Weeping openly now, Stephanie shook her head. “That’s really nice of you to say, but there’s no way to know whether or not I’d mess it up until it happens, and I can’t take that risk. It wouldn’t be fair to the kid or to Grant. He deserves better. He deserves so much better than me.”

“God, Steph,” Laura said. “You have no idea how much he loves you if you can say something like that.”

Stephanie wiped the tears off her cheeks. “I know you guys mean well—”

“Ladies,” a deep male voice said behind them. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take it from here.”

They spun around to find Grant standing there.

Laura looked to Stephanie to see what she wanted them to do.

“It’s okay, you guys. This conversation is probably long overdue anyway.”

Each of them hugged and kissed Stephanie before they walked away to leave them to work it out. Laura squeezed her cousin’s arm as she walked by, afraid of what might become of him if he lost the woman he loved.

A knot of fear settled in her gut as Stephanie eyed her fiancé’s unreadable expression. “How much did you hear?”

He kept his hands in the pockets of the plaid shorts she’d bought him for his birthday earlier in the summer. She’d had to talk him into wearing them, and now he loved them. “Enough.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shared with them something I’ve been unable to share with you.”

“Why is that? Why have you been unable to share it with me?”

“Because I’m afraid.”

He took a step closer to her. “Of what, honey?”

“Of losing you.” Despite her effort to contain the emotional wallop of exposing her deepest fears, a sob escaped from her tightly clenched lips.

Grant closed the distance between them and put his arms around her, drawing her into his familiar and comforting embrace. “That’s not going to happen. There’s nothing you could say or do that would keep me from wanting you or loving you. I thought you knew that.”

Sometimes she still felt like she didn’t deserve this amazing man. “I don’t know if I want kids.” Saying the words out loud filled her with an unreasonable level of fear that she’d kept locked inside for months as she dodged his efforts to pin her down on a wedding date.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because! After the way I grew up, I have no business taking that kind of chance with an innocent kid who deserves better than a mother who doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing.”

His soft chuckle surprised and infuriated her.

“Are you laughing at me?”