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Right after my mom gave her big emotional speech about wishing the father was around to experience this with me.
We were about to have an experience, that was for sure.
I couldn’t help it, my eyes drank in the sight of him, greedy for even the slightest bit of how he’d changed in the past few months. His hair was slightly longer, the usual stubbled jaw thick with a dark beard. Like usual, he wore a black T-shirt and worn-in work jeans that molded to his thick thighs. The toolbelt slung low around his slim hips jangled when he came to the bottom step.
He lookedgood. Heart-stopping, lung-squeezing, if-I-wasn’t-pregnant-already, him-looking-like-this-would-probably-knock-me-up-all-over-again good.
That’s when his gaze snapped to mine.
I couldn’t breathe.
“Hey,” I whispered, my voice trembling only the slightest bit. Everyone around us went suspiciously quiet. I felt my sister’s gaze heavy on my face, but I couldn’t possibly look anywhere but Jax.
Those dark, dark eyes traced over my face first, then slowly tracked down to where my hand rested on my stomach and narrowed. His big frame expanded on a sharp inhale and an equally sharp exhale.
“What thefuck, Poppy?”
Chapter 12
Jax
There were probably a million better, smarter, calmer ways to handle this, but every single fucking option flew out of my fucking head the moment I saw her hand on her obviously pregnant belly.
Pregnant.
Poppy was pregnant.
I didn’t know much about pregnancy, or when a woman started showing, but no matter how much I avoided her over the years, I knew Poppy Wilder, and all it took was one solitary glance at the way the color drained from her face, the way her eyes were full of shock and apology, and I fucking knew that baby was mine.
“You’re pregnant?” I said again, voice raspy and low in disbelief. “You’repregnant?”
No one moved.
If a single nail fell on the ground, the echo would’ve sounded like a gunshot.
Slowly, Poppy nodded, and a hint of pink crept into her pale, pale cheeks. Next to her, Cameron narrowed his eyes.
“Why do you sound so pissed right now?” my best friend asked quietly. It was a dangerous sort of quiet too, and I struggled not to give anything away on my face.
Poppy’s eyes fluttered closed for just a moment. At her side, Sheila Wilder kept her face impassive, but she gently wrapped an arm around Poppy’s back.
“That’s why you texted me?” I shouted.
After a visible swallow, Poppy nodded again.
Ian Wilder let out a sharp gust of air, rubbing a hand over his jaw.
“I think we need to go talk somewhere,” I said grimly.
“Jax, why do you sound so pissed off right now?” Cameron asked again, his voice rising loudly.
Wade, our longtime foreman, stood behind me, and I heard his muttered, “Fuck me sideways, I did not see this coming.”
The first person to move was Greer Wilder—the oldest Wilder sister, the one I’d worked with for over a decade, and at the moment, quite possibly the scariest woman in the world. Slowly, she looked down at the worktable next to her and picked up a hammer, hefting its weight in her normally very graceful hand.
“Greer,” I warned.
She nodded sharply. “Yup, this’ll do just fine.”
