, go ahead,” he said for lack of anything else to say.
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Flint went back to pounding nails into shingles and reminded himself of that other way that Jessie wasn’t merely anyone else—with Jessie came four kids.
Four kids he had to factor in…
Marriage might be going from a sports car to a sedan, but add four kids to the picture and that was taking the leap all the way from sports car to minivan…
From childless bachelor to married man with children—it was daunting enough to give him pause.
Could he handle it?
He did like those kids, he admitted when he thought about it. Even Ella—who was still very lukewarm to him—was a sweetheart underneath her leeriness. And all the kids were similar to their mother in that they were strong and resilient and upbeat and funny and fun, too.
He was impressed by their outlook on things even after losing their father. And he got a kick out of their points of view, their senses of humor. He had a great time with them. And while he hadn’t ever seen himself as a parent, he thought he’d done okay helping to give baths and put them to bed, looking after them on all of their outings. He’d even found himself feeling pretty protective of them along the way.
Granted none of that, none of the time he’d spent with Ella, Bethany, Braden and Adam amounted to much, but still, when he considered himself taking on that role, that, too, suddenly didn’t seem so far-fetched. Especially not when he realized that Jessie’s four kids were all little reflections of her and it occurred to him that because of that he couldn’t help being smitten with them.
But having been a child of a single mother who had run numerous men through his life, Flint knew he couldn’t take lightly the responsibility of being the man in Jessie’s kids’ lives. He couldn’t risk disappointing those four kids if he couldn’t do the dad bit wholeheartedly and with a solid commitment to be there for them for the distance. To literally be a father to them. A father they could count on as surely as they would have been able to count on their own dad.
Could he do that?
He gave it serious, solemn thought.
But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he’d liked the times when the six of them had all been together almost as much as he’d liked the times he’d had Jessie to himself.
That he even liked what being with her kids brought out in him—a side of himself that he’d just discovered that made him not only able, but willing and eager to put them and their needs before his own. A side that he’d seen in Coop since Anthony had come into his brother’s life. Another dimension that hadn’t seemed like something he or Coop might actually have at their disposal before this.
But finding out that they did? Finding out that they could be part of the Fortune family, and also finding out that they could be part of families of their own—even if it wasn’t something that had ever seemed likely given the way they’d grown up themselves—was doubly nice.
“Fwint! I’m done!” Adam called from the bathroom window again.
“Good for you, big guy. Did you wash your hands?”
“I fuh-got.”
“Do it now,” Flint instructed, feeling very paternal and amused by that.
But somehow at that moment, it also occurred to him that what he’d said to Jessie when he’d told her about Myra was more true than he’d known at the time—he’d told Jessie that there were worse things than being a childless bachelor.
And suddenly it struck him that one of the things that was worse than being a childless bachelor would be to have come to know Jessie and her kids, and go on being a childless bachelor. To go on without them. Any of them.
So sign me up for the minivan, he thought.
“Okay, I dood it,” Adam again yelled from the bathroom window a moment later. “Good job!”
“Me an’ Gramma an’ Grampa an’ all us kidses goin’ to the store but Mama doan’ wanna go. Do you wanna? ‘Cuz you could come wis us if you did…”
“I think I’ll have to pass, buddy. But you go on,” Flint advised as the wheels began to spin even faster in his mind.
He wanted Jessie and he couldn’t wait to let her know that. To hopefully hear her say that she wanted him, too. That she’d have him. That they could have a future together. That they could be a family.
He just couldn’t wait…
They had plans to meet in the studio again tonight. But if everyone was going out and she’d be on her own now…
Be sure, he warned himself.
But he didn’t really need to think any more about it to know that he was.
He was absolutely sure that he wanted Jessie.
Not for any reason except that he couldn’t imagine his life without her.
Without her and everything that came with her.