"More champagne? We practically swam in it at the hospital. I'd better go up and settle down the troops. "
"They're out for the count. Have been since just before nine. Digging holes wears a man out. "
"Oh. I know you said you'd bring them back when I called to tell you about the baby, but I didn't expect you to put them to bed. "
"They were tuckered. We had ourselves a manly shower, then they crawled into bed and were out in under five seconds. "
"Well. I owe you big. "
"Pay up. "
He crossed to her, slid his arms around her and kissed her until her already spinning head lifted off her shoulders.
"Tired?" he asked.
"Yeah. But in the best possible way. "
He danced his fingers over her hair, and kept his other arm around her. "How's the new kid on the block and her mama?"
"They're great. Hayley's a wonder. Steady as a rock through seven hours of labor. And the baby might be a couple weeks early, but she came through like a champ. Only a few ounces shy of Gavin's birth weight, though it took me twice as long to convince him to come out. "
"Make you want to have another?"
She went a few shades more pale. "Oh. Well. "
"Now I've scared you. " Amused, he slung an arm around her shoulder. "Let's go see what's on the menu with that champagne. "
* * *
He hadn't scared her, exactly. But he had made her vaguely uneasy. She was just getting used to having a relationship, and the man was making subtle hints about babies.
Of course, it could have been just a natural, offhand remark under the circumstances. Or a kind of joke.
Whatever the intent, it got her thinking. Did she want more children? She'd crossed that possibility off her list when Kevin died and had ruthlessly shut down her biological clock. Certainly she was capable, physically, of having another child. But it took more than physical capability, or should, to bring a child into the world.
She had two healthy, active children. And was solely and wholly responsible for them - emotionally, financially, morally. To consider having another meant considering a permanent relationship with a man. Marriage, a future, sharing not only what she had but building more, and in a different direction.
She'd come to Tennessee to visit her own roots, and to plant her family in the soil of her own origins. To be near her father, and to allow her children the pleasure of being close to grandparents who wanted to know them.
Her mother had never been particularly interested, hadn't enjoyed seeing herself as a grandmother. It spoiled the youthful image, Stella thought.
If a man like Logan had blipped onto her mother's radar, he'd have been snapped right up.
And if that's why Stella was hesitating, it was a sad state of affairs. Undoubtedly part of it, though, she decided. Otherwise she wouldn't be thinking it.
She hadn't disliked any of her stepfathers. But she hadn't bonded with them either, or they with her. How old had she been the first time her mother had remarried? Gavin's age, she remembered. Yes, right around eight.
She'd been plucked out of her school and plunked down in a new one, a new house, new neighborhood, and dazed by it all while her mother had been in the adrenaline rush of having a new husband.
That one had lasted, what? Three years, four? Somewhere between, she decided, with another year or so of upheaval while her mother dealt with the battle and debris of divorce, another new place, a new job, a new start.
And another new school for Stella.
After that, her mother had stuck with boyfriends for a long stretch. But that itself had been another kind of upheaval, having to survive her mother's mad dashes into love, her eventual bitter exit from it.
And they were always bitter, Stella remembered.
At least she'd been in college, living on her own, when her mother had married yet again. And maybe that was part of the reason that marriage had lasted nearly a decade. There hadn't been a child to crowd things. Yet eventually there'd been another acrimonious divorce, with the split nearly coinciding with her own widowhood.