Read Online Some Like It Perfect (A Temporary Engagement) by Megan Bryce - Free Book Online

question.”
    “Well. I’m awake now. Are we talking about Justine?”
    Paul looked back out the window. “She wants us to move in together, which I think I’m okay with. But the rest? I just don’t know. I don’t want to string her along. If she’s not it, it would be kinder to tell her now. To stop this before it went any further.”
    “Are you sure you’re a lawyer? That is such a decent and good thing for any man to think, let alone one who is a lawyer.”
    “She was in my office crying that she was thirty-six. She told me that if this wasn’t going to work she needed to know sooner rather than later.”
    His sister hummed in the back of her throat. “I didn’t realize. Thirty-six.”
    Two years older than Paul. Seven years older than Karen.
    She said, “All right, I’ll go ask Steve. But I am not changing this diaper, no matter how much he gags.” She muttered to herself, “I will not change this diaper. Be strong, Karen. Be strong.”
    She covered the phone and after a minute Paul heard a muffled, “Oh, come on. You’re gagging over this .”
    Steve whined at Karen and Paul listened to them, listened to what a family was.
    It didn’t always smell like a bed of roses but he knew they were both happy with what they had. Or maybe it was one day they’d be happy that they’d done it.
    His sister came back on the line and said dryly, “He says he thought I was the best he could get.”
    She held the phone away from her mouth and said, “You weren’t wrong.”
    Steve said faintly, “I know it, babe. I still know it.”
    Paul knew why Karen had married Steve, probably even knew why the guy had only changed three diapers. He made Karen feel like he’d lucked out by getting her. They had their moments, moments where Karen would call asking Paulie what the statue of limitations on murder was, but they were a team. They were part of a whole.
    Steve came on the line and Paul smiled. “Got out of another diaper, huh? You’re welcome.”
    “You’re asking when it’s time to pop the question, man. That’s not something you ask a woman. They’ll always say it was yesterday.”
    Paul grinned. “And you’ll say it’s. . .”
    “Always someday. Put it off as long as they’ll let you.”
    Paul imagined Steve’s shaggy blond hair, his plaid flannel shirt, the big hulking bear of a man. His sister’s dark hair, glasses permanently perched on her nose, her face in a book. She was on parental leave from Harvard, assistant professor of ancient history, until the end of December. Steve worked for the forest service. They didn’t look like they went together but, somehow, they did.
    Paul said, “You didn’t.”
    “I know, but I married up. I had to nail that down before everyone talked her out of it.”
    “And how did you know you were sure? That this was it, that she was it?”
    “I just knew. I knew that I’d never be happy without her. I knew the first time I saw her that she was mine.”
    “And you’re not just saying that because Karen’s standing right there threatening you with a gag-worthy diaper?”
    Steve made a noise in the back of his throat. “I know Mother Nature can be nasty, I see plenty in my line of work, but the things that come out of my sweet, little princess? It is just not right, man. Just not right.”
    Paul closed his eyes, trying not to imagine what could be so horrible that it would make a man who’d sucked an eyeball out of a fish, a man who hunted and field dressed his own game every year, sound so horrified.
    Steve said, “I love Karen more every time she lets me pass that cup. I would lay down my life for that woman. You feel that way about your woman? Would you give her your life?”
    That expectation was a lot to live up to. To love someone more than yourself. He didn’t feel that way about Justine.
    Paul said, “Did you feel like that before Little Princess?”
    “Maybe not. There’s something that happens to a man when he becomes a father. Something