“Thank you. My mouth is watering. I appreciate your willingness to share.”
He sat down in the chair next to me and set a soda in the cupholder on the chair. “I don’t mind sharing my sausage with you.”
The double entendre was less than subtle, and I smirked. Okay, so I was a child, but now I couldn’t stop picturing him sharing his sausage with me. “This bun looks familiar,” I said, picking up the hot meat. “I think I might know the baker.”
He was grinning when I looked up at him. “You might. Everyone in town swears by his dill pickle buns.”
“You won’t be sorry,” I promised, taking a bite. I know Bishop moaned, but he quickly covered it with a bite of his brat.
Neither of us spoke again until the food was gone and we sat sipping our sodas in the night air. The fire crackled to keep the bugs and the chill away as the sun finished its journey into the good night.
“I talked to Athena this evening,” he said, tapping his can on his leg.
“How is she? Missing home?”
His head shook, and he laughed heartily. “Not that girl. She loves her independence. She got a job working at Disney and is going to spend the summer selling Mickey Mouse ear balloons.”
“Wow, that sounds like fun for someone her age. Not to mention, a long way away from my experiences growing up in Minnesota.”
He nodded again, his head bobbing rhythmically. “It’s certainly not your typical summer job. She has always loved everything Disney, though. She felt bad that she had to push her visit here back to the end of August and will only be able to stay a few days. I assured her that I love her and that I want her to take these opportunities when they come up, not let them pass her by because she was trying to please someone else or do what someone else thinks she should do.”
Oh boy, it didn’t sound to me like he was talking about Athena anymore. Was he sending me a message in dad language? I chuckled at the thought inside my head and rolled my eyes. If he was, he was the hottest damn dad I’d ever met. There was no dad bod on this guy. He was one hundred percent ripped. I couldn’t stop thinking about him inside me, his breath hot on my ear when he asked, who’s your daddy, my little tart?
I rubbed my forehead and took a steadying breath. It must be the fever. It was the only thing to explain the nonsense floating around in my head right now. Maybe I hadn’t had sex in so long I’d forgotten how, and the hot man next to me already proposed. Okay, so he didn’t propose propose, but he did suggest we get married—kind of the same thing.
“I hope I get to meet her when she comes to visit. She sounds like an awesome young lady,” I said, clearing my throat. I was thankful that the sun was gone, so he couldn’t see how those thoughts of heated sex brightened my cheeks with blush.
“You will, and she is. I’m pleased she’s confident enough to go out and do the things she wants to do without one of us holding her hand.”
My phone beeped again, and I held up my finger, glancing at the screen. “It’s from Hay-Hay. She should be in bed, but she’s texting me about some news she has to tell me tomorrow.”
“Don’t you love that?” he asked, laughter in his voice while he took a drink.
“No, I don’t,” I said, shaking my head. “If you have news to share, either tell me what it is or don’t say anything until you show up at my door.” I held up my finger and texted her that we’d talk in the morning after she finished with the baking. I added that I was super stoked to hear about the big news, just to settle her down a little bit.
“Do you think she’s pregnant?”
I snapped my head up, sliding my phone back into my pocket. “No,” I said, shaking my head. “That was already a scare that occurred and prompted all of this messiness.”
“Messiness?”
I nodded and stared into the fire, my mind racing. I had so much to think about, and now he’d thrown the whole marriage thing into the mix. I didn’t know where to start to sort any of it out.
“Hay-Hay thought she was pregnant and had a meltdown thinking about the business, all the work that already wasn’t getting done, how many hours she spends there, and how she was going to do it with a baby on her hip.”
“I see,” he said. “That would be a lot if you hadn’t planned for it.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, finishing my soda. “The test was negative, but Brady used her reaction to the situation to force her to see things had to change. He told her she had to think hard about how to stop letting the business run us.”
“I feel like he’s good at that. He kind of has this quiet way of needling you about something you already know has to happen, but you haven’t accepted yet.”
“God, you’re so right,” I said on a sigh, but my lips wore a smile. “He’s the only guy in the bakery. We need his cool head on a daily basis, to be honest. He’s the break in the dynamic between Hay-Hay and me. When we get going on something that could spiral out of control, he’s always the one to bring us back down to earth and remind us that there’s more to consider. Come to think of it—I could use his wisdom now, too bad I don’t have that luxury.”
“His wisdom about what?” he asked, his head tipped to the side.
I held my hand out and sighed. “Well, see, someone asked me to marry him today, and I don’t know what the right answer is.”
He chuckled and stared into
