The Rancher's Secret Son

by Sara Orwig

  She rose slightly to look down at him. “Christmas is next week. What are your plans?”

  “This year the whole family is going to Mom and Dad’s for dinner on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day everyone is on their own. I’ll be with you and your family that afternoon. Then everyone’s invited to Wyatt’s for dinner Christmas night.”

  “If you’d like, come Christmas Eve and join us. You’ll miss dinner at your parents’ house, but we’ll be happy to have you.”

  “I accept,” he said, kissing her briefly.

  She rolled off the bed to gather her clothes. “Nick, I need to go home. I’m not spending the night here.”

  “Home, it is,” he said.

  She loved the sound of that word on his lips.

  * * *

  As Nick drove her home, she placed her hand on his knee.

  “Nick, we’ve never talked about children. We’ve lost some time. Cody is already three. I’d like Cody to have a sibling or two.”

  Nick smiled. “I think that’s a marvelous idea. I agree. As soon as you want.”

  “I might want to just retire to the ranch with you and raise a family.”

  “That would suit me fine,” he said.

  She laughed. “Cody is going to be impossible to calm down. If he thinks he is moving to the ranch, he won’t sleep for a week.”

  “So maybe we ought to both take the rest of the time until Christmas and go to the ranch. I can fly your grandmother and grandfather there, also his nurse and a caregiver, whoever you need to hire for him.”

  “I’ll ask if they want to do that,” she said, watching him drive and bubbling with happiness over the changes in her life. “I love you so much, Nick. You’ll never ever know, even though I’m going to try to show you. Even though I’ve held out for things, I love you with all my heart.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll come by and let’s tell Cody the news.” He snagged a quick kiss. “Get your camera ready.”

  Twelve

  In a white silk dress with a square neckline, short sleeves and a narrow skirt that ended at her knees, Claire stood in the vestibule of her church in Houston. Her great-uncle stood beside her with her arm linked in his as they watched Cody walk down the aisle with the wedding ring.

  In the front, on the aisle, sat her grandma. Next to her was Grandpa and beside him a nurse. A wheelchair was set out of the way temporarily.

  When it was her turn to walk down the aisle, her gaze honed in on Nick, who had never looked more handsome in his black suit.

  As Nick took her hand, he stepped close beside her to repeat their vows. Near them, Cody stood with a big smile. She glanced up at Nick who squeezed her hand.

  As soon as they were pronounced man and wife, Nick picked up Cody and the three of them walked up the aisle to the vestibule where Nick turned so they could hug.

  “I love you both with all my heart,” Nick said gruffly.

  Cody smiled. “I love you, too, you and Mama,” he said, smiling at her.

  “This is going to be good, Claire,” Nick said. “I’ll do my best to see that it is.”

  “I think it’s going to be difficult to see who’s the happiest—Cody or me,” she answered.

  “Let’s get this reception over.”

  While the wedding had been small, the reception was large, filled with relatives and friends from all over Texas. The January party was held at a Houston country club. As the band played, Claire and Nick mingled with guests. At one point they stood in a Milan family gathering.

  “You’ve been the miracle worker,” Tony said, “getting my brother to finally take up ranching. If anyone had challenged me, I would have bet my spread that wouldn’t ever happen.”

  Nick merely grinned and kept his arm around Claire’s waist.

  “I’m betting you never have a second’s regret,” Madison said, smiling at them.

  “Well, my term as sheriff will be up before you know it, so if you need a political office, I can throw your hat—”

  “Brother, stop right there,” Nick said, grinning. “You can forget that one. Wait until Cody is old enough. I can’t get him to stop wearing that little badge.”

  Wyatt smiled. “He can visit anytime he wants.”

  “We still need to get that kid to a rodeo,” Tony stated.

  “That’s on my agenda,” Nick said. “Once he sees one, he’ll want to go all the time.”

  They stood laughing and talking, and at one point Madison took Claire’s arm to walk away and leave the brothers. “I thought you might need a break from horse talk. Seriously, Claire, I’ve never seen Nick look as happy. Frankly, he didn’t at his wedding to Karen. You and Cody are so good for him. He’s way more laid-back now.”

  “I’m glad. I hope he doesn’t have regrets. He gave up a lot.”

  “I don’t think there’s the slightest chance of that happening. These boys had a grandfather who caused them to all love being cowboys. It doesn’t matter what kind of fortune the Milans have, those guys are happiest on the back of a horse or riding across the ranch in a pickup. You’ll see. Nick will never look back. That was something our Dad wanted him to do—law and politics. Now, because of you, Nick’s married his first love.”

  “Thanks, Madison. You make me feel good,” Claire said, smiling.

  “And here he comes, looking like a man ready to escape a party,” Madison said, laughing and walking away.

  Nick joined her. “I suppose I just ran Madison off.”

  “She didn’t mind.”

  “I’m ready to bow out of this. They’ve already taken your grandfather home. Your grandmother and Irene are waiting with Cody for us to tell them goodbye and there’s a limo to take them home. Can I get you to leave now?”

  “Of course,” she said, taking his hand. They walked out of the room and outside the club, where Grandma and Cody stood in the sunshine beside a white limousine. The tall gray-haired nanny stood nearby and smiled at Claire.

  Claire stopped to speak briefly with Irene and then moved to Cody and her grandmother.

  Claire picked up her son. “We’ll be back at the end of the week. I promise to call you every night, and you tell Grandma if you want to call me. All right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I love you,” she said, hugging him and loving the feel of his thin arms around her neck. She handed him over to Nick, who also gave him a big hug.

  “We’ll be back in a week,” he said, setting Cody on his feet. Verna reached out to take his hand.

  Claire hugged and kissed her grandmother and then climbed into the limo. Nick followed and the chauffeur closed the door behind him. They waved as they drove away, and then Nick pulled her into his arms.

  “Mrs. Nick Milan. I’ve waited a long time for this, Claire. I love you,” he said as he pulled her close again to kiss her.

  “I love you, Nick,” she whispered. Claire clung to him tightly while she kissed him. Joy filled her and she hoped they could give Cody a little brother and a little sister. She squeezed Nick tightly, still astounded that she was married to the man she had always loved. Like the diamonds on her finger, happiness held a glittering promise of her future with Nick and Cody. Her family.

  * * * * *

  If you loved this LONE STAR LEGENDS novel, read more in this series from USA TODAY bestselling author Sara Orwig.

  THE TEXAN’S FORBIDDEN FIANCÉE

  A TEXAN IN HER BED

  AT THE RANCHER’S REQUEST

  KISSED BY A RANCHER

  Available now from Harlequin Desire!

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  Keep reading for an excerpt from TAKING THE BOSS TO BED by Joss Wood.

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  Taking the Boss to Bed

  by Joss Wood

  One

  Jaci Brookes-Lyon walked across the art deco, ridiculously ornate lobby of the iconic Forrester-Grantham Hotel on Park Avenue to the bank of elevators flanked by life-size statues of 1930s cabaret dancers striking dance poses. She stopped next to one, touching the smooth, cool shoulder with her fingertips.

  Sighing through pursed lips, she looked at the dark-eyed blonde staring back at her in the supershiny surface of the elevator doors in front of her. Short, layered hair in a modern pixie cut, classic, fitted cocktail dress, perfect makeup, elegant heels. She looked good, Jaci admitted. Sophisticated, assured and confident. Maybe a tad sedate but that could be easily changed.

  What was important was that the mask was in place. She looked like the better, stronger, New York version of herself, the person she wanted to be. She appeared to be someone who knew where she was going and how she was going to get there. Pity, Jaci thought, as she pushed her long bangs out of a smoky eye, that the image was still as substantial as a hologram.

  Jaci left the elevator and took a deep breath as she walked across the foyer to the imposing double doors of the ballroom. Here goes, she thought. Stepping into the room packed with designer-dressed men and women, she reminded herself to put a smile on her face and to keep her spine straight. Nobody had to know that she’d rather stroll around Piccadilly Circus naked than walk into a room filled with people she didn’t know. Her colleagues from Starfish were here somewhere. She’d sat with them earlier through the interminably long awards ceremony. Her new friends, Wes and Shona, fellow writers employed by Starfish, had promised to keep her company at her first film industry after-party, and once she found them she’d be fine. Between now and then, she just had to look as if she was having fun or, at the very least, happy to be surrounded by handsome men and supersophisticated women. Dear Lord, was that Candice Bloom, the multiple Best Actress award winner? Was it unkind to think that she looked older and, dare she even think it, fatter in real life?

  Jaci took a glass of champagne from a tray that wafted past her and raised the glass for a taste. Then she clutched it to her chest and retreated to the side of the room, keeping an eye out for her coworkers. If she hadn’t found them in twenty minutes she was out of there. She spent her entire life being a wallflower at her parents’ soirees, balls and dinner parties, and had no intention of repeating the past.

  “That ring looks like an excellent example of Georgian craftsmanship.”

  Jaci turned at the voice at her elbow and looked down into the sludge-brown eyes of the man who’d stepped up to her side. Jaci blinked at his emerald tuxedo and thought that he looked like a frog in a shiny suit. His thin black hair was pulled back off his forehead and was gathered at his neck in an oily tail, and he sported a silly soul patch under his thin, cruel mouth.

  Jaci Brookes-Lyon, magnet for creepy guys, she thought.

  He picked up her hand to look at her ring. Jaci tried to tug it away but his grip was, for an amphibian, surprisingly strong. “Ah, as I thought. It’s an oval-faceted amethyst, foiled and claw-set with, I imagine, a closed back. The amethyst is pink and lilac. Exquisite. The two diamonds are old, mid-eighteenth century.”

  She didn’t need this dodgy man to tell her about her ring, and she pulled her hand away, resisting the urge to wipe it on her cinnamon-shaded cocktail dress. Ugh. Creep factor: ten thousand.

  “Where did you get the ring?” he demanded, and she caught a flash of dirty, yellow teeth.

  “It’s a family heirloom,” Jaci answered, society manners too deeply ingrained just to walk off and leave him standing there.

  “Are you from England? I love your accent.”

  “Yes.”

  “I have a mansion in the Cotswolds. In the village Arlingham. Do you know it?”

  She did, but she wouldn’t tell him that. She’d never manage to get rid of him then. “Sorry, I don’t. Would you exc—”

  “I have a particularly fine yellow diamond pendant that would look amazing in your cleavage. I can just imagine you wearing that and a pair of gold high heels.”

  Jaci shuddered and ruthlessly held down a heave as he ran his tongue over his lips. Seriously? Did that pickup line ever work? She picked his hand off her hip and quickly dropped it.

  She wished she could let rip and tell him to take a hike and not give a damn. But the Brookes-Lyon children had been raised on a diet of diplomacy and were masters of the art of telling someone to go to hell in such a way that they immediately started planning the best route to get there. Well, Neil and Meredith were. She normally just stood there with a mouth full of teeth.

  Jaci wrinkled her nose; some things never changed.

  If she wasn’t going to rip Mr. Rich-but-Creepy a new one—and she wasn’t because she had the confrontational skills of a wet noodle—then she should remove herself, she decided.

  “If you leave, I’ll follow you.”

  Dear God, now he was reading her mind? “Please don’t. I’m really not interested.”

  “But I haven’t told you that I’m going to finance a film or that I own a castle in Germany, or that I own a former winner of the Kentucky Derby,” he whined, and Jaci quickly suppressed her eye roll.

  And I will never tell you that my childhood home is a seventeenth-century manor that’s been in my family for over four hundred years. That my mother is a third cousin to the queen and that I am, distantly, related to most of the royal families in Europe. They don’t impress me, so you, with your pretentious attitude, haven’t a chance.

  And, just a suggestion, use some of that money you say you have to buy a decent suit, some shampoo and to get your teeth cleaned.

  “Excuse me,” Jaci murmured as she ducked around him and headed for the ballroom doors.

  As she approached the elevators, congratulating herself on her getaway, she heard someone ordering an elderly couple to get out of the way and she winced as she recognized Toad’s nasally voice. Glancing upward at the numbers above the elevator, she realized that if she waited for it he’d catch up to her and then she’d be caught in that steel box with him, up close and personal. There was no way he’d keep his hands or even—gack!—his tongue to himself. Thanks, but she’d rather lick a lamppost. Tucking her clutch bag under her arm, she glanced left and saw an emergency exit sign on a door and quickly changed direction. She’d run down the stairs; he surely wouldn’t follow.

  Stairs, lobby, taxi, home and a glass of wine in a bubble bath. Oh, yes, that sounded like heaven.

  “My limousine is just outside the door.”

  The voice to her right made her yelp and she whirled around, slapping her hand to her chest. Those sludgy eyes looked feral, as if he were enjoying the thrill of the chase, and his disgusting soul patch jiggled as his wet lips pulled up into a smarmy smile. Dear God, he’d been right behind her and she hadn’t even sensed him. Street smarts, she had none.

  Jaci stepped to the side and looked past him to the empty reception area. Jeez, this was a nightmare... If she took the stairs she would be alone with him, ditto the elevators. Her only option was to go back to the ballroom where there were people. Across the room, the elevator doors opened on a discreet chime and
Jaci watched as a tall man, hands in the pockets of his tuxedo pants, walked out toward the ballroom. Broad shoulders, trim waist, long legs. His dark hair was tapered, with the top styled into a tousled mess. He had bright, light eyes under dark brows and what she imagined was a three-day-old beard. She knew that profile, that face. Ryan?

  Neil’s Ryan? Jaci craned her neck for a better look.

  God, it was the grown-up version—and an even more gorgeous version—of that young man she’d known so long ago. Hard, tough, sexy, powerful; a man in every sense of the word. Jaci felt her stomach roll over and her throat tighten as tiny flickers of electricity danced across her skin.

  Instant lust, immediate attraction. And he hadn’t even noticed her yet.

  And she really needed him to notice her. She called out his name and he abruptly stopped and looked around.

  “Limo, outside, waiting.”

  Jaci blinked at Mr. Toad and was amazed at his persistence. He simply wasn’t going to give up until he got her into his car, into his apartment and naked. She’d rather have acid-coated twigs shoved up her nose. Seeing Ryan standing there, head cocked, she thought that there was maybe one more thing she could do to de-barnacle herself.

  And, hopefully, Ryan wouldn’t object.

  “Ryan! Darling!”

  Jaci stepped to her right and walked as fast as she possibly could across the Italian marble floor, and as she approached Ryan, she lifted her arms and wound them around his neck. She saw his eyes widen in surprise and felt his hands come to rest on her hips, but before he could speak, she slapped her mouth on his and hoped to dear Lord that he wouldn’t push her away.

  His lips were warm and firm beneath hers and she felt his fingers dig into her hips, their heat burning through the fabric of her dress to warm her skin. Her fingers touched the back of his neck, above the collar of his shirt, and she felt tension roll through his body.

  Ryan yanked his head back and those penetrating eyes met hers, flashing with an emotion she couldn’t identify. She expected him to push her away, to ask her what the hell she thought she was doing, but instead he yanked her closer and his mouth covered hers again. His tongue licked the seam between her lips and, without hesitation, she opened up, allowing him to taste her, to know her. A strong arm around her waist pulled her flush against him and then her breasts were flat against his chest, her stomach resting against his—hello, Nelly!—erection.