“Trust me, Cassie. Even your male cousins want to think that.” Valentina gave Smith a little nudge. “In fact, if we’re going to get any good girl talk in, maybe you should go check that Magoo isn’t tearing up your mom’s backyard.” Almost completely blind, Smith and Valentina’s dog was as handsome and lovable a fellow as they came.
As soon as Smith was out of hearing, Valentina turned back to Lori. “From the gleam in your eyes whenever you look at Grayson, I take it everything I’ve heard about pregnancy hormones and increased libido is true?”
“And then some,” Lori confirmed with a quintessentially naughty grin. “Take it from me, every baby shower should start with a hot quickie.”
“You had sex with Grayson before the party began?” Cassie looked partly shocked. But mostly intrigued. And possibly a tiny bit envious. “Where?”
“My old bedroom.”
Cassie’s eyes grew even bigger. “Have I mentioned recently how much I adore you just for being you, Lori?”
“A girl can never hear it enough.” Lori gave her cousin a big hug. “Just like I can never thank you enough for that ridiculously cool cake. My Instagram feed has been lighting up like the Fourth of July ever since I posted a picture of it—even now I can hear my phone in my purse, dinging away with notifications.”
For their shower, Cassie had made a cake in the shape of a dancing baby girl in a cowboy hat, with cute little pigs and sheep and horses all around her. It was positively brilliant. For the millionth time, Lori wished her cousin didn’t live all the way over on the other coast. Thankfully, over the years Lori had been in so many dance shows along the Eastern Seaboard that she’d been able to visit with Cassie, her other six Maine cousins, and Uncle Ethan and Aunt Beth, quite a lot.
Both Ethan and Beth were here today—they were currently chatting with Lori’s mom, Uncle Max and Aunt Claudia from Seattle, and Uncle William from New York. Her cousin Hudson, a landscape architect, and Brandon, a luxury hotel mogul, hadn’t been able to make it, however. Neither had Ashley, who had stayed in Maine with her son to keep watch over the family business. Lori loved the Irish cafés and gift stores that Ethan and Beth had opened throughout Maine. Time and time again, she had told them that she thought their business would do just as well on the West Coast, in the hopes that they’d expand the family business this way soon.
Fortunately, Cassie’s other siblings were here. Turner was a brilliant animator who had worked on several fantastic movies and TV shows. Rory was an incredibly talented furniture maker who had made the driftwood coffee table in Lori and Grayson’s living room. And Lola not only designed knockout textiles, she was also a knockout bombshell. Thankfully, she was also one of the nicest women on the planet.
Lori was endlessly proud of her cousins. Grayson liked to joke about how many there were. Truth be told, even Lori tended to lose count once she started adding in her second and third cousins in Europe and Australia and Asia. No matter where she went in the world, family was never far away.
Lori put her hand over the spot on her belly where the baby was kicking up a storm, safe in the knowledge that her daughter would always be surrounded by people who loved her.
Realizing she must have drifted off inside her head for a few moments—something that never used to happen before she became pregnant—Lori turned back to Cassie. “When I first saw your cake, I thought it looked too good to eat. But we pregnant women are always hungry. And your cake is so good.” So delicious that she couldn’t resist snagging another bite from Cassie’s own plate.
“I had a lot of fun coming up with the ideas for it,” Cassie said with smile.
“Anything else—or anyone—you’re having fun with recently?”
“Candy and pastry, yes. Men?” She shook her head. “Nope, not a one.”
Lori raised an eyebrow. “You’re not holding out on any dirty details, are you?”
“Trust me, if I had dirty details to share, you’d be one of the first people I’d tell them to. After all, no one appreciates TMI more than you.”
“I’m going to hold you to that promise. In fact, there are a couple of cowboys Grayson and I know that we could—”
“No!” Cassie held up her hands, clearly horrified by what Lori was about to suggest. “I can’t do setups. They always go terribly, embarrassingly wrong. Besides, you’ve already snagged the best cowboy around.”
“I really have,” Lori agreed, going all dreamy again as she looked over at her husband.
“How has Grayson been holding up during your pregnancy?” Chloe asked, joining the conversation. Married to Lori’s brother Chase and mother to four-year-old Emma and two-year-old Julia, Chloe was a masterful fiber artist who had been the perfect addition to the Sullivan family from day one.
“Fortunately, my pregnancy has been perfect,” Lori replied. “I haven’t been sick. I haven’t had any red flags. I’ve taken my prenatal vitamins and eaten all the right food. Apart from wearing these five-inch spikes—” She lifted up one heeled foot. “—I’m doing everything by the book. Still…” She hadn’t forgotten how tense Grayson had seemed earlier. Nor had she forgotten the look of panic on his face after the dog nearly knocked her over in the kitchen. “Right after we got here, while we were saying hi to Mom, he seemed worried.”
“Though sweet and wonderful, husbands aren’t always rational,” Chloe noted. “In fact, even though they don’t mean to be, sometimes they’re downright out of their minds.”
“Out of their minds?” Vicki, an award-winning sculptor who was married to Lori’s baseball-playing brother, Ryan, joined the group. With her was Nicola, a world-famous musician who was married to Lori’s vintner brother, Marcus. “I’m assuming we’re talking about your brothers, Lori?”
“Of course we are, along with my husband.”
“I know they can act like cavemen,” Nicola said, “but honestly—” She was blushing as she admitted, “I kind of like it when Marcus goes all Neanderthal on me.”
Though there were plenty more eye rolls, Lori knew that all of them felt the same. Not one of them would trade their man for anything.
“But enough about our caveman husbands,” Nicola said in an obvious bid to spin the conversation in a less blush-worthy direction. “The big question everyone wants to know is whether you and Grayson have picked a name yet.”
Lori shook her head. She and Grayson had been going round and round about names ever since her pregnancy test had come back positive. But they’d yet to agree on a name. “We’re probably going to be one of those couples who leave a blank space on the birth certificate for the first two weeks,” she joked, even though the truth was that it did bother her. Why couldn’t they decide on a name? Shouldn’t there be at least one that felt right?
“Hi, beautiful!” Lori’s cousin Mia found her way right into the center of the group to give Lori a smacking kiss on the cheek. “You look amazing, so I won’t ask how you’re feeling. All I want to know is, do you have a babymoon planned yet? If not, I’m going to drop everything to find you a killer vacation rental so that you and your drop-dead-gorgeous husband can get away before the little ankle-biter comes along.”