Page 50 of Just One More Night

So they did.

CHAPTER TWELVE

TENYEARSLATER, Indy shivered in the cold on the front porch of a sweet little old farmhouse she and Stefan had spent the last six months renovating.

Right there on the outskirts of the same little Ohio town where she’d grown up. The town she’d been so certain she would never return to, ever.

She reached down and slid her hand over her gigantic belly, feeling even bigger beneath all the layers she was wearing, smiling. Because life, it turned out, did what it wanted.

Especially when a person finally wised up and stopped living it all in one way.

Her parents had thought that when Indy called home at the end of the summer to announce she’d met a man andoops,had accidentally married him on a beach in Bali, it was more evidence of her well-documentedflightiness.

Then they’d met Stefan that Christmas. It had been a banner holiday in the March family. Bristol had come home with Lachlan Drummond, and it had been a strange few days of too many men in a house that had never had that problem.

Lachlan and Stefan had bonded. Bristol and Indy had realized, too late, that this was a potential cause for concern.

“We are brothers now,” Stefan had said, a wicked light in his eyes, there in her childhood bedroom.

Where he’d proceeded to wash away all the ghosts of Jamie Portnoys past.

But quietly, so as to be respectful.

Indy’s parents had been instantly impressed with their new son-in-law. Bill had a few beers with him. Margie had taken Indy aside and told her, with great confidence, that a man like that would settle her down. Eventually.

That wasn’t quite how things had worked.

She and Stefan had followed their passions, whatever they might be. They didn’t need to work, or wander off into think tanks like Bristol and Lachlan, so they indulged their whims instead. And over time, their whims tended to shift back and forth—something worthwhile for every selfish bit of hedonism. Art appreciation and buying trips all over the world. A year of volunteering in the rain forest. A summer scuba diving off the Great Barrier Reef. A season in Antarctica on a research expedition.

There was no need to waste her time on silly love affairs with men not worth remembering. Not when she had everything she could ever want, and more, in Stefan.

Indy had never wanted to settle. She and Stefan had attended Bristol and Lachlan’s wedding a few years after theirs, and while she’d loved watching her sister so happy, she was even happier that she and Stefan had married in private.

Because that kind of happiness, to her, was real.

And it made settling fun. Even the most domestic, hum-drum activity in the world was fun if she did it with Stefan.

“Are you ready?” she asked when she heard him come out of the house behind her. “Christmas morning waits for no one, Stefan. You should know this by now.”

She turned to look at him, this beautiful man of hers. He still looked as dangerous as ever. He still had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.

“For you?” Stefan grinned. He did that a lot more now. “I am always ready.”

“You know we Marches take our holidays seriously.” She smiled when he moved his hands over her belly, too. This baby they’d made, a little boy she was already madly in love with, would be joining them at any time. “Just wait until he comes. He’s going to be worse than all my sister’s kids combined.”

Stefan’s hand settled at the nape of her neck, possessive and perfect. The snow had come in last night, but he’d been up early to clear off the steps and the walk to their car. And now he helped her navigate her huge, unwieldy body down the wintry steps.

“My son will be properly reserved and contained,” Stefan told her. “I will teach him myself.”

“You’re not reserved at all, foolish man,” she said softy.

His gaze seared through her. “Not anymore.”

He helped her into the car and she sat there as he rounded the hood, looking at this place they intended to call home, at least for part of the year. So that Indy could be near her mother and the child could be near his grandparents. And they would always be close enough to Columbus that they could fly away at a moment’s notice.

Because she liked to spend a good chunk of her summers in Prague, where they’d become them.

That was what she’d learned. Life was what she made it. It was never all one thing. She and Stefan got more solid by the day, happier and better, and none of that prevented them from playing the kind of games they liked best.