by Teri Wilson
“So you like it?” He dropped their overnight bags on a luggage rack beside a beautifully crafted armoire that looked like it might hold handmade quilts or chunky knit blankets.
“I love it. It’s like something out of fairy tale,” she said, suddenly wistful.
“Good.” He studied her for a moment, and then his lips curved into a slow smile that gradually built into an expression that took Avery’s breath away. “I’ve wanted to be alone with you, really alone, since the second I spotted you in the general store.”
She let out a shuddering breath, and suddenly the air in the room felt thick with promise. Or maybe the intimate hush that had fallen between them was the memory of the night they’d spent in Oklahoma City.
“Avery.” Finn held out his hand, and the subtext was clear. He wasn’t just offering her his hand—he was offering her himself, body and soul.
But for how long?
She couldn’t seem to move a muscle. Even breathing seemed difficult. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought she might choke.
Finn’s face fell, and he dropped his hand. “Did I presume too much? If you don’t want this...”
“I do want this. I want you...more than I can possibly say. This place, this room...it’s all so beautiful. I don’t want anything to mar our perfect night together.” She inhaled a steadying breath before she hyperventilated. Why was this so hard? “I should have been straight with you from the start.”
Finn closed the distance between them, wove his fingers through hers and kissed the backs of her hands. First one, then the other. Tenderly. Reverently. “Princess, there’s nothing you can tell me that will change the way I feel about you.”
She didn’t deserve this kind of blind faith—not when she’d been hiding such an enormous secret from him.
“You can’t know that,” she said, shaking her head from side to side.
“I think I know what you’re trying to say.” He lifted a hand to her face, drawing his fingertips slowly across her cheek. She closed her eyes and fought the urge to lean into him. Because he couldn’t possibly know, could he? “You came here on purpose looking for me.”
She opened her eyes and nodded slowly. It was the truth, but not all of it. It was barely even the tip of the iceberg.
“That’s great! I’m glad you did. Now come here.” He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close until she was pressed flush against him.
Then his mouth was suddenly on hers, and she was opening for him, wanting the warm, wet heat of his kiss—wanting it so badly she could have wept, because she could feel the crash of his heartbeat against hers. Frenzied. Desperate. And she could feel the way his body hardened as the kiss grew deeper, hotter.
Her fists curled around the soft material of his T-shirt, and in one swift move, Finn pulled back, slid the shirt over his head and tossed it onto the floor. In a heartbeat, he was kissing her again, cupping her face and groaning his pleasure into her mouth.
Avery’s hands went instantly to the solid, muscular wall of his chest, and he felt so good, so right that she felt like she might die if he didn’t take her to bed again. She’d wanted him since Oklahoma...since before she’d even known about the baby.
The baby.
Her eyes flew open and she pulled away, ending their kiss. Her palms, however, stubbornly remained pressed against his pectoral muscles. Was it her imagination, or had he gotten in even better shape since she’d last seen him shirtless? It must be all of the ranch work out at the Ambling A. It hardly seemed fair. He’d gone and made himself hotter while she’d been bursting out of her pencil skirts.
“Finn, wait.”
He gave her one of his lazy, seductive smiles that she loved so much and glanced down at her hands, which seemed to be making an exploratory trail over the sculpted ridges of his abdomen. “We’ll take it slow, baby. It will be good. So good.”
She had no doubt that it would—better than the last time, even.
“We can’t.” She shook her head, somehow forced herself to stop touching him and crossed her arms.
Finn’s gaze flitted to the bed and then back to her. “Why the heck not?”
She couldn’t bring herself to say it. How could she? She couldn’t even think straight while she was looking at that bare chest of his, much less form a coherent sentence.
But this was it—the moment of truth. One way or another, he was about to find out she was pregnant. He’d see the change in her body the second she undressed.
Slowly, she took his hand and rested it on her belly, telling him the only way she knew how.
His expression went blank for a moment, and then he stared down at his hand covering the slight swell of her tummy. The wait for understanding to fully dawn on him was agonizing. Avery lived and died a thousand deaths in that fraction of a second, until at last he lifted his gaze to hers. A whole array of emotions passed over his face, a lifetime of feelings all at once.
She took a deep breath. Then she let the rest of her secret unravel and laid it at his feet.
“It’s yours.”
Chapter Seven
Finn’s ears rang.
The noise in his head started out as a faint roar—like listening to the inside of a seashell—but it multiplied by the second, drowning out all other sound. Avery’s lips were moving, so he knew she hadn’t stopped talking. But he couldn’t make sense of the sounds coming out of her mouth. Nor could he hear the crackle of the fire in the old stone fireplace, even after he forced his gaze away from Avery and stared at its dancing flame.
He blinked, half tempted to stick his hand in the hearth to jolt himself back to life.
It’s yours.
Avery was pregnant...with his child. He was going to be a father.
He didn’t know whether to be furious or ecstatic. Somewhere beyond the scathing sense of betrayal, he was delighted at the news. A baby...with Avery.
That night in Oklahoma had changed him. Finn had realized that the moment he’d run into her at the general store. All the nonsense he’d put himself through since he’d moved to Montana—all the casual dates with women he didn’t even know—reminded him what he was missing without Avery Ellington in his life. It was as if that Oklahoma City blackout had somehow split his life into two parts, before and after. Only now did he fully comprehend why it had felt that way.
But she should have told him sooner. She’d been in town for weeks and hadn’t said a word.
“It’s mine,” he said in an aching whisper. And with those two quiet words, the fog in his head cleared.
“Yes.” Avery nodded, tears streaming down her face. “Yes, of course it’s yours. There hasn’t been anyone else. Not for a long, long time.”
In the mirror hanging on the calico-papered wall, he saw himself shake his head. She didn’t get it. Couldn’t she understand? He wasn’t questioning her assertion. He was stating a fact. The baby was his. Theirs.
Which meant he had a right to know of its existence.
“How could you have kept this from me all this time?” He closed his eyes and thought about all the times in the past few days he’d sensed that something was off. He’d known, damn it. He’d asked her time and again to tell him what was on her mind, and she’d refused. Every damn time.
“I tried to tell you. I really did. I just couldn’t find the words. Please, you have to understand.” She pressed her fingertips to her quivering mouth.
She stood stoically, awaiting his response. But he could see the hint of tension in her wide brown eyes, then he saw her bite her lip. And even in his fury, Finn hated himself for making her feel that way.
“I asked you to talk to me,” he said with measured calmness. But his voice sounded cold and distant, even to his own ears. “I asked you what was wrong, and you looked me straight in the eye and said ‘nothing.’”
He sat down on th
e edge of the bed and dropped his head in his hands.
“There were cows! And your father. And then I couldn’t even bottle-feed the goat...and then...” The words caught. A sob escaped her, and when Finn looked up, Avery had wrapped her arms around her middle as if it took every bit of her strength to simply hold herself together. “Finn, I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to tell you. I knew it would be a shock. It was for me, too.”
He narrowed his gaze. What on earth was she rambling on about? Old Gene’s orphaned goat?
She’d been so happy when the tiny thing took a liking to her. She’d beamed like she’d just won a shiny blue ribbon at the state fair. Was this what all that excitement had really been about? The baby?
Not the baby. Our baby.
“Look, I didn’t even realize I was pregnant myself for quite some time. For months. I missed my period, and I was so tired all the time, I fell asleep at my desk! But I’d been working such long hours and I just thought...”
Finn flew to his feet. “Are you okay? Is the baby healthy?”
Avery nodded, her eyes still wet with tears.
What had he done? His first thought should have been about the baby, not how long it had taken her to tell him about the pregnancy.
He reached a trembling hand toward her belly and then pulled it back. He had no right to touch her. Not after the way he’d just spoken to her.
“Okay.” He swallowed, shame settling in his gut. He couldn’t turn back time and change his initial reaction, but he could still make this right. He had to make it right. “In the morning we will make the arrangements.”
“The arrangements?” The color drained slowly from Avery’s crestfallen face. “Surely you’re not suggesting I have a...um...procedure?”
Over his dead body. She thought that much of him, did she?
“Princess, you really don’t know me very well. Absolutely not.” His gaze dropped to her belly again, and he had to ball his hands into fists to stop himself from reaching for her so he could feel the swell of life growing inside her.
The life they’d made together.
When he lifted his gaze back to hers, she regarded him with what looked like a cautious mixture of hope and shame. And he hated himself just a little bit more.
He was thoroughly botching this. It was time to make himself clear.
“You and I are getting married,” he said flatly.
Avery’s jaw dropped. She stared at him for a beat and then had the audacity to laugh in his face. “You can’t be serious.”
“As a heart attack,” he said evenly.
No child of his was going to grow up without a father. Finn knew all too well what it was like to be brought up without two present, supportive parents.
Maximilian was no saint. Finn wasn’t fool enough to overlook the fact that his father could be manipulative and somewhat domineering. But he could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen his mother since she’d filed for divorce. She hadn’t just walked away from her husband—she’d walked away from her six sons, too. An absence like that left its mark on a boy. A soul-deep wound that took a lifetime to heal.
Possibly longer.
Finn wouldn’t do that to an innocent child. He would be there every step of the way, come hell or high water.
“Finn, what you said a few seconds ago is the truth. I don’t really know you, and you don’t know me, either. Certainly not well enough to entertain the idea of marriage.” She shook her head and looked at him like he was as mad as a wet hen.
The only thing his impulsive proposal had accomplished was putting an end to her tears. That was something, at least.
“I won’t be shut out of my child’s life,” he said. His voice broke, and something inside him seemed to break right along with it.
How had he and Avery come to this? They should be in bed together right now, but instead they were suddenly standing on opposite sides of the room as if the past few days hadn’t happened at all.
Spending time with Avery in Rust Creek Falls had been fantastic, like something out of a dream. Finn had gone to bed every night thanking his lucky stars that she’d somehow found her way back into his life. He hadn’t thought about his dad’s ridiculous arrangement with Viv Dalton in days. He’d been too busy figuring out how to see more of Avery before she left town to think about the bounty on his head.
Oh, the irony.
Maximilian was going to be happier than a pig in slop when he heard about this. Avery’s dad, not so much.
Just how much did her father despise the Crawfords? Finn hadn’t given the matter much thought since he and Avery had agreed to put their family differences aside, but that would no longer be possible.
“I would never prevent you from seeing your child. You know how much I love it in Rust Creek Falls. I’ll come visit, and you can come see the baby in Texas as often as you like,” Avery said.
She took a step toward him, her hand resting protectively on the slight swell of her abdomen. She looked more beautiful than Finn had ever seen her before—already so attached to the baby they’d made together.
It seemed crazy, but Finn felt that way, too. Even though he’d only known about the pregnancy for a matter of minutes, an intimacy he’d never experienced before drew him closer to both Avery and their unborn child. Despite her words of assurance, a raw panic was clawing its way up his throat, so thick he almost choked on it.
He couldn’t be just a visitor in their baby’s life. He wouldn’t.
“Can I ask you a question?” His jaw tightened, because he had a definite feeling he knew why Avery was so dead set on raising the baby on her own.
She blinked. “Of course.”
He lifted a brow and fixed his gaze with hers. “How do your parents feel about the fact that you’re carrying a Crawford heir?”
Because that’s precisely what their child would be—an heir, not only to the Ellington fortune, but to everything the Crawfords had built, as well. The two empires their fathers had created from the ground up would be forever intertwined in a way that neither of them had ever anticipated.
“Um.” Avery looked away, and that’s all it took for Finn to know the rest of the story.
Oscar Ellington had no idea that his darling princess of a daughter was pregnant with Finn Crawford’s baby.
* * *
Avery felt sick, and for once, the slight dizziness and nausea that had her sinking onto the B&B’s lovely four-poster bed had nothing to do with morning sickness.
She should have told Finn about the baby sooner. That much was obvious. If she could rewind the clock and go back to the very first time she’d seen him in Rust Creek Falls, she would blurt out the news right there in the middle of the general store. Melba would have fainted, and the news would have been all over town faster than she could max out her credit card during a Kate Spade sample sale, but that would have been just fine...because at least Finn would never have looked at her the way he was regarding her right now.
The look of betrayal in his dark eyes was almost enough to bring her to her knees. Her legs wobbled as she sat down, and a coldness settled into her bones, so raw and deep that a shiver ran up and down her spine. She felt more alone than she’d ever been in her entire life.
He wants to marry you, remember?
Weirdly, Finn’s abrupt proposal—if you could even call it that, since it was more of a command than a question—only exacerbated the aching loneliness that had swept over her the minute he’d begun looking at her as if she’d inflicted the most terrible pain in the world on him. Probably because she knew his desire to get married had nothing to do with her. He wanted to be close to their baby.
Not her.
“My parents don’t know I’m pregnant,” she said, heart drumming hard in her chest.
She couldn’t even look at Finn as she admitted the truth. When had she bec
ome such a coward? It was pathetic. Her baby deserved a mother who could face challenges head-on, like an adult. Not a spoiled princess who’d had everything handed to her on a silver platter.
She squared her shoulders and forced herself to meet Finn’s gaze. “I’m going to tell them, obviously. But I wanted to tell you first.”
The set of Finn’s jaw softened, ever so slightly. But the hurt in his eyes remained.
Avery swallowed hard. “You deserved to know before anyone else. You’re the baby’s father.”
He took a deep breath, and she wondered what would happen if she went to him and wrapped her arms around him. Pressed her lips to his and kissed him with all the aching want she felt every time she looked at him.
Because she did still want him, and a part of her always would. They were tied together for life now. And as scary as that probably should have been, knowing her attraction to him was part of something bigger—something as meaningful as another life—gave her a strange sense of peace.
The only thing keeping her a chaste three feet away from him was stone-cold fear of what he would say or do next. He wanted to marry her, for crying out loud.
That was a hard no. This wasn’t the 1950s. Besides, Avery wasn’t about to marry a man who wasn’t in love with her.
“Where do they think you are? You’ve been out of the office for weeks. I’m guessing you didn’t actually have meetings in the area at all.” Finn’s brow furrowed, and he looked like he was mentally scrolling through all the little white lies she’d told since she’d rolled into town. She wanted to crawl under the bed’s beautiful lace coverlet and hide.
He pinned her with a glare. She wasn’t going anywhere.
No more hiding.
“There were no meetings.” She shook her head. “Everyone—my mom and dad, the office—thinks I’m at a spa.”
She waited for him to make a crack about what a completely believable lie that had been. Was there a soul on earth who would believe Princess Avery had been bottle-feeding a goat and carving pumpkins instead of munching on kale salad and getting daily massages at Canyon Ranch?
