“One hundred, thirty-eight thousand and six hundred dollars.”
“You don’t have that!” I exclaim, my mouth open.
“No?” He pouts his lips. “Huh… could have sworn I did.”
“Bo…” I whisper, side-eyeing him. “Are you rich?”
“I do well.”
“I do well sounds like something a rich person would say. I know you have a really great job, but that is some serious money.”
“I’ve been lucky with some investments. Adamir approached me for some advice when he finished school, and I ended up partnering with him on an app he built. It sold over a year ago for just under three million.”
“And when you say partnered, you mean…？”
“I got about 30 percent of that.”
I grip my forehead, laughing without sound. “There is so much math going on this morning.”
Bo drops his hand from the counter and wraps it around my back, tugging me to him. “There have been a lot of things I wanted to do and say these last few months, and I’ve been waiting not so patiently. This is one of those things. Now that you trust me,” he tilts my chin up toward him when I look down between us, “I want you to let me help, okay?” He nods, his eyes locked on mine, as if he’s trying to get me to do the same. “It’s your turn now, Win.”
“My turn?” I ask, my voice distant.
“Everything you poured into your relationship with that…” Bo’s eyes flare, and he takes a breath, steadying himself. “I don’t know everything yet—and I’d really like to talk about it more when you’re ready—but when you said you supported that asshole through school just to get nothing in return, it destroyed me. So yeah, it’s your turn now, Win. To get back that time. To get to where you want to be. Where you deserve to be. And not just because you deserve it. But also because kids like Henry do. Kids like us who need this camp. So, please, let me be a part of it.”
“It’s not up to you to fix Jack’s mistakes…”
“No,” Bo says, leaning down to kiss me just once, brushing his nose against mine. “But it is my job to love you the way you deserve to be loved from now on.” He presses his forehead against mine, breathing out slowly. “Let me do that, honey.”
“Okay,” I whisper, breathing him in. Bo straightens, his face still pointed toward me. “You promise you’re not just doing this because we’ve finally had sex?” I say, wincing.
Bo laughs, playing with the hair over my shoulder, twiddling it mindlessly. “As good as the sex is, no. It’s so much more than that.”
“So… just like that? I quit my job?” I ask, wrapping my arms around his middle and placing my chin on his chest, looking up at him adoringly. “You really did want a kept woman. I was right.”
“The sooner you quit, the sooner you can focus your attention on the camp,” Bo says. “Plus, we’re not going to be just us for much longer. As excited as I am to have August, I’d like some more one-on-one time before then.”
“Hmm. And sleep,” I agree.
“That too.”
“So… do we email James? Tell him the plan?”
“Well, we’re going to have to do a lot more math, because none of those plans we made matter anymore. But then, yes.”
“I love when you talk dirty to me,” I say, wiggling my eyebrows.
“First, breakfast.” Bo twists within my hold and hands me a plate with a sly wink. “I’ve gotta keep you fed,” he says, brushing his nose across my temple. “For later.”
I have a feeling I’m going to enjoy later very much. “Yes, for all that math.”
“Exactly.”
CHAPTER 32
Twenty-Six Weeks Pregnant. Baby is the size of an eggplant.
“You’re being ridiculous!” I shout, storming down the hall after Bo. “April fool’s day was two weeks ago, so if this is some sort of prank, it is not funny or well-timed!”
Bo turns sharply into his room. Sorry, our room. I keep having to remind myself of that.
I follow in after him, watching as he backs away from me. He’s audacious enough to be laughing.
“If you want to fight with me, that’s fine, but can it wait until after the installation guys leave? That way we can at least have make-up sex when you’re done being angry.” He stops when he hits the wall. I corner him, my finger prodding his chest on impact.
“You. Said. No. More. Gifts,” I say, announcing every word with a poke of my finger against his muscle.
He swipes my hand away, keeping it tightly in his grasp, and kisses my palm, smiling into it. “I never said that. You said that.”
“Robert!” I snap my hand back, momentarily falling into his soft, lulling trap of tender kisses.
“Winnifred!” he laughs out, his eyes creasing on either side.
The nerve of this man. “Don’t,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.
He admonishes me with a gentle exhale, his face falling into something a touch more serious, but still not as sincere as I’d like him to be. He runs a hand through his hair, letting it flop back onto his face.
He hasn’t gotten it cut since I’ve known him, and I have to admit I really love it longer. More to grip on to in bed or play with when he lies across my lap on the couch, watching another movie I’ll inevitably fall asleep during.
“Honey, it’s a bathtub. We need one eventually. Were we seriously going to bathe August in the sink for the next four years? A bucket? You want it, I want it. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that you didn’t tell me beforehand so I could have had the option to say no. Every time you do something like this, I feel one step closer to becoming some spoiled princess with no job who—”
“You have a job,” he interjects, placing a hand on my stomach. He knows when I get riled like this, August kicks,and dammit, it’s so much harder to continue being mad when he’s smiling at my belly, listening to me absently as he awaits the baby’s movement.
“With no income,” I correct myself, moving his hand lower to the spot where the baby was already kicking. “Who is waited on hand and foot and contributes nothing. You keep doing all these extravagant things for me, and I’m uncomfortable with it. I’ve told you that. First, it was the camp loan—”
“Not a loan. An investment,” Bo argues, spreading his fingers wider on my bump.
“Then it was the shed.” I use air-quotes aggressively around the word shed, comically attempting to do them with my small fingers as well.
When Bo announced he was getting a shed for the backyard for gardening and storage, I didn’t think much of it. Though I did have a sneaking suspicion it was related to all my questions about what the garden would bloom into in spring. I made plans to start a small vegetable garden, and suddenly, I was the proud owner of a greenhouse. Not a shed. A beautiful glass greenhouse with running water and electricity.
Because this man is ridiculous.
“In my defence, that had selfish motivations. Some of the living room plants did move outside, which—”