The Rancher’s Unexpected Baby: Brothers of Cooper Ranch Book Two

by Leslie North

  How badly did he want her?

  She could see she had him cornered. Either he was a liar and did not value her the same as a real, true employee, or he was at the mercy of her demands now to prove otherwise. Lena crossed her arms. The baby bump tended to get in the way of her negotiating posture these days, but she knew it was enough to still get the message across. She was serious about this, damn it.

  And she wanted Maxwell to be too.

  "All right," he relented. His expression told her it had been almost physically painful for him to do so. "Looks like I'm not going to talk you out of it."

  "No," she agreed.

  "Sign here." Maxwell pushed the contract back across the table to her, and Lena penned her signature eagerly. "And no assigning me any of the lighter workloads, you hear?" she said. It was a belated thought.

  "No promises," Maxwell replied. He tugged the document from her hands before she could think to hold it hostage, folded it, and tucked it into his back jean pocket. Did he really think she wouldn't stoop to snatching it out of there?

  Lena studied his ass as he turned away. God, she wanted to take a bite out of it. Her own thoughts were enough to make her blush in half-hearted horror. To think she had been a virgin before she crossed paths with the cowboy only five months ago…

  Maxwell had awakened an appetite in her. And she was afraid of what it might mean. Agreeing to be his employee made him her boss and only complicated any potential relationship tenfold. What was she thinking?

  I'm trying to keep our heads above water, she thought as touched her stomach. That's what I'm thinking.

  She just wished it didn't feel like drowning every time she looked at Maxwell.

  She refused to surrender to her family's curse. She would provide for this child without sacrificing her dreams.

  Besides, how hard could a little farm work really be?

  5

  MAXWELL

  Maxwell reared up out of bed.

  It was early morning. He didn't need to read the time on the bedside clock to know just how early; he had risen with the dawn since as far back as he could remember.

  He ran a hand over his face as he collected himself. His hair hung in snarled tangles, and the sheets weren't much better. He tried to recall the nightmare that had woken him up but decided it was probably better left banished from his mind. Whatever the phantom threat had been, he knew where it had been directed: Lena and his child.

  He shouldn't have let her sign the contract. He had been so eager to put his plan for hiring her into motion that he hadn't stopped to consider the potential ramifications. What was he thinking, letting a pregnant woman sign on for this sort of work?

  He threw on his red flannel shirt, not bothering to button the front, and slid into his jeans. He brooded as his coffee brewed. He definitely felt like he needed a shower after a fitful night's sleep, but he wanted to get a few of the filthier chores in first. He walked downstairs from his apartment, blowing the steam off his mug.

  When he arrived at the barn, he froze and nearly dropped his mug of coffee.

  Lena was dressed in work clothes, humming to herself as she cleaned one of the stalls. It was the second in the row on the left, and as his eyes dragged over to the first, he realized the straw there had already been refreshed. Dandelion Child poked her head over the stall door and snuffled. The first stall—unlike the second—wasn’t empty.

  Maxwell's sleep-deprived brain dragged over the significance sluggishly. Lena would have had to enter the stall, on her own, and lead Dandy out into the aisle before she got in there to clean. By the looks of things, she had done just that—all without supervision.

  "What the hell are you doing here this early, Lena?" He didn't mean to curse and felt even worse when she jumped with surprise and turned. Her curly hair was pulled off her neck and tied in a ponytail, and a smudge of dirt on her face made her even cuter than usual. Her baby bump poked out from beneath the bottom of her shirt.

  "Morning, Maxwell! I thought I'd get a head start." Lena straightened her posture and wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. He noticed she wore a pair of old work gloves that had been knocking around the barn for a while, too small for most of the ranch hands. He had thought about giving them to her but stopped himself at the last minute; he hadn’t wanted to encourage her to tackle the ranch's physical labor, even though she had expressed an interest.

  "I don't want you doing any of this by yourself," he said seriously. "And I especially don't want you interacting with the horses on your own. It's dangerous."

  The thought of what one kick would do to their future brought all his nightmares howling back into his brain. Maxwell set his mug on a post and crossed the distance between them quickly. He caught the pitchfork, intent on prying it out of her hands, but Lena hung on.

  "I can take care of myself." It wasn't her usual arguing posture, though. Her eyes searched his, almost curious, and Maxwell wondered what his expression must be. "And you're not the only one who grew up in Montana, Maxwell. I've been around horses almost all my life. There's no place I feel safer. Isn't it the same for you?"

  He held onto the pitchfork a moment longer, then relented. He turned away. "I used to think I trusted my horses more than anyone," he murmured. "But I've seen what a kick can do to a man, much less…"

  "Hey." Lena laid a hand on his shoulder. "Are you okay? You're looking pretty freaked out. Maybe you should sit down."

  Maxwell snorted. Dandy echoed him, and Lena laughed. It felt like the whole barn was conspiring against him. "I was just about to suggest the same to you," he said, ignoring their comedy duo. "Why don't you take a break and let me turn over a few stalls?"

  "Why don't you join me?" Lena raised an eyebrow in challenge. "There's another pitchfork leaning against the wall by the office."

  Maxwell knew where the other tools were. He sighed in defeat, turned, and snatched it up. He took over cleaning the stall next to her. Most of the horses were still out to pasture; Dandy was recovering from a tendon injury, so it was just the three of them in the barn. "You don't have to do this, you know." He threw the remark over his shoulder along with a forkful of soiled hay.

  "Do what?" He didn't need to look up to see the wildly innocent look on her face.

  "You don't need to prove anything. Not to me."

  "Who says I'm trying to prove anything to you?" Lena took hold of the wheelbarrow before he could and trundled it out to dump the manure they had gathered. Maxwell flicked his hair out of his eyes, leaned against his pitchfork, and fixed her with a patient look. "If anyone has something to prove, it's you," she mentioned as she wheeled back over and disappeared into the neighboring stall.

  "Yeah? What's that?"

  "I'm not sure you know how to do chores with a shirt on," she said. "You'll have to prove me wrong some day."

  Maxwell glanced down at himself. He was wearing a shirt today; he had just forgotten to button it. He still didn't get what all the fuss was about. "Does seeing a man's chest make you uncomfortable?"

  Lena laughed. "Not uncomfortable! But you're my boss now, Maxwell. I have to keep an eye on these things."

  "You have to keep an eye on my chest?" He couldn't help himself. A smile dragged up one corner of his mouth when he saw Lena's rake pause mid-swing. He turned back to his own work as if he didn’t know what he just said.

  "I have to keep an eye on how things look," Lena said. "Between you and me."

  "And how do things look?" Maxwell was genuinely curious. Rumors hounded the Cooper brothers like dogs, and most days he felt like he bore the brunt of it by sticking so close to home. He hadn't said a word to anyone about the baby, save for his mother, and he knew Lena had kept the news under wraps as best as she could. But there wasn't a whole lot she could do to divert the gossips, looking the way she did now.

  Ravishing. The thought surprised Maxwell. It was like a punch to the gut that he was immediately eager to invite again. He leaned back out of the stall to get a look at her
. She was turned away from him, forcing dirt out the stall's back door in brown, billowing clouds with the push broom. Her blue jeans hugged her hips as if they had been painted on that morning; her ass wagged at him, round and sensual. He remembered the last time he had laid his hands on it. Five months later, did Lena still feel the intensity of his grip and the possessive way his fingers had tightened on her flesh? Did she imagine the smarting sting of his palm as he delivered a light slap in the heat of their rocking passion? His hands tingled to deliver another.

  "I don't know. How do things look? You seem to be doing an awful lot of looking for someone who wanted to turn over stalls by himself a second ago." Lena took the wheelbarrow and passed him again. Maxwell blinked and realized that she had already finished putting fresh straw down in the second stall. He hadn't even finished cleaning his out.

  "It's not a competition, Lena."

  "Then you won't mind that I've already turned over more stalls than you," she concluded with a self-satisfied smile. She parked the wheelbarrow between them on his right and started in on the next stall.

  Not a competition, Maxwell thought. He needed to hammer the point home for himself, needed to lead by example, but he couldn't help rising to her obvious challenge. He began to shovel more quickly, heaping the rest of the manure onto the wheelbarrow. The stall filled with a cloud of dust as he swept the floor in a hurry. Not a competition morphed into no breaking for coffee in his brain. The mug he left on the post had stopped steaming ten minutes ago.

  "Well, well." Lena laughed in amusement from the stall next to him. He didn't look up from his task, but his gaze did slide sideways when she let herself back out into the aisle. An unruly curl had sprung free from her ponytail; it corkscrewed between her flashing green eyes and down the bridge of her pert nose. Her cheeks glowed with exertion beneath the film of dirt that covered her.

  She reached for the handles of the wheelbarrow, but Maxwell's hands came down sooner. "Allow me. It's only fair."

  "I thought you might need a handicap considering you're still running behind."

  "Funny," he remarked as he carted the barrow out to dump it. "I thought the same for you."

  Lena picked up the pace after that, and so did he. They leapfrogged over one another to the next stall, and then the next stall. Maxwell, who had been cleaning barns all his life, found that he was actually working up a sweat. He stripped out of his flannel shirt and hung it on a nail in the aisle. He wondered if he only imagined her work flow stuttered. He tucked his chin, smiling to himself.

  Lena beat him to the last stall. Maxwell stood back to observe, laying aside his gloves and taking a drag off his cold coffee, grateful for the refreshment. His chest rose and fell as he watched her. Lena was panting as well, but she showed no signs of joining him for a break.

  He watched the way her body moved. Even pregnant, the confidence she had in her own skin was mesmerizing. He wasn't sure how many stalls she had mucked personally in her lifetime, but she made it seem like an almost glamorous undertaking. There was no bigger turn-on, he decided, then watching a beautiful woman take charge of what needed to be done.

  He set his coffee aside and moved into the stall with her.

  Lena looked up. "Hey, don't think you can take credit for—"

  Maxwell claimed her fork and set it aside. Her breath caught, and she stopped talking. She stared up at him with startled eyes as he pushed her against the wall. "Maxwell…"

  He said nothing. He had always been a man of few words, especially before Lena came into the picture. She was good at opening up and getting other people to open up in turn.

  Still, there were some moments where words served no other purpose than to postpone the inevitable.

  His hand caressed the side of her face and splayed along her jaw. Her cheeks were pillow-soft beneath the pads of his fingers. He stroked all the way down to her neck. Her pulse beat beneath his thumb, and he pressed it lightly. Lena shuddered. She pressed forward into his touch. Her eyes closed, and her lips parted.

  Maxwell accepted her invitation. His mouth moved in to claim hers, and Lena sighed in the seconds before his lips sealed over her own. Five months, and almost all he had been able to think about was this moment. Even with the Reins article, and Dan Henderson, and the horse trading tip that might very well cement his success, he hadn't been able to get Lena Fudge out of his head.

  She moved beneath him, and Maxwell pressed in closer. The swell of her stomach butted against his, and the visible sliver of her naked skin brushed against his own. He deepened the kiss almost without meaning to, egged on by the sensation of their bodies in a slow-motion collision. His tongue rolled against his teeth and unfurled into Lena's eager mouth. She pushed into him as they tangled and warred for dominance. He had almost lost track of his hands at this point; he rediscovered them knotted in her hair. Her ponytail came loose and her tresses flowed over his fingers. He made a fist, and Lena broke from the kiss with a wild gasp.

  Maxwell stared into her eyes. His breathing was even more ragged now than it had been before. Lena looked back at him and smiled. If he hadn't already been rock hard, then seeing that shy grin would have stiffened him in a second.

  He leaned in again and paused. He watched Lena's smile drop off her face. Her skin bleached a ghastly shade of pale beneath the dirt. "Lena?"

  She blinked as if she couldn't quite get him into focus. Then her eyes rolled, and she sagged in his arms. If Maxwell hadn't been there to catch her, she would have dropped to the floor in a dead faint.

  "Lena!" This time he shouted her name, his voice far too loud for how close they stood, but she didn't respond. Dandy whickered and stamped her panic on the far side of the barn.

  Maxwell hoisted Lena into his arms and ran for the truck, snagging his shirt with a finger on the way. Tick was just coming down from the bunkhouses and froze with a mug of coffee in his hand. "Boss? What the hell happened?" His eyes glinted with fear when he saw the pregnant woman in Maxwell's arms.

  "She passed out." Maxwell braced Lena against him with one arm as he pulled the back door open on the crew cab so he could lay her on the seat. It didn't even occur to him in that moment to ask Tick to assist him. His head was full of nightmares, of Lena, of their baby…

  "I'm headed to the hospital now. Tell Dennis he's in charge."

  Tick nodded. "Will do. Call the office when you know what's up."

  Maxwell nodded as he hauled himself into the cab. He reached back behind him to secure Lena's seatbelt as best he could, and his hands froze over her belly.

  Oh God. What was the matter with her?

  6

  LENA

  "And that's how Maxwell Cooper kissed a girl and swept her off her feet!" Lena concluded. "See? Not a bad story once you know how to spin it the right way!"

  Maxwell looked less convinced. He sat in the chair beside her hospital bed with his arms crossed. Just looking at the sharp angles of his chosen piece of furniture told Lena it couldn't possibly be comfortable, but he hadn't moved from her side since she’d woken.

  The news wasn't as bad as he had been taking it. In her haste to rise early that morning and prove to him just how much she was able to handle, Lena had forgotten to eat breakfast. The physical exertion on an empty stomach, coupled with dehydration, had thrown her body out of whack, and she had passed out in the stall. A part of her was secretly grateful that Maxwell had been there to catch and deliver her into the arms of her gently exasperated nurse in the local ER.

  "This isn't funny, Lena," Maxwell responded eventually.

  Could he really blame her for trying to make light of the situation? She was hooked up to half a dozen monitors and had been ordered to spend the night. She was trying to go with the flow and look on the bright side. It could have been a lot worse, but it wasn't. Still, Maxwell looked as if someone he cherished had just died in his arms.

  Lena blushed. She was trying to bring some levity to the situation with her jokes, not add to the drama by imagining how mu
ch she might mean to Maxwell. "All right," she conceded. "But you have to admit that there is a silver lining in all this."

  They both turned to look at the monitor closest to them. The screen enabled them to see the baby's heart beating. The nurse, knowing her audience, had even brought in speakers so they could listen. The little heart throbbed a steady rhythm, almost always in concert with Lena's own heart.

  "I admit it," Maxwell said quietly. He reached for her hand, and the machine monitoring her pulse sped. Her blush deepened. Being rendered this transparent was definitely not a silver lining.

  The door to the hospital room burst open suddenly, and Lena jumped. Her hand flew from his as if she were a guilty child caught sneaking birthday cake before the party.

  Maxwell's mother refused to be called "Mrs. Cooper." She was Penny, and she was one of the prettiest women Lena had ever seen. She was small and slender, and her pleasant face was a network of laugh lines rather than outright wrinkles. Her hair was cut stylishly short and dyed a gorgeous copper red that Lena could almost believe was natural, if it weren't for the fresh-looking, flashy highlights.

  Penny lived a few towns over. When she got the call from Maxwell that morning, she had come running—or, more accurately, flying down the road in her own pickup, Lena suspected, based on how quickly she’d arrived. She had no doubt that Maxwell had laid the full story up until this point on his mother.

  "Sorry! I had to run back to the ranch. Figured I'd whip you up a batch of cookies in case you got tired of eating the same old hospital food." Penny shot a distasteful look at the half-eaten container of applesauce left on a tray at Lena's bedside. Lena knew she should have eaten more—Maxwell had been berating her, before she distracted him with her plan for how to spin her fainting spell—but she couldn't stop thinking that the hospital's offering had the consistency of coagulated slime. She blamed it on the pregnancy. She simply didn't have the taste for certain things anymore (or ever, if she was being honest).