“Looks like it sweetheart. Now what is this about you being horny?”

I started to laugh. I leaned down and whispered into Gunner’s ear.

“I really want you Mr. Mathews. Now!”

Gunner had me off his lap and walking into the house faster than I even knew what hit me. As we walked by Josh and Heather were so deep in conversation they did not even notice us walking by.

Gunner and I made our way down to the master bedroom. Would I always feel so nervous with him? Just the thought of making love to him had my stomach doing flips.

“Oh my god….does it just keep getting better Gunner?” I said as I lay across his chest trying to catch my breath.

He let out a laugh as he stroked my back with his hand……up and down. God it felt so good.

“I have a feeling it is going to be even better when we are married.”

I pushed myself up and looked down at him. He smiled at me but I could tell something was wrong.

“Gunner, what’s going on with Jefferson?”

He let out a sigh. “Fuck Ellie, I can’t be the one to tell you. I don’t want to be the one to tell you.”

Oh no….it was bad. Did something happen with the property? One of his horses or oh god Ari’s horse?

“Gunner…I saw the look on his face. It’s big….tell me what is going on.”

Gunner moved me off of him and sat up.

“Ellie you cannot tell Ari a word of what I am about to tell you. Promise me baby you won’t say anything.”

Oh holy shit. Maybe I didn’t want to know.

“Um, okay. I promise you Gunner. I won’t say a word.”

“Jeff needs to find out some shit before he talks to Ari about this.”

“Okay….”

“I mean it all could turn out to not even be true.”

“GUNNER! Just tell me!”

He ran his hands through his hair…...oh god how I wanted to do that…...oh gosh focus Ellie…..focus……

“Jeff got a call about forty five minutes ago from Rebecca. The girl he slept with that night at your graduation party.”

“Okay…what did she want?”

“I guess Jeff hooked up with her the weekend before Thanksgiving. Ran into her at Rebels and ended up fucking her in his truck that night.”

Nice……not the image I wanted in my head right now.

I just nodded and he kept talking.

“Well, anyway, she just called him and told him she was seven months pregnant and the baby was his.”

Mother fucking son of a bitch. NO!

“Oh no! No Gunner no! This is going to destroy Ari! Why didn’t he use protection?”

“He swears he did, he told her it was impossible but she said something about finding a piece of condom in her underwear later that night. But Jeff said he was not drunk and when he took the condom off it was not broke.”

“Then she’s lying Gunner. She has to be lying!”

“Jeff thinks she is but the only way to find out for sure is to wait until the baby is born and take a paternity test.”

“Why did she wait until she was seven months pregnant before she said anything?”

“She said something about hearing from a friend he was about to get married. She must think he is getting married this weekend and she wanted to drop the bomb on him before he got married.”

“Oh my god what a bitch! Ari is going to kill her Gunner.”

“Yeah, I know. But hey, don’t let this ruin our day okay? Jeff will take care of it. You have to trust him Ells to take care of it all okay baby?”

I nodded my head. Oh god. He was going to ask Ari to marry him Saturday night after the wedding. Is he going to tell her?

“Is he going to tell Ari?”

“Yeah he just needs to talk to Rebecca first and then he is going to tell Ari.”

“Is he still planning on asking her to marry him this weekend?”

“YES! Of course he is sweetheart. He loves her more than anything.”

“He needs to tell her right away Gunner. I don’t think he should wait.”

Gunner nodded but I know he was just as lost as I was.

I started thinking about the conversation I had with Ari just yesterday. We were wrapping up party favors that Jenny had sent up for us to do and Ari was talking about wanting to start a family right away. How she couldn’t wait to see Jefferson’s face when she told him for the first time she was pregnant. Oh god…my chest was hurting.

Poor Ari.

CHAPTER SIXTY

Ellie…….

Saturday….the wedding…..

“Do you want to go and check everything out before everyone gets here Ellie? If so, now would be our time to go.”

Jenny was amazing! They way she was handling everything and doing such a great job at it! I had no doubt everything was going to look beautiful. She really needed to start a business doing this stuff with the way she made the cabin look when Gunner asked me to marry him; my heart was beating a mile a minute. She took us down to the wedding site first. It was a good thing my makeup was not done yet. It was exactly how I wanted it. The first thing I noticed was our tree. Hanging from the tree were about fifty small flower vases that we spent days making out of old bottles and mason jars. My fingers were almost raw from wrapping thin wire around and around the jars so that we could hang them in the trees. Daisies and other wild flowers were in each one. They looked beautiful. Then I saw all the hay bales. They were set in rows and had old quilts and blankets over each one. The way Gunner and Jefferson set them up there was a small back also so that people would be able to lean back while sitting down. Emma and her quilting club made pillows to put on the hay bales as well. The little fans on each row were perfect! They each had the letter M on them. I almost cried just thinking about how my name was going to be Ellie Mathews in just a few short hours.

The aisle that was made for the wedding party to walk down already had a few dozen red and pink flower petals spread around. Ari’s little Cousin Lauren was the flower girl and her little brother Matthew was the ring barrier. They would both look so cute walking down the aisle.

I wanted the wedding site to be very simple nothing more than the vases hanging in the tree. I did not want to take away from the beautiful location where we were getting married. I walked around and smiled. The memory of that night flooded back to me. The endless talking about our favorite movies, singers, songs, the beautiful stars……my first orgasm. I felt the heat rush into my face and I had to look around to see if anyone was watching me. I’m sure I was as red as those rose petals. This place was so special to me. Someday we would bring our kids here and show them the nighttime stars just like Gunner did for me.

“Is everything how you want Ellie?” Jenny asked as she walked around with a clip board and her cell phone ever present in her hand. I just smiled at her.

“I can never ever repay you for how wonderful you have made this day for me Jenny. It’s perfect. Thank you so much for listening to me when I said I wanted to keep it as simple as possible. I just….I just love it.”

Jenny smiled her shy little smile and shrugged her shoulders.

“I’m so happy you like it Ellie. Do you want to go up and see the reception area?”

“Is it safe? Where will Gunner be?”

Jenny laughed. I’ll make sure that Aaron knows to keep him in the house and not to let him peak out the window.”

We headed up to the ranch house and to the main barn. Drake, Aaron and Dewey spent days cleaning out the barn so that the slab floor would be ready for the reception. I was going to have to do something special for them.

We turned the corner and I saw three large white tents set up right outside the house and the barn. I sucked in a breath of air.

“OH. My. God! It looks beautiful…..it all looks so beautiful.”

We got out of Jenny’s truck and started walking around. Ari grabbed my arm and we set off to explore. Each of the white tent legs were wrapped in white silk mesh tulle with soft pink ribbon wrapped around each leg. The white tables had white linen draped over the whole table with a smaller soft pink linen on top of that. I was so glad Jenny kept the white chairs plain though. She wanted to tie large pink bows on each but I wanted to keep it simple. I liked it simple and plain, it was more me I thought. Each table had a center piece of wild flowers in mason jars with a few small white votive candles.