“No kidding.” The Pork and Peach had been controversial, and Fletcher knew a lot of people who’d been happy there’d been a fire that had closed it down permanently.
“Yep. Big job but Jase is a good guy and he’s paying well.”
“Late hours,” Fletcher commented.
Zeke clapped him on the shoulder. “Yeah, well, we don’t all spend our day fingerpainting and taking naps between eight and three.”
“Fuck off. I teach third grade. We don’t take naps.”
“But you do fingerpaint?”
“Well…we use paintbrushes.” They only painted when they were doing maps of the continents or painting balls for the solar system models and things like that. But yeah, they painted. Painting was fun, dammit.
They made their way out of the otter enclosure and it wasn’t until Fletcher was sitting in his truck with the engine running, that he realized he was headed home. And that there would be someone there waiting for him.
Not just someone. Jordan.
His new wife.
The woman he wanted to get naked more than anything.
The woman he’d gotten naked—okay, she’d gotten herself naked but he’d definitely seen her naked—that morning and couldn’t stop thinking about.
The woman he needed to keep clothed until they had an important talk.
He knew so much about Jordan. Except in this one area. Yes, he knew about the sprained ankle and the blowjobs, but beyond that, Jordan’s sex life had always been, thankfully, a mystery.
And now that was coming back to bite him in the ass.
Of course, the one thing he didn’t know was the thing he needed to know the most.
If there was anything in his life that he had to get right, it was being Jordan’s husband.
Jordan heard the back kitchen door open and felt her stomach flip. Fletcher was home. Then she looked around. She wasn’t exactly prepared for seduction. Or even for dinner. She was sitting crisscross in the middle of Fletcher’s living room floor surrounded by papers, folders, a notebook in which she had already filled six pages, and her open laptop.
Dammit, the time had gotten away from her.
She looked down. She was wearing another sundress borrowed from Charlie, so at least there was that. She’d showered when she’d gotten home from the animal park too.
She’d worn rubber boots to walk around the barnyard and otter enclosure as Charlie gave her the tour. Those were obviously not the places to be wearing sandals or even tennis shoes you wanted to keep clean. But in spite of the boots and a pair of gloves she borrowed, she’d still ended up with mud—at least it had looked like mud—on her thigh and one forearm. She’d been kissed on the cheek by two different alpacas, butted in the leg by at least three goats, and had otters climbing over nearly every inch of her. She was very glad the dress she’d been wearing was Charlie’s and her friend completely understood why it smelled the way it did at the end of the day. And that it wasn’t dry clean only.
She didn’t have any body spray or perfume with her and she’d borrowed Fletcher’s deodorant. She was also makeup-less since she’d left everything back in Vegas. Not that she was missing any of that. After this second shampoo, her purple hair had faded to a very faint lavender and she’d left it down to dry naturally. She ran a hand through it now, feeling the slight dampness that remained. So, that meant she’d been sitting here working on her plans for the animal park for a couple of hours.
Fletcher appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. “Um…is there something you need to tell me?”
It was crazy the way seeing him and that low, husky greeting made her stomach swoop.
She gave him a bright smile. “I took the job.”
He frowned. “Yeah. I mean, I assumed. But…Jordan…there’s a pregnancy test on the kitchen table.”
Oh, right. Jordan shoved the papers from her lap to the floor and stood swiftly. She crossed the room and stepped around him. “There’s also this.” She handed him the paper and photo that Tori had dropped off at the petting zoo for her.
Fletcher looked down at it. “This is…” He frowned. “What is this?”
“A dog,” she said. “Tori has him at her place right now. But he needs a new home.” She leaned in, looking into the big brown eyes of the border collie Tori and Josh were fostering. “I told her we were looking for one.”
“We…are?”
“Aren’t we?” She looked up at him. “We talked about getting two or three.”
He looked…freaked out.
“We did.” Finally he met her eyes. “Just yesterday.”
Jordan turned to face him. “Right. Yesterday. When we were talking about getting married.”
“And the pregnancy test?”
“I saw it when I was at the store getting dog food and grabbed it on a whim. I figured we’ll need one. Maybe soon.” She narrowed her eyes, studying him. “Won’t we?”
He took a deep breath, his eyes going from the dog’s photo to the pregnancy test box, and back. Finally he nodded. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“Fletcher?” She waited until he looked at her. “What’s going on?”
He didn’t respond for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “You know I would do anything for you.”
“Yes.”
“But can we just… slow down a second?”
She blinked at him. “Oh.”
He wanted to slow down? Fletcher? The guy who’d asked her to stay with him in Autre just four months ago? Who’d jumped on a plane and flown to Vegas the second she was single?
She had not expected that. She’d been so excited by the idea that she no longer had to have her life on hold, that she could jump in with both feet with a new job and a dog and the idea of starting a family that she hadn’t thought about how fast this was all going. But yeah, okay, it was fast. The pregnancy test had truly been an impulse buy. She’d seen it and thought, “wow, needing one of those is actually a possibility now.” She hadn’t intended to use it today, but it had just been fun to buy it.
He shoved a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. I know that sounds a little crazy. But we just got married. We actually just made up after our fight in April. Now we’re kissing, and fucking, and I have to explain to my kids why we got married in Vegas and then I come home and there’s a dog and you could be pregnant and—”
Jordan grabbed his arm and squeezed. “Fletcher.”
He blew out a breath and looked at her. “Yeah.”
“Yes. We can slow down.”
“Okay. Good.” He suddenly turned fully and took her face in his hands. “I’m all in. I want you to know that. I want all of this. I just need it to be…”
“Perfect.”
That made him pause for a moment. But then he nodded. “Yeah.”
She wrapped her fingers around his wrists. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. That’s a lot of pressure.”
“But, I always get things right with you. I always fix things. I’m the guy who’s there when all else has failed.”
She swallowed and nodded. That was true. Or, at least, she’d always led him to believe that all of that was true.