“Cool. If you want your baby to be a hairless, craft-beer-drinking snob.”

“I don’t think snobbery or beer taste is genetic.”

“But you don’t know that.”

She huffed. “You’re actually the one that sounds like a snob right now.”

“I’m just saying.”

“You’re just saying a whole lot of toxic, stereotypical things.”

“You like it when I’m like that. Because I’m the secret part of your brain that you never let out, Sammy. And I think we both know that.”

He was making assumptions now. That maybe he was the hard, dark edge to her sunny sweetness. Just as she was any amount of optimism that he was able to access.

“This isn’t helpful. I don’t know why it should surprise you that I want a man that exemplifies the kinds of things I care about.”

“Corduroy and beekeeping?”

“He’s my type,” she insisted.

“Your type doesn’t turn you on,” he said.

Their eyes clashed, and it was like lightning cracking over the mountain that night. Sudden and sharp and echoing down into the valley below. The valley of his soul.

“Fine. I don’t need to be turned on. Maybe I just need to be intellectually stimulated.”

“Baby, if you were stimulated on any level you would have come.”

“I don’t...” Her face had gone red again. “I’m done with that part of the discussion.”

“We are actively talking about which man in here you should sleep with.”

“For the purposes of creating life.”

“You may have to sleep with him many times. You don’t just get pregnant the first time.”

“I’ll check my ovulation. There are predictors for that. You could just buy them at the store. They’re like next to the pregnancy tests and condoms and maxi pads.”

“Thank you for that little verbally guided tour of the grocery store. But I did know that.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve bought condoms. And maxi pads.”

She squinted and looked at him through her spiky, golden lashes. “You’ve bought maxi pads?”

“I basically raised three daughters, Sammy. I have bought maxi pads. Tampons. You name it. I’m sorry. Does the kind of man you hang out with usually get disgusted by that?”

“No.” She sniffed. “They’re actually very enlightened. It wouldn’t bother them at all.”

“Sure. Or is it that you didn’t expect me, caveman that I am, to be completely okay with that?”

“I didn’t think about it.”

“Have you ever gone and bought that stuff for the girls?”

Sammy frowned. “No.”

“Who do you think talked to them about all that. I mean, Iris helped. But she was young herself. And somebody had to talk to her...”

“You did that?”

“Someone had to. And I was okay with it being me.”

“Okay just...” she sputtered. “Make a list, put Lincoln on it.”

“Fine.”

“And Laz. Oh maybe that dude that rides rodeo and hangs out with Colt and Jake... Bowen?”

“No,” Ryder said. “He’s not your type. He’s just a...a cowboy.”

“Like you,” she said. “You’re not writing anything down.”