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Some of the worry in her face was pushed aside by a slight smile. “I hate to burst your bubble, but I already figured that out.”
Ah. There was the Kate he knew.
He let his hand drop back down to his side. “We got caught by surprise. Things are more complicated than either of us expected. But complicated can still be amazing.”
“And wanted?”
“Wanted. And very much loved.”
This time, when she ducked her head, he was pretty sure it was to hold back the flash of moisture he saw in her eyes.
“I want to know Jamie.” If he had to spell it out, he would. “I want to talk to him as much as he would like, and come here to hang out with him every year, and maybe, soon, start having him spend some time in Peru. With you, of course,” he said when her head snapped up. “But I’m okay with leaving the details of when we take each step kind of fluid.”
“Fluid.” She said the word slowly, as if trying it on for size. After a moment, she nodded. “Okay. I see what you mean. As long as we both agree on what the next step should be, I’m good with leaving the timing loose.”
Down on the floor, Jamie grabbed a squeaky toy and smashed it on the blanket.
“Rock on, dude.” Boone cocked his head toward the baby but spoke to Kate. “Maybe he’ll be a drummer.”
“Oh, no. No wishing drums on him when you’ll be on another continent.” She reached behind her, grabbed a paper and squinted at it. “Okay, since His Highness is still happy down there, let’s talk about some things we haven’t covered yet. Like guardians.” She frowned before looking at him. “Right now, I have Allie listed. It made the most sense, since she’s here and he knows her. But do you want to leave it that way? Or if something were to happen to me...”
Boone’s mind went blank. He couldn’t help it. The thought of Kate not being alive drove all capacity for thought from his mind.
“Would you want to...” She carried on, totally oblivious that parts of him had frozen at the thought of her dying. “I mean, I think it would be easier on Jamie if he were to stay with people and places he knows, but you’re his father. It would be up to you.”
Oh, God. She expected him to answer.
The floor was hard against his knee as he pushed back upright. The chair was solid beneath him as he sat down once more, the wood of the armrests smooth and slightly warm against his palms as he gripped them.
He could handle this. If she had the guts to sit there and calmly talk about what would happen if she were to die, then surely he could manage something coherent.
“I...uh...I haven’t thought about that.” Start with the facts. Buy himself time. “I, uh, need to think about it, but my feeling is, yeah. Having Allie take over would undoubtedly be easiest on Jamie. As long as she’s okay with me still being in the picture.”
Kate smirked. “There’s a reason I asked her and not my mother, and let me give you a hint—it had nothing to do with age.”
Damn, it felt good to laugh. The tightness in his chest eased and lightness filled him.
“But while we’re on the subject,” she said, “we probably should think about what we would like to do when and if either of us remarries.”
“That’s not going to happen.” The words were out of his mouth before he processed them. He wasn’t even sure who he was talking about. Him, definitely. But her?
Though judging from the way she was watching him, as if he had suddenly sprouted alien antennae, he had a feeling that maybe he should have waited to speak.
“Kate, come on. We both know I’m not going to...that is, if not for Jamie...”
Oh, God. She was clutching the pen.
When she looked up again, her face was set in a resolve he’d seen only a couple of times before. When she’d told him that no matter what, she was keeping their baby. When she told Maggie that no matter what, they were getting married.
When she had taken him to the airport for his flight back to Peru. And why hadn’t he put that together until just now?
“I know that you don’t see yourself as a family man, Boone, and that’s...well, it is what it is. It’s part of you. But as we both know, things happen.”
She had a point. Maybe he should look into getting a vasectomy while he was here.
“But I’m not you. I want to have more kids. I would like to have them with someone I can build a life with.”
She wants to be with someone else.
Once, when he was helping build the expansion on the project’s office, the guy carrying the other end of a board had slipped and Boone had taken a solid chunk of wood to the torso. Kate’s words made him feel like he was doubled over in the yard once again, struggling to breathe through a chest that had forgotten how to move.
“I...guess that’s another thing I hadn’t thought about.”
Maybe because it was impossible for him to think about her being with someone else and still see straight.
And then he had to know. “Is there someone?”
“What, do you mean, like, am I taking applications?” She started at him blankly before bursting into laughter.
“No. No, Kate, I’m not...”
Her laughter faded into a bemused smile. “I’ve been kind of busy, you know?”
Yeah. He knew.
“Sorry.” He attempted a smile. “You caught me by surprise.”
“Obviously.” Her gaze slid sideways, though he doubted she was really seeing Jamie chewing on the alpaca. “I mean, it would be one thing if you thought that maybe, someday...”
His breath caught in his throat. She shook her head.
“But you’re there, and I’m here. And if it turns out this is the only life Jamie ever knows, then that’ll be his normal and it will be wonderful.” She stretched her foot out again to straighten the corner of the blanket. “I only remember a little from the years when it was just me and Mom, living here with Nana and Poppy, but I know it was good. Then she married Neil, and then Allie came along, and things just felt so different. Like we’d found something we never knew was missing.” Her voice dropped. “Someday, I would like to have that for Jamie.”
“And for you?”
He shouldn’t have asked. He had no right. Yes, she was his wife, but that was only a matter of time. She would always be the mother of his son, but that didn’t give him any say over who was in her life, or her heart, or her bed.
Jamie. Keep it focused on Jamie.
“As long as this future potential...person...is good to Jamie, I don’t see how I would have any input.”
“Well, you wouldn’t, really. But I want you to think about it. If someone else was in our lives, day in, day out, he would become the father figure. You would still be Daddy, but things would be...different.”
Different. Yeah, that was one way to describe it.
He was pretty sure he was okay with things being different. Change was good. But he was also pretty sure that Kate would prefer the version she had laid out.
That, he wasn’t so certain he could handle.
But he also knew that he had no choice.
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