The Dance

Chapter 191 Roses are Red

Red and Bear were curled up on the couch with a book of baby names and a pad and a pen. He read the names aloud and she scribbled them under the headings of boy and girls.

"So we agree, no names are too quirky or off limits?" Bear asked as he thumbed through page after page of names. There were categories for names from the bible, quirky names, names of famous people and the top 500 baby names from the last one hundred years. He was overwhelmed by the number of choices.

Red grabbed the book from Bear's hand and set it aside. "Let's start with names we like." She wrote a name on the page under the girl heading.

"Wait. Aren't you going to tell me what you wrote?" He reached for her pad and read the name aloud. "Willow."

"I like that name, especially because it's a tree name."

Red giggled. "Of course you would."

Bear scribbled a name under the boy's name list. Red took the pad back to read his first entry. "Oakley?"

Bear smiled. "It's a tree name. Get it Oak?"

Red groaned. "Promise me we won't name our baby Pine Nut Brown or Red Cedar Brown."

"Hey, I married a Red. You actually married a Rose." She wrote two names under the girl heading and handed the pad back to Bear. "Violet. Iris. Flowers just like her mom and her cousin Lily. I like those names."

Bear wrote a name under the boy column again. "Devlynn."

"That sounds like a vampire name. I don't like that name." Bear shrugged handing the pad back to Red. She seemed stuck on girls names. Her next selection was "Cierra."

Bear frowned. "That reminds me of a desert. Dry and lacking life. How do you feel about biblical names? All of us brothers have bible names."

"You mean like Mark, Luke, Timothy , Peter, John, David, Adam..." Red recited a series of boys' biblical names. "I like Luke but we already have a Lucas in the family."

"Well we could name our first son Adam."

Red interrupted, "But we wouldn't name his sister Eve." Bear rolled with laughter.

"Nevermind." He said flipping through the book again. "How do you feel about Alaska names like Denali or McKinley?"

"Nope. Those are already so popular in this area." Red wrote an entry in the boy column. Kiah.

"It's pronounced Kiah like pie but spelled differently." Bear furrowed his brow obviously not a fan of that suggestion.

He scrawled another name on the pad. Wolfgang.

Red bellowed. Bear suggested that he could be called Wolfie when he was little; Wolf when he was a teenager and Wolfgang when he was grown.

"Maybe Wolf but not Wolfgang." She added another name to the girls list. Skye.

Bear loved that name. He quickly scribbled out a full name. Violet Skye Brown.

"I think we have a winner if our baby is a girl." Bear leaned over and kissed his wife sweetly on the lips and then her neck.

"Hey cut that out. We still have a boys name to come up with."

Bear growled in her ear taking her pad and pen from her hand. "I think I might be able to make something come."

"Sol, you have a one track mind, don't you?"

"Only when it comes to you." He kissed her again biting her lip playfully.

"Isn't this how we got here in the first place?" She rubbed her pregnant belly succumbing to his natural charm.

Roses and Violets by Alexander Jean