“Right. You’ve been good business. Seems like every time you come out to the ranch I get to do a little doctoring. Since we’re old friends and all, I guess that gives me the right to be a little nosy and bend my strict MYOB policy. I’ll just come out and ask. Does the father know you’re pregnant?”
“He does now,” Katie muttered. “I had no choice but to tell him after I fell.”
“Ah.” Somehow Laura managed to inject that single syllable with an entire world full of understanding and sympathy. “The gorgeous Mr. Logan, then?”
Katie nodded, then bit her lip when it threatened to tremble. She swallowed her tears again and blew out a breath.
“It’s a long story, Laura. One I’m afraid won’t have a very happy ending. I haven’t been precisely truthful with him from the beginning. I misled him and…I didn’t tell him about the baby. I doubt he’ll ever be able to see past that.”
Laura sat on the edge of the bed. “You might have made mistakes. You both might have, for all I know. But now is the time for both of you to put those differences behind you and concentrate on what’s best for this baby of yours.”
“I didn’t want him to know.”
“Here’s your first parenting lesson. What you want or need doesn’t really matter much anymore in the scheme of things. Your first and only priority is that baby. Whatever the circumstances, the two of you created a life together. It’s up to you to do right by that little life.”
“I’m going to be a terrible mother.” The tears spilled free once more and trickled down her cheeks. “How can I be anything else? Just look at the kind of example I had!”
Laura handed her a tissue, then gathered her into her arms. “You’ll be a wonderful mother. You have so much love inside you to give. You just have to trust yourself.”
“I’ve already made so many mistakes.”
“There’s not a mother on earth who hasn’t. It’s a wonder I can even let my two boys out in public with all the mistakes I made. They’re grown now and I’m still making mistakes with them. But you know, for all my shortcomings, they’ve turned out to be pretty decent people. So have you, despite your parents. You just need to trust yourself. You’ve always been much stronger than you’ve ever given yourself credit for.”
Right now she felt like a weak and trembling child, especially whenever she thought about the inevitable confrontation with Peter.
“Thank you,” Katie murmured.
“Rest now. Stay off that sprain until you can put weight on it without pain. I’ll call tomorrow to see how you’re doing, but if you need me before then, I can be here in a heartbeat. You have your young man give me a call, all right?”
Katie nodded, though she wanted to protest that Peter was not her young man.
When it came right down to it, that was the entire problem.
CHAPTER NINE
She awoke just after midnight.
With an anguished cry of alarm, she sat up and her hand automatically fluttered to her abdomen.
Peter jumped up from his chair by the fire, his heart pounding. “What is it? Another cramp?”
She frowned, as if not quite sure. After a moment she let out a breath and sagged against the pillows again. “No. I must have been dreaming.”
“Not a good one, I’m guessing.”
“No. It was horrible and so real. One of those dreams you try so hard to wake from.”
He sat on the edge of the wide bed. “Want to tell me about it?”
Her fingers clutched the scalloped edge of the quilt she had pushed off in her sleep. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Try me.”
She closed her eyes. “I was riding Susan through thick trees and she stumbled. I fell off, just like today, but when I caught my breath, I found myself staring into the yellow eyes of a wolf. It was beautiful but terrifying at the same time. Silver with black fur around his face.”
Her eyes opened and the remembered fear in them clutched his heart. “I can still see it when I close my eyes,” she continued, “pacing back and forth. Pacing, endlessly pacing, until I thought I would scream.”
She shuddered and pulled the blanket up to her shoulders. “Suddenly I had a baby in my arms. I’m not sure how it got there, but then the wolf started edging closer, so close I could feel the heat emanating from his fur and smell his breath. I knew, somehow I knew, he would try to wrench the baby away from me. Right before he lunged at me, I threw a snowball at him and he disappeared.”
She grimaced. “Weird, isn’t it? I knew you’d think I was crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy. You’ve had a rough day.”
She looked around the room, at the dark windows. “What time is it?”
“Around midnight. How are you feeling?”
She touched her abdomen again, as if for reassurance. He wondered if she knew she slept that way, with one hand tucked under her cheek and the other curled around the tiny life growing inside her. All evening long he had watched her sleep as he tried to come to terms with the shock of finding out he was going to become a father.
“I’m fine. My ankle throbs but the rest of me seems okay.”
“You slept through dinner. Are you hungry?”
Her brow furrowed as if she had to think about it. “I guess I am, a little,” she said after a moment. “But you don’t have to wait on me. I can find something.”
“Don’t even think about it,” he said sternly. “I talked to Dr. Harp before she took off and she said she wants you on bed rest for at least the next few days. I’ll fix you something.”
“I don’t want you to have to do that.”
“Is there anyone else lurking around Sweetwater I don’t know about who can feed you?”
“You know there’s not.”
“Right. A smart woman like you should know when she’s all out of choices.”
“Whoever said I was smart?” she muttered, looking so disgruntled he almost laughed.
He knew damn well she was brilliant. She had told him she’d been admitted to Stanford early and he knew she had graduated with honors.
He also knew enough about the inner workings at Crosby to know her brother Trent relied heavily on her brains and that she had revitalized research and development at the company under her tenure.
Brains and beauty. His baby could do a whole lot worse in a mother, he thought.
“Just give me a minute,” he said.
When he returned fifteen minutes later with a tray, she was reading a pregnancy book with a photograph of a smiling baby on the cover. She set it down, coloring a little, he was charmed to see.
“I’m overwhelmed by all the things I never knew about pregnancy and childbirth. It’s terrifying.”
“Not nearly as frightening as what comes after the delivery,” he pointed out.
“Don’t think that hasn’t been giving me nightmares, too.”
She paused and her fingers clutched the edge of the quilt again, her expression a jumbled mix of emotions, determination in the forefront.
“Peter, I—”
“Omelettes taste like rubber school erasers when they’re cold. For the baby’s sake and for your own, you need to eat,” he said, cutting her off. He knew what was coming. Yes, they would talk about her pregnancy and all the ramifications of it. They had to talk about it.
But he wasn’t ready yet.
Though she looked as if she wanted to argue, he gave her his best don’t-mess-with-me look and she finally turned that determination to the tray he set in front of her.
“This is delicious!” she exclaimed after a moment.
“You sound surprised.”
“I don’t know. I suppose I wouldn’t have expected the Logan CEO to be a culinary whiz.”
He laughed. “I’m far from that. Mom insisted each of us have at least one specialty in the kitchen. Since I’ve always been an early riser, I was relegated to breakfast food by default. Besides omelettes, I also make a wicked French toast.”
He suddenly had the sobering realization that he knew relatively little about this woman who was pregnant with his child. “What about you? Do you like to cook?”
She took a sip of the juice he had included on the tray, then set the glass down at the same time she shrugged. “Too much. I also like to eat. That’s why I used to be huge.”
“I don’t remember you as huge.”
She studied him for several moments, her expression unreadable. “You don’t remember me at all, do you?”
Again he tried to conjure up an image of her from before that night at the charity auction. He should remember her. Damn it, why couldn’t he? “You used to have glasses and long, pretty hair, right?”
“And an extra forty pounds.”
“I don’t remember that part.”
She rolled her eyes and laughed. “As if you would admit it, even if you did remember.”
“We Logan men have never been dumb.”
He paused and his smile slid away. “Although I certainly was three months ago. I should have recognized you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. My own family barely knew me when I walked into the benefit. I’ve been hiding for a long time behind the image people expected to see when they looked at me.”
What did people expect to see when they looked at her? he wondered. And what was she hiding from? He wanted to ask but he sensed she already regretted her comment.
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?” he asked instead.
He had posed the same question to her before, after he first arrived at Sweetwater, but she had brushed him off with some glib answer about being carried away by the glamour and excitement of pretending to be someone else for a while.
He hadn’t bought it then. Now he didn’t know what to believe.
She set her fork down next to her half-eaten omelette and let out a slow breath.
“I suppose I was shocked and flattered when you seemed interested,” she admitted. “I’ve always been in the shadows, one of those women no one noticed. I didn’t mind. I preferred it that way. But suddenly one of Portland’s most eligible bachelors was flirting with me—me, fat, awkward Katie Crosby—and I didn’t want it to end. I knew the moment you learned I was a Crosby you wouldn’t be able to get away from me fast enough so I—I lied.”
There was more to this story, he thought. Why had she gone home with him? He had learned enough about her since he arrived at the ranch that he had a feeling her actions that night had been as uncharacteristic for her as they’d been for him.
It had been far easier to accuse her of corporate thievery than to dig into his own psyche and ask himself why he had responded to her so instantly and so passionately—and why she had reacted to him the same way.
“And the baby?” he asked. “Were you ever going to tell me you were pregnant?”
He hadn’t meant to ask the question, but somehow the words forced their way out.
She met his gaze for just a moment, her expression guarded, then gazed at the fire. “No,” she finally said.
He was completely unprepared for the pain that pierced through him at her answer. “Why not?”
Her laugh was short, harsh. “A million reasons. You didn’t even know my real name. I’m sorry but I couldn’t quite figure out a good way to suddenly show up at your doorstep and say, ‘Hey, remember me? Funny thing, my name isn’t really Celeste, it’s Katherine Crosby. Yes, of those Crosbys, the family you hate. Nice to meet you. Oh, and by the way, guess what? Great news! We’re having a baby.’”
Without a pause Peter asked, “Didn’t you think I had a right to know?”
Her gaze shifted to the fire. “I couldn’t think about that, not with everything between us. I don’t know, maybe I would have told you eventually, but to be honest, all I’ve been able to focus on for the last week has been my own shock. I haven’t even had time to get used to the idea myself.”
And yet he knew she already loved the child they had created together.
“So where do we go from here?” he asked.
“A baby was something neither of us ever expected. I don’t know how or why it happened, not when we were so careful, but I do know I want this child, Peter. I don’t expect anything from you. Tomorrow the roads should be clear enough for travel. You can go back to Portland and forget any of this ever happened.”
A muscle clenched in his jaw. “You think I would just walk away from you and the baby? You must think I’m a real son of a bitch.”
“I don’t think that of you at all! I just don’t want you to feel obligated to stick around and pretend to be happy about all of this. I know it’s been a shock.”
He wanted to laugh at the understatement but he could find very little humor in this whole thing.
He had thought of nothing but the future while he had sat by the fire watching her sleep. In that darkened room, he had gone over the very limited options available to them now that they had a child to consider and had come up with only one real solution.
“We should get married.”
At his blunt words, her gaze flew to his and her mouth sagged open. She swallowed hard several times then shook her head vigorously. If she could have gotten out of bed, he had no doubt she would have stalked out of the room. “No. Absolutely not. Forget it!”
“Just like that? You’re not even going to think about it?”
“What’s to think about? As far as proposals go—if that’s what you want to call that…proclamation—this one is both unnecessary and unwanted.”
“I disagree.”
He didn’t see any other choice available to them. Wherever possible, a child needed both parents. He believed it fiercely. His parents would expect them to marry when they learned a child was involved.
He expected it.
Getting married was the right thing to do, and since that day the Logans had plucked him out of a bleak future and given him the world, he had spent his life always trying to do the right thing.
Katherine held her ground. “No. I am perfectly capable of raising my child by myself. I don’t need you.”
“Not your child,” he said coolly. “Our child.”
“You’re the sperm donor. That’s all.”
He narrowed his gaze and refused to let her see how those words wounded him. “Is that why you seduced me that night? The old biological clock was ticking away and you decided you needed a warm, healthy male? What did you do, poke a few holes in one of the condoms and think I’d never find out?”
Even if he had believed his own words, the shock on her features would have told him how ludicrous that idea was.
“Of course not!” she exclaimed. “I never expected to end up pregnant from that night. This was as much a shock to me as it is to you! I didn’t believe it myself. I denied it as long as possible until I could no longer avoid facing the truth. I never would have tricked you like that.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you, Celeste?”
She flushed but met his gaze steadily. “All the more reason why your marriage offer is completely ridiculous. You don’t like me or trust me. How are we supposed to base a marriage on that?”
“We’ll just have to figure it out as we go along.”
“We won’t have to figure anything out because I’m not going to marry you!”
“This is my child, too. I intend to be part of his life.”
“Or her life.”
“Either way. I’ve got no preference.”
“Fine. You can be involved. You don’t have to marry me to do that. People find themselves in this situation all the time. They manage to work it out.”
“To the satisfaction of no one involved,” he pointed out, “especially not the child.”
“You think a marriage between two people who barely know each other is the answer?”
“So we’ll get to know each other. And then we’ll get married.”
* * *
Katie wanted to scream at his resolute tone. Of all the scenario
s she had imagined for this conversation, this was a direction she absolutely never expected him to take. Marriage! Between a Crosby and a Logan. The idea was laughable.
This was no Romeo and Juliet. She wouldn’t marry him. She couldn’t. It would be disastrous all the way around. Her feelings for him were already too complicated, too intense. She wouldn’t be able to bear trapping him in a loveless marriage.
She had seen the hell of her parents’ marriage. The fierce fights, the cheating on both sides. They had stayed together far too long, not for the sake of the children—that novel idea never would have occurred to them—but because neither Jack nor Sheila wanted to be the one to cry uncle.
They must have loved each other at some point. She had to believe that. But by the time they divorced, that love had morphed into something ugly and bitter.
A marriage without even that foundation at the beginning didn’t stand a chance—and an innocent child would be the one to suffer.
“No,” she said almost frantically. “No. I won’t do it.”
Something of her distress must have shown on her features, in her tone, because Peter crossed the room, his expression concerned and faintly guilty. “Don’t upset yourself about this right now. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed you. You need to rest and take it easy, not argue with me. We have time to sort everything out.”
Maybe they wouldn’t have anything to sort out. The fear she had been holding at bay seeped through as she remembered just what challenges their child faced before entering the world. Maybe the pregnancy wouldn’t survive and all this talk about marriage would be moot.
No. She wouldn’t think like that. You’ve always been much stronger than you’ve ever given yourself credit for, Laura had said. She had to believe she could be strong for her baby—for their baby.
“Thank you for the omelette,” she said to Peter. “Your mother would be proud.”
“Of my cooking skills anyway,” he said, just a shadow of bitterness in his voice. “I’ll leave you to rest now. I’ll be out on the couch. Call me if you need anything.”
She nodded, then watched him carry the tray out of the room, wondering how it was that telling him about their child had left her feeling more alone than ever.
Snowbound in Sweetwater Ranch Page 12
