He sighed at the question, realizing that she’d read more into his statement than he’d meant to share. But she’d been honest with him, and she deserved the same thing in return. “My mother died when I was born,” he explained. “I never knew her. But my dad married three more times, and all three of my stepmothers were brutal, on many different levels, not to mention some assorted girlfriends that he mixed in.” He didn’t want to go into the details, because he’d long ago stopped wasting energy on them, but he needed Mira to understand. “I watched them tear my father apart, and destroy what was left of my family. I watched my brothers suffer as each one was born, and I fought so hard to protect them all from the women my dad had chosen. As bad as my dad was, the women he married made him worse. I don’t trust women. I don’t trust marriage. And I’d never give a woman any power over me.”
He couldn’t keep the coldness out of his voice, and she cocked her head, listening intently. “Then why would you ever offer to marry me?” She didn’t sound scared. She actually sounded relieved, as if his antipathy toward marriage eased some of her fear.
“Because you’re Mira Cabot.” He walked over to her and took her hands. Her fingers were cold, but her hands weren’t trembling anymore. “I’ve known you vicariously through AJ for over a decade, and I know what kind of person you are. You’re the one person in the world he trusted, and that means you’re the one person in the world that I know I can trust as well.”
Her eyes glistened with sudden moisture. “I’m not an angel, Chase.”
“No. I know that. I know you get cranky as hell when you’re hungry or tired. I know you stole a gun from your dad’s squad car when you were fourteen because you were going to shoot Alan with it. I also know you cheated on your seventh grade geography test.”
Her eyes widened. “You know all that, but you didn’t know I was engaged?”
He paused at her question. Why hadn’t AJ told him that? Had it just been because AJ had been distracted, or had it been something else? And what else didn’t he know about her? Suddenly, he wanted to know. He wanted to sit her down and grill her with a thousand questions, discovering everything about this woman who had existed only in his imagination for the last ten years.
Mira pulled her hands out of his. “Listen, Chase, it’s very heroic of you to sweep in and rescue me, but we both know it won’t work—”
“I’ll have my lawyer draw up a contract. Child support, alimony, and everything you’ll need. We’ll live together at my ranch for a year. Once the baby is born, and we’ve solidified my fatherhood, we’ll get ‘divorced.’ This won’t be a real marriage, Mira. Just a business partnership designed to protect you and the baby.”
She cocked her head, studying him. For the first time, she looked thoughtful. “A business partnership?”
“To protect you and the baby,” he repeated. Alan was lethal, and his tentacles were strong and powerful. Chase knew he’d have to address every possible eventuality to ensure Alan could never take the child. “I owe AJ a life debt. You can trust that, if nothing else. AJ was a distrustful loner, and you know he wouldn’t have trusted me unless I deserved it.”
She studied him for a long moment, then she reached into her purse. She pulled out a cell phone encased in a cracked, black case. Silently, she scrolled through it, and then held it out to him. He looked down and saw his name, cell phone, and current address listed in her contacts. He frowned. “How did you get this information?”
“AJ always believed he would die young. He knew his time on this earth would be short, and he worked hard to make his imprint in the time he had.” Her voice trembled slightly, and she cleared her throat. “After my dad died, AJ was concerned that there was no one to protect me. He told me that if I ever ran into trouble and he wasn’t around to help, then I should go to you. He made sure I always had your updated contact information. Every time you moved, I knew how to find you at any hour of the day.”
Son of a bitch. Chase closed his fingers around the phone. “He didn’t tell me he gave you my info.”
“He said you didn’t need to know. He said you’d just say yes.” She managed a smile. “What he didn’t say was that you would come riding up gallantly on your white horse and throw yourself at my feet in a desperate attempt to save me when I didn’t even ask for help.”
“My horse isn’t white. He’s a bay, and he’d be highly insulted to know you called him white.” Chase knew why AJ hadn’t told him that he was first in line as Mira’s savior.
If he had, Chase would have found a way to talk him out of it. He wasn’t a protector, and he didn’t have time to do anything but focus on repairing the damage his father had done to him and his brothers. And yet, Chase had decided to rescue her anyway, all on his own. “You would never have come to me for help, would you?”
She shook her head. “Never.” She shrugged. “I’m kind of an independent girl. I like to save the world on my own.”
“Yeah, I suspect you do.” He cocked his head thoughtfully. “AJ knew you’d never ask, didn’t he?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes, he probably did.” She looked at him. “So why did he give me your information?”
Chase rubbed his jaw. “He knew that I’d offer. By telling you that I was the guy to ask for help, he was setting the stage for you to trust me, so that when I offered to help, you’d let me. He had it planned all along, didn’t he? Manipulative bastard.” He couldn’t keep the affection out of his voice. AJ had known them both too well.
She laughed then, her fingers brushing against his as she retrieved her phone from him. “You’re much more stubborn than I’d have expected you to be, getting all insistent on marrying me.”
He grinned. “You’re a hell of a lot more difficult to convince than I’d have anticipated. AJ led me to believe you had the ability to think logically. I had no idea you would get all emotional on me. I’m not really into the emotional thing, just so you know.”
“Well, you’ll have to learn to deal with it,” she said, poking the phone into his chest. “I’m highly emotional. I find it cathartic. Suppressing emotions will never get you anywhere.”
Her words made something leap through him. “I’ll have to learn to deal with it? Is that your way of saying, ‘Yes, Chase, I am willing to sully my pristine reputation by getting knocked up by you and then running off to Wyoming to be your shotgun bride?’”
She laughed out loud then, a sound that made him chuckle. Damn, she had an engaging laugh. “A shotgun bride sounds so romantic,” she remarked with a deadpan expression. “I’ve always dreamed of it.”
He stiffened at her words, knowing full well how women fantasized about their weddings. He didn’t want her to have expectations that he would inevitably fail to meet. “I’m busy on the ranch,” he warned her. “I can’t be the husband type, so don’t expect it. One year of cohabitation while you get big and fat with my kid.”
“Well, I have no interest in turning my loyalties over to a husband, so we’re even.” She cocked her head, and he saw her eyes soften. “Your kid? You said that like it was already true, like you mean it.”
He nodded, possessiveness surging through him. “There’s no halfway in my book. Yeah, I’m claiming that baby that’s in your belly. Obviously, I have sperm of steel to knock you up long distance, but hey, I’ve always been an overachiever.” He reached out and put his hand on her stomach, feeling the softness of her flesh beneath his touch. “That’s my kid in there, Mira. From this moment onward, there is no other truth.”
“I believe you,” she said softly as she put her hand over his, not to pull him off her belly, but to hold his hand there. It was an intimate moment, one he’d never thought he’d experience, but it felt right. “You truly will stand beside AJ’s child as your own, no matter what.”
“Of course.”
She bit her lip. “One year?”
Hope surged through him, and fear, but also something else. A feeling of anticipation that he hadn’t experienced in a lon
g time. A year of Mira living in his house sounded good. Really, really good. “One year. Then you’re free, but even after we divorce, I’ll always, always, be Dad. I won’t fail either of you.”
She stood on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Her lips were warm and soft, and the kiss far too fleeting. “Well then, cowboy, you better get your shotgun, because you just got yourself a bride.”
Chapter 4
Mira was sitting on her living room couch, grimly studying the stack of moving boxes in the corner, ready to be put into storage. Prior to Chase’s proposal, she’d already had almost the entire house packed up to be sold. The house was going on the market in three days, regardless of whether she left town or not.
She had no choice but to let go of the house she’d grown up in. She needed the money from the sale of the house to pay off her mother’s remaining medical expenses. It was the right thing to do. But sitting there, surrounded by the things that reflected her past, including the last remnants of her parents’ belongings, it suddenly felt clinical and cold to be packing up and moving out, to be leaving so she could marry a man she didn’t even know.
It had been bad enough selling the house when she was at least going to stay in town and do something heroic like try to get a job filing permits at the town office. But to be leaving behind every last memory of her family to marry a stranger and possibly raise a child in the barren, friendless world of the untamed west? It felt a little barbaric.
She looked around the living room. The walls were empty now, but the outlines of the picture frames had left marks on the formerly white paint that had since turned yellow and stained. Thirty-two years of sunlight had left their mark.
She knew every photograph that had once hung on the walls. Her parents’ wedding picture. Her baby picture. Her dad’s first day on the job as sheriff. A photo of her and AJ at their high school graduation, bedecked in their black gowns and huge smiles.
Every memory of a lifetime was now packed away. She was taking only one photograph, the one taken of her and her parents the day they’d dropped her off at college. It was the last time she’d seen them both alive and healthy. Her mother’s clothes were already bagged up to be donated to charity. Her life, her world, stripped away—
The front door slammed open, making Mira jump as her best friend, Taylor Shaw, strode in. “You slept with him? After all these years, you finally met Chase Stockton, and then slept with him? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Mira grinned at Taylor’s energetic, unapologetic entrance. The mere appearance of her friend made her feel better. “You were on a transcontinental flight at the time,” she said. “I figured it could wait.”
“Sex can never wait, especially for you, my celibate friend.” Taylor was wearing jeans, her favorite pink sweatshirt, and a pair of old flip-flops, indicating that she’d just arrived home from her trip to Indonesia. Taylor always went for her comfy clothes after spending an eternity on a plane. Her curly mop of blond hair was somewhat bouncing irreverently around her face, but the three-inch gold hoops dangling from her ears added that hint of femininity she never seemed to lack. “I had to hear about it from Octavia, who accosted me before I even pulled into my driveway. Apparently, the whole town saw his truck in front of your house all night after the funeral. You’re a complete slut, and I mean that in the most affectionate, supportive way.” She flopped down on the couch, then glanced around at the boxes. “Did you find a place yet? Clock’s ticking.”
Mira grinned at the change in subject. Taylor never worried about societal proprieties. She just dealt with life straight on, and she loved that about her friend. “I sort of found a place,” she said, hesitating before explaining further. She still hadn’t decided whether to tell Taylor the truth about the pregnancy. Chase had been adamant that no one could know AJ was the biological father, because Alan was just that good. But Taylor was her best friend, the one who had stood by her all the years while she’d been taking care of her mom. “I’m moving to Wyoming to live with Chase,” she said carefully, testing the waters. “To marry him, actually.” The words tasted thick and muddy on her tongue, and for a moment, she felt like she was going to throw up. What had seemed like a solid, logical solution two nights ago now sounded…less than sane, pretty much.
Taylor’s blue eyes widened. “What?” Then she sighed. “Oh, man, I know you’re devastated by AJ’s death, but marrying his best friend isn’t going to bring him back, not for either of you. One night of sex doesn’t create that kind of bond. Just because AJ loved Chase doesn’t mean that you would automatically love him. You’ve hated every boyfriend I’ve ever had, right? Love doesn’t translate across third parties.”
“Yeah, true, but that’s because you have singularly bad taste in men.”
Taylor wrinkled her nose. “This is about you, not me, and the fact you’re having a thinly disguised emotional collapse. To be expected, of course, but marrying a hot cowboy is a bit of a permanent solution, you know? Although, as bad decisions go, I guess it could be worse, like throwing yourself off a cliff, for example. “
Mira picked up a tape gun and dragged it across one of the few remaining boxes, locking away more of her past. “It’s kind of a trial thing. For a year.” She sliced the tape off, then grabbed a marker to jot a note about the contents on the side of it.
“A year? What?” Taylor stood up, her hands on her hips. “This is completely unacceptable. I’m going to kidnap you. We’re going to have a crazy girls’ weekend and you’ll realize that you can handle your life just fine, even though it kind of feels overwhelming right now.” She held out her hand, and wiggled her fingers for Mira to take them. “Come on. Let’s leave now. We’ll be back in two days, enough time to finish clearing out the boxes before it goes on the market.”
“I’m pregnant.” The words burst out of her mouth before she’d even decided to say them.
Well, so much for not telling Taylor the truth. But just saying it felt like a thousand burdens had fallen off her shoulders.
“What?” Taylor’s mouth dropped open, and her hand fell limply to her side. “How could you possibly know already? It’s been twenty-four hours since he left.”
God, here it came. Was she really going to tell her? Mira dragged another box over to her to tape it, avoiding Taylor’s gaze. “Yeah, well, when my mom died last month, AJ came to town to see me. He stayed over.”
Taylor sank back onto the couch beside her. “You slept with AJ? But you guys are completely platonic. Like siblings, though not actually siblings, for which I think we’re both eternally grateful given the fact that he knocked you up. Dear God. How is this possible? There’s no connection between you guys.”
“Was,” Mira corrected. “And I know there was no romance between us. It was a one-night thing. We were both in bad shape, because you know how much he loved my mom. She was more his mom than his own mother was. We cried, we held each other, and then it just happened.”
“Oh, God.” Taylor leaned forward, searching her face. “Was it good? Was it worth a ten-year dry spell?”
“Eight years, and it was perfect, in the way that it was, but no, nothing really sexy about it.” She still couldn’t believe she’d been naked with him, but being held in his arms when the grief had been so overwhelming was a gift she’d never forget. Neither of them would have made it through that night alone.
“Wow.” Taylor rubbed her forehead. “It’s AJ’s baby, for sure? Did he know before he died?”
“No. I just found out Wednesday morning.”
“Oh, God. On the morning of his funeral?” Taylor shook her head. “You know, AJ would probably have loved that timing. He’d want you to be looking toward the future instead of wallowing in the past. Can’t you see him in heaven, cheering you on as you peed on a stick right before his funeral?”
Mira managed a smile. “This is true. He would have enjoyed that.”
“Knowing AJ, he probably did it on purpose. He decided to leave behind a legacy, and figure
d you were the one woman with enough cojones to kick his dad’s ass if he came after the kid. So, yay, girl power, I guess? Maybe you could get like an award or something?”
This time, the laughter bubbled out. “You’re insane, Taylor.”
“I know. It’s my gift. But I’m guessing that since you discovered your MTB status after his skydiving accident, you weren’t able to scrape any money from him? All to charity?”
“Yep. And what’s MTB status?”
“Mother-to-be, of course. Hello, get with the times.” Taylor eyed her belly. “Is it kicking yet?”
“Talking actually. Asked me for cash yesterday. I told it to get a job. I feel like I need to set some standards early on, you know? My dad would never approve of being soft with the kid.”
“Amen, sistah. Sheriff Cabot will be watching you.” Taylor leaned back and propped her feet up on a cardboard box. “So, what’s the old bastard’s status?”
“Alan? He knows AJ spent the night after the funeral. He thinks I used my body to convince AJ to change his will. I suspect he’s going to try to use me to invalidate the will.”
Taylor nodded. “Rock on. So he’s after you for money, but in the process of trying to expose you for the deceitful fraud we all know you are, he’ll get the delightful surprise of figuring out that when you croon to your uterus, you’re actually talking to his grandchild. How fun is that? It’s like a cat and mouse game, but he’s this shape-shifting, immortally deadly panther, and you’re like, a stuffed mouse, staked out in the yard, waiting to be munched.”
Mira blinked. “I think my odds are a little better than that.”
“Sweetie, no one’s odds are better than that when it comes to Alan. Your dad was the only one who could stop Alan. The only reason Alan respected your dad was because he knew that your dad would shoot him if necessary, all in the name of duty, of course, but still. Once your dad died, there was no one to stop Alan. AJ had to forget to open his parachute in order to escape him. You think you can dodge that bullet?”
A Real Cowboy Never Says No Page 4
