Mountain Man's Baby Surprise (A Mountain Man's Baby Romance)

by Lia Lee

  Luna, however, was not going to be satisfied with a pretty piece of jewelry or even a piece of property in her own name. The money she was getting would never be enough for a heart that felt as fragile as glass, as elusive as smoke.

  I know what I should do here, he thought to himself. I should give her up. I should let her go.

  However, even at the mere thought of it, his arms closed around her. She made a soft whimpering noise in her sleep, and reluctantly, he loosened his grip again.

  "Sorry, darling," he murmured, kissing her temple, and to his pleasure, she smiled in her slumber.

  A good man would have let her go. The minute he knew that she was out of her depth, he would have put her on a plane back to the United States. Hell, a good man wouldn't be doing this with her at all. However, Tucker had had many years to resolve that he was not, in fact, a good man. He simply wasn't sure that he had cared about the collateral damage before this.

  He couldn't stand the thought of hurting Luna, of making her cry as she had cried less than an hour ago. It was strange; he had heard plenty of women crying and been the cause, but there was something about her deep agonized sobs that struck him deeply. Luna was sweet and kind, perhaps the kindest and most genuine person he had ever been with. She didn't deserve that.

  Tucker gave Luna a soft kiss on the top of her head. It struck him that he had been far more tender with her than he had been with anyone in his life. He did not want to give her up, but old habits died hard. If he kept her, if he tried to make her a lover as well as the future mother of his child...

  The tears that she shed tonight would be nothing compared to what she might suffer, he realized with a chill.

  Tucker had not made it to his position in the world by giving up, and at the moment, he reasoned, there was no real cause to stop what they were doing. He could not afford to ignore Luna, and she did not want to be ignored. Fine.

  It would all be fine, he told himself. He would allow himself to be a little more invested, a little closer. That surely couldn't hurt things.

  Then... when the child was born, they could renegotiate. Perhaps she would be the woman he finally installed in an apartment in Paris or New York or San Diego. An allowance, the ability to pursue her career and her dream; those were not small things at all. They would be of value to her, and that meant she could be kept close without the rest.

  In this case, the rest referred to the settled life that he had always shunned and that it seemed as if women were always trying to get from him. Right now, though, sleeping with quite the most adorable woman he had ever known in his arms, a part of him wondered if that was really so very bad.

  Tucker dismissed it. Luna was more important to him than other women. Fine, that made sense. She was going to be the mother of his child, and in addition to that, she was a charming woman in her own right. There was nothing wrong with that. There was nothing that needed to change.

  Tucker fell asleep, secure in the knowledge that he was doing the right thing, but if that was the case, why did his dreams all involve trying to find a treasure that he had lost, that he knew he had neglected and failed to keep well?

  ***

  Luna woke to a feeling of pleasant warmth, blinking sleepily at the sun coming into the room.

  This feels good, I feel so safe, she thought blearily, and then the events from last night came rushing back. She jolted upright, making Tucker growl sleepily from next to her.

  "Are you up already?" he asked, and she had to clear her throat twice before she could speak.

  "I am," she said, unable to keep the guilt from her voice. "I... I guess I fell asleep here. Oh my god, what time is it? Did I keep you from..."

  She stopped because she hated the quaver in her voice. She wasn't the one who was meant to be apologizing here. She wasn't the guilty one; all she had done was follow a pair of retirees to a cave full of bats!

  Tucker didn't seem to notice her quandary. Instead he stretched (god, but the man was large when he was sprawled out), and smiled lazily up at her.

  "No, no early meetings at all," he promised her. "Nothing to do this morning for me..."

  Luna gasped when she felt his hand under the blanket, closing gently over her knee before sliding up. The sensation of his hand against her thigh made her want to whimper, but she remembered her fury from the night before and pulled away. That fury was gone, but the issues that had caused it were not.

  "I don't think I can," she hedged. "Tucker... last night... we need to talk. I mean, I really, really enjoyed what we did, but the anger... Tucker, we were both so angry at each other."

  For a moment, she didn't think that he was going to listen, and if Luna were honest with herself, she had no idea how much she was prepared to have that talk either. It felt as if there were a chorus of voices in her head that told her that whatever she was worried about, it was all less important than the sparks of heat that were already flying between them, than the prickles of electricity that made her stomach turn over.

  It struck her that no matter how angry she was with Tucker, or how angry he was at her, that electricity, that desire would never go away.

  Then Tucker sighed, and the look on his face was unexpectedly soft and sweet. He reached up to palm the side of her face, and the smile was rueful.

  "Clever girl, you're definitely right," he said shaking his head. "First rule of business, when you see a snag, you fix it right away. You don't let it grow up into something that you cannot deal with later. I am going to take a shower, you should do the same, and then how about breakfast together? There's a place a friend was telling me about a short while ago, I think you'll like it."

  It struck Luna as she showered in her own suite how normal this was. There was no pain, no recrimination. There was only a problem and two people who wanted to solve it together. It felt strange, but there was something right about it as well.

  She finished up with her shower and twisted her hair up into a gleaming bun, dark red stragglers coming out as they always did to frame her face. Luna paused in front of her closet. This had been less difficult when she had nothing but jeans and hoodies in there. At last, she chose a sleeveless black dress that was severe but had a sweetheart neckline that she thought gave her a kind of vintage look.

  When she met Tucker at the door, Luna had the pleasure of seeing his eyes widen a little at her outfit. For just a moment, it looked as if he could eat her alive, and Luna didn't think that she would have been all that averse to the idea if he did. Then Tucker was a complete gentleman and opened the door for her. He had decided to drive that day instead of calling for their chauffeur, and he took her to an elegant building in the heart of busy Florence. The round glass elevator took them up to an exclusive row of shops and restaurants at the top of the building, and they were shown to a table on the balcony that looked out over the city. With a warm playful breeze sweeping over her skin and the mid-morning sun warming her up, Luna sighed with pleasure.

  "This is beautiful," she murmured, and Tucker grinned at her.

  "This floor, this whole building, as a matter of fact, was once the home of Veronica Zenatti, famed courtesan of the seventeenth century," he said with a smile. "They said she broke hearts here until she was thirty, and then she took all that money and ran to Amsterdam to set up a profitable fleet of ships all on her own."

  "Sounds like an amazing woman," Luna said, imagining what it would have been like to trade on her beauty and then to leave it all behind. It struck her as lonely, but surely Veronica Zenatti had had a plan, a reason.

  "Well, she was if you weren't the one left with a broken heart, I suppose," said Tucker. He looked supremely amused, and it was difficult, Luna admitted, to ever think that he might be the one with a broken heart.

  She might have responded to that, but then the waiter was coming for their order. She had not had time to look at the menu yet, but Tucker ordered for them both confidently in Italian.

  "You know, I didn't think that I would like that at all," s
he said thoughtfully. "You ordering for me, I mean."

  "And now?"

  "Well, we'll see when the food gets here, I imagine," she said, daring to tease just a little, and she was rewarded with a blinding smile.

  The food was as good as she had hoped it would be. It was a delicate arrangement of roast vegetables with cool fruit to one side, and a few slices of ham and a perfect poached egg in the center. The waiter also set down a basket of fragrant bread, and when Tucker saw her blissful smile, he laughed.

  "A bit heavy for every morning, but no one really goes wrong with a breakfast like this. Plus, the view can't be beat."

  Luna knew that they had things to discuss, but for right now, the food was too good. It wasn't just the ham, no matter how good it was, though. It just felt so good to relax with Tucker again, to smile at him, and to laugh and to tease. It was as if they were back in those first days again, and she felt as if someone had turned on a light deep inside her. She was finally beginning to feel warm again, and she loved it.

  Finally, however, Tucker wiped his mouth and set the napkin aside, a serious expression on his face.

  "First," he said, "I'm sorry. I think I know what was going on last night, and I am sorry that I lashed out the way that I did. It was not my intention to hurt you, and I think you were hurt."

  Luna blushed, because the idea of him seeing how hurt she had been left her feeling vulnerable and oddly sad.

  "I realize that I have not been altogether fair to you," he continued. "You are not some woman that I met at a gala and decided to keep for the length of my stay in the area."

  "Is that... a thing that you do often?" Luna asked, vaguely fascinated even as the bottom dropped out of her stomach. "I mean, pick up women and just... keep them for a while?"

  Tucker shrugged, and all over again, she had to realize that she was a stranger to his world.

  "I don't really do it as deliberately as all that, but I've done that several times, yes. It is all very willing and it works out quite well. We enjoy the pleasure of each other's company for a short while, and then when I am done in the area, we go our separate ways. It works well."

  Luna wasn't so sure. She had already had some experience with how it felt when she and Tucker had enjoyed each other's company and then gone their separate ways. It felt a lot like a punch to the stomach, but Tucker was continuing.

  "But the fact remains that however well that has worked out for me in the past, this is not the relationship that I am pursuing with you," he said. "We have something different, and I am slowly realizing that it is something... different and good."

  "Don't sound so surprised," she muttered, but he ignored her, continuing.

  "You are going to be the mother of my child," he said, and when he met her eyes, there was something intensely fierce in his gaze. "You are going to give birth to a child that is mine, and you deserve better than that."

  "So what does that mean?" she asked, lifting her chin. He was the one that had started this conversation, he could be the one to come up with the conclusion.

  "It means that I have behaved badly," Tucker said, taking her hand. "I finally realized that if I hadn't been acting so badly, we never would have had the fight we had. You never would have been hurt."

  She found somehow that his apology made her heart hurt. Luna blinked rapidly a few times, wishing that she wasn't tearing up. God, she had never been like this before. What was it about this man that made her emotions feel as if they were being churned?

  "We are going to be different moving ahead," he said. "I want to be with you. I want us to enjoy each other, truly. Then, perhaps... well, perhaps after the child is born, you won't want to disappear with that million dollars."

  Luna could feel her heart start to slam into her ribs. She could barely believe her ears. Was he stating that perhaps... perhaps they would want to stay together on a more permanent basis? Was Tucker Keene hinting at a marriage?

  "Something structured, perhaps," he continued. "If we still suit, you could own your own apartment in a city of your choice, an allowance, something like that."

  She felt something in her go cold.

  "You mean, like a mistress," she said. "Like Veronica Zenatti."

  His smile was sweet and easy, and she wondered if she had imagined all of the times she thought she had glimpsed something sweeter and more vulnerable there.

  "Something like that. And if you ever decide to run off and start a shipping business in the Netherlands, I promise I won't rant or scream as much as her lovers did."

  Remember this, her mind whispered. This is what he wants from you. A mistress, not a wife, not a girlfriend. Someone he pays off, who is available to him, and who doesn't live in his life with him.

  Tucker seemed to sense her reticence because he shrugged.

  "But that's for the future. In the here and now, what I want is to simply... be with you. I still need to work, but I want to see you more, be a part of things. What we were doing before, it doesn't seem to work all that well."

  "No, it wasn't," she said, slightly wistfully. She thought of how empty the days had been, even with her work, even with the city of Florence in her grasp. It had meant nothing at all without someone to share it with.

  "So are we agreed?" he asked.

  Luna looked at Tucker, who in the mid-morning light looked as handsome as Lucifer himself. Even now, it was hard not to reach out to touch him.

  "All right," she said. "No promises on what might come after... after the baby comes. But right now, let's be together."

  She was rewarded with a smile of such triumph that she blinked, but then it was gone, and he smiled warmly at her.

  "Good," he said, and then, almost shyly, "I missed you."

  Then he was talking about other things, about a famous horse race in a nearby city that he wanted to take her to, how there was an airfield nearby where they could try small craft flying, and for the moment, she allowed herself to be carried away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The problem, Luna decided almost six weeks later, was that it was so easy to be carried away by Tucker. Tucker was a man who lived an exciting life, and before he had met her, he lived it at breakneck speed. She had gasped when he told her about his chute failing to deploy and how it had led to his need to leave something behind, but he had laughed at her alarm.

  "I think it might be one of the best things to have ever happened to me," Tucker said. "It made me stop and really think about what I wanted."

  He was a worldly billionaire, but somehow, he had missed out on some of the most simply joys that she took for granted.

  "You really don't always have to be on the go," she said with amusement, and he raised an eyebrow at her.

  "If I'm not on the go all the time, what's the point?" Tucker had asked, and when Luna ascertained that he was serious, she had taken him to the nearby market. Tucker, though bemused, was quiet as she led him through the aisles.

  The little Florentine markets were different from the supermarkets that were so prevalent in the United States. She understood that there were definitely some supermarkets scattered here and there, but a great deal of Florence still got on well with the small shops scattered throughout the city. They reminded Luna of the bodegas where she could stop by and pick up the materials for a meal while also scratching the local cat in residence for a moment of much-needed stress relief.

  Tucker looked dubious, but after she had made their purchases, she led him on a wander that finally ended up on a small plaza. There were a few benches scattered about, but besides them and the pigeons that seemed to be everywhere, the only inhabitant of the square was the statue of a young girl holding flowers up to the sky.

  Tucker watched as she made them thick sandwiches with good Italian mustard, some kind of salty cheese and ham, chasing it all down with glass bottles of delicious lemonade.

  "I'll admit, I did not expect it to taste this good," he said, and Luna smiled triumphantly.

  "Sometimes, it's best
to just keep it simple," she said.

  He took the apple slices she had cut with her pocket knife without a word, and then he looked surprised when she slid one past his lips. For all that they had spent weeks exploring each other's bodies, there was something shockingly intimate about this gesture. The apple felt cool under her fingers, the warmth of his lips, and the wetness of his tongue as it flickered out to lap at her fingertips, it all made her feel ridiculously happy.

  Whether they were enjoying lunch in a secret plaza or going up into the mountains for a famous horse race that was nearly two hundred years old, however, Luna had the nagging feeling in the back of her head that this couldn't last. After she gave him the child that he wanted so badly, she had come to realize that she couldn't possibly stay. She wouldn't be his mistress, a small part of his life while he led it somewhere else.

  It wasn't just that, either. Her appointments with Dr. Schmitt continued, and they made everything more real. She wasn't sure that she could create a baby with Tucker and then have nothing to do with that baby at all. Luna had thought that she could, and she was beginning to suspect that that was not the case at all.

  Some nights, she was on the verge of breaking everything off and running away. Others, she simply willed the earth to stand still so that she and Tucker could live in this short span of time forever.

  Short?

  She realized that no matter how much time she had with Tucker, it would always feel short, whether it was another five weeks or another year. When she looked at him, there was something in her that felt a fierce joy for having found him, for being able to touch him and laugh with him.

  As the weeks rolled on, Luna felt as if she was slowly being pulled apart. It was such a slow and gradual thing, it was as if she didn't notice it until she was nearly in pieces. She knew that she couldn't stay, but her entire body felt as if it couldn't go, either.