by Amy Lillard
“You know this would be a lot easier if you would agree to get married. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about who gets the baby for Christmas each year.”
She tilted her head to one side. “You really think that’s going to help? I only plan to get married once.”
“So did I.”
The words fell like a boulder between them.
“Maybe we should get a lawyer to help us.”
“We haven’t even started,” Jake pointed out.
Bryn shook her head. “I don’t even know where to begin. You can’t have her for her first Christmas.”
“Why should you get to spend the first Christmas with the baby alone? You both could come here.”
Christmas with the Langstons. The thought made her heart soar and sink all at the same time. She missed her family so very much, but adopting the Langstons would not bring her parents or Emery back. And she would always be on the fringes here. Not quite part of the family, but allowed in all the same. She wasn’t one of them and no certificate could change that.
She jerked her thoughts to a stop. She was coming dangerously close to regretting her impulsive decision that landed her where she was now, but regretting that was a little too close to wishing she wasn’t pregnant at all. And that was something she wasn’t. She was so very grateful to have this second chance at a family.
“Surely we can work this out,” she murmured. But the words were more for her benefit than for his. “We have a lot of time before we have to worry about where she spends her first or any Christmas.”
Jake stood and came around the desk. He leaned against it, still a good foot away from her but so much closer than he had been. “This ranch is the only life I’ve ever known. I’ve not seen much of Texas. Even less of the world. But this is the best place I can think of. Fresh air. Great family and open spaces. I’m glad I’m raising my daughter here. I want this baby to be able to experience that as well. Is that too much to ask?”
He didn’t give her time to answer, instead reaching out and pulling her to her feet.
“Don’t.” Having him so near was confusing. Wonderful. She shook her head to clear her thoughts. “We have time to think about it. Work it out.” She pulled her hands from his grasp. “We’ve got months before we have to make any decisions.” Not exactly what she was saying last night, but this was proving to be more difficult than she ever imagined. Maybe once she knew them better . . .
For a moment she thought he might protest. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll take a little time to think about it.”
She moved away from him, needing Jake-free air to keep her thoughts clear.
“But it’s not going to change anything. You live there, and I live here. Getting married is our only solution.”
She started for the office door. Maybe, just maybe, a little bit of time would bring about a different solution. But as much as she wanted to be hopeful, from where she stood the situation was bleak.
Chapter Six
Stay.” He said the word even as she started out the door.
She stopped half in and half out, not turning around, as if she had imagined his request.
“Stay for a while. Let’s talk.”
She turned to face him then, but he could see in her eyes that she would refuse him. “What do we have to talk about?”
“See?” he said. “That’s the problem. We have to find out what to talk about. Discover our similarities.” He must have hit on something. She nodded and came back, though she stood behind the large armchair that squatted in front of his desk.
“What should we do? Play some party game to get to know each other better?”
“If we have to.”
She shook her head. “Two truths and a lie is not going to solve our problems.”
“It can’t if we don’t give it a try.”
She seemed to think about it for a moment. “Okay, then. But we can’t stay in here with you behind the desk.” She shook her head. “It’s a little off-putting, that big desk.”
“I know the house may look large, but there’s not much privacy around here. This is one of the few places where I can go and be undisturbed. Then again Grandma Esther probably has a glass pressed to the door right now.”
She laughed, the sound like music. Or maybe he just didn’t hear laughter enough these days. Not even from Wesley. The thought was sobering.
“So the living room is out,” she said, settling back into the armchair. “Who goes first?”
“Ladies, always.” He slid onto the edge of his desk, his booted feet almost brushing her knees.
“Okay.” He could almost see the wheels turning in her mind. “I went on my first date when I was nineteen. I’ve never owned a dog. I wasn’t born in Georgia.”
“And I have to pick out the lie, right?”
“Yes.”
“The date one.”
She shook her head. “I was sort of a geek in high school. Well, not geek-geek. Artist-outcast is more like it.”
He gave her a sad look. “What is wrong with the boys in Georgia?” he said, then watched the pink creep into her cheeks. Was that all it took to make her blush?
“Your turn,” she said.
He searched his brain trying to think of something to say. Then her answers hit him again. “You’ve never owned a dog?”
“Both my parents were biomedical engineers at the CDC. They just didn’t have time for pets.”
But he heard something else in her voice. “What about you?”
“They didn’t have a lot of time for me either.” She sighed. “I loved them but . . . my mother died when I was fifteen.”
“Ouch,” he said. He didn’t know a lot about mother-daughter relationships, but he knew enough to know that fifteen was a critical age in a girl’s life.
“We weren’t very close. Sometimes I think she got pregnant to experience the biological aspects.”
“Seriously?”
“Some women just aren’t maternal.”
“I suppose not,” he murmured.
“After she died, my father married his lab assistant.”
“And he found his true love?”
“I don’t know. I think it was based off of mutual love for the field. I’m just happy that his assistant was a woman.”
He laughed. “That bad?”
“Worse,” she said. “But then they had Emery and gave me a family I never knew I was missing. So no, there wasn’t much time for a dog. I was going to get one, then she got sick. We were spending so much time in Memphis at St. Jude that I was sort of glad that we didn’t have a dog. But it makes me sad that she never got to have a dog of her own.”
He watched in horror as tears filled her marvelous brown eyes. He moved without thinking, pulling her up from the chair and wrapping his arms around her.
She was warm in his embrace, soft and pliant, solid and sound. Everything he needed her to be and more.
“Everyone should have a dog,” he murmured into her hair. “At least one time in their life.” He rocked her from side to side, thankful at least that she wasn’t sobbing. Her tears wet the collar of his shirt where she had buried her nose in the crook of his neck, but each breath was steady.
“She used to have this collection of stuffed animals—just dogs. All sorts. I bought her a new one every time we went to treatment. It was silly, I know, but I wanted her to have something. Even if she couldn’t have the real thing.” She pulled away and reluctantly, he turned her loose. He would have much rather gone on holding her until . . . until . . . well, until. That was all.
“It’s not silly. Where are they all now?”
“I took them to the hospital for the other children. I figured that would be the best way to honor her.”
“And you took her ashes to the Pacific?”
Bryn nodded, her tears seemingly under contro
l, but somehow he knew they hovered just below the surface. “I dropped some into the Atlantic too.”
“You loved her very much.”
“I was seventeen when she was born. With parents who could carry on about corpse reanimation but couldn’t sit through a school play, she became more like my own daughter than just my sister.”
She wiped the last of her tears from her eyes. “This was supposed to be about us getting to know each other, not just Bryn tells all.”
“What do you want to know?” He slid back onto the desk, but she remained standing, so close all he had to do was reach out and he could easily tug her into his arms again.
“Have you always wanted to run the ranch?”
“There was a time when I thought Mav would run it. He’s the oldest. But . . .” He shook his head.
“What happened?”
“No one really knows. Or they’re not saying.” He knew his mother had her secrets. “I was away at college when he left. Then right after that, Dad had a heart attack and I came home and took over everything.”
“Did you ever finish school?”
“I did. I managed to take correspondence courses and the like. I majored in business, which was easy to do online, and here we are.”
“Business?” She seemed surprised.
“That’s what we have here, a living, breathing business.”
“I know but . . .” She shrugged. “It seems different somehow. Like . . .”
“Like being a cowboy isn’t an occupation?”
“More like ranching is a way of life.”
Now she had surprised him. “It is, but it’s a business too.”
“And would you be happy running a McDonald’s on the interstate? That’s a business.”
“No,” he said simply. He couldn’t imagine doing anything other than what he was doing now. And that had been the problem between him and Cecelia. She had thought he could be different. “I’m a cowboy. And that’s all I’ll ever be.” And it was one of the very reasons why he needed Bryn close. Leaving Texas wasn’t an option for him.
“You say that like it’s a simple thing.”
“It’s simple enough for me.”
But then simple turned complicated, more than complicated as something shifted between them. She took a step closer to him. She bumped into one of his knees and he moved his legs a little farther apart. He was still sitting on the desk, but now she could move in. It was an invitation and a challenge. A dare and a hope to have her come near enough to kiss.
But after last night, she would have to be the one.
“What are we doing?” she asked.
“Getting to know each other better.”
“Is that all we’re doing?” she asked. “Getting to know each other better?”
“It’s supposed to be.” Why were those words so hard to say?
She inched closer still. He wanted to pull her the rest of the way to him, but he managed to keep his hands on his thighs. He wouldn’t be accused again. This one was all on her.
“Why does it feel like more than that?”
“Maybe because it is.” It was the only answer he had. He’d known from the first time he saw her that Bryn was different. Special. Even through the dull senses and haze of alcohol, he’d known.
“I’m getting mixed signals from you,” she whispered, still so close and yet so far away.
“How’s that?” he asked in return. His fingers twitched to entwine themselves in her hair but somehow he refrained.
“Your eyes say you want to kiss me, but you seem distant.”
“This one’s on you, sweetness.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means if you want a kiss, you have to come get it.”
Did she want a kiss? Could she explain this force that seemed to pull them together no matter how hard they resisted? Or would she talk it away?
A mischievous light sparked in her eyes. Or maybe it was desire. “Are you saying I can come kiss you and you aren’t going to hold me?”
“That’s right.”
“Take over the kiss?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Try to make more of it than just a kiss?”
He swallowed hard. He’d like nothing better than to make it more than a kiss. “Nuh-uh.”
“Are you serious?”
“Just trying to be fair.”
All of a sudden he felt like he’d thrown down a gauntlet.
She took that one last step to bring her as far as she could come into the V of his thighs. The sides of her growing belly brushed against him as she came closer. He shouldn’t have thought it sexy but it was. They were having a baby together and heaven help him, he found it extremely—
She cupped his face in her hands, and then her lips were on his. Her sweet, sweet lips.
Her kiss was tentative and explosive all at the same time. Suddenly he realized that maybe she hadn’t had many dates in high school or even many more after. She hadn’t been a virgin when they were together, but there was an innocence in her kiss that he had never tasted before.
His hands jerked, but he managed to keep them in place. He fisted his fingers, fighting the urge to pull her even closer, lift her onto his lap and . . .
She seemed to enjoy being in control, taking the kiss one step further. Her tongue slipped between his lips exploring, rediscovering.
They had more than kissed that night in Austin and he remembered it in sweet fuzzy sections. Yes, he’d had too much to drink. Hell, she had too. And he’d always believed that what the two of them had shared was a trick of the lighting, misplaced emotions tacked onto a time that didn’t deserve them. But this . . . this kiss told another tale.
It took every ounce of willpower he had to not snatch her to him. He’d made a promise, and a cowboy always kept his word. No matter how much it killed him.
Sadly . . . No, it was thankfully. Thankfully, she got her fill and stepped back.
She licked her lips as if tasting him again. Then shook her head like she was having trouble collating her memories with the present.
“I’m not sure what just happened here.” She took another step away from him and he let her. He was pretty sure he was as confused by the kiss as she was.
“You kissed me.”
“Thanks, Jake.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t think we should do that again.”
“What, let you be in control? I thought you did all right.”
“Kissing. We shouldn’t be kissing.” She turned away but not before he heard her say under her breath, “It’s too confusing.” She started for the door, then whirled back around. “I mean, the last thing I need to be doing is going around kissing cowboys.”
Jake shifted, trying to get into a more comfortable position to watch her leave, but that kiss had just been so . . . “Just for the record, sweetness, since you’re carrying my baby. I’d better be the only cowboy you’re kissing these days.”
• • •
Bryn shut the office door behind her and rested against the wall. What was she doing kissing Jake Langston? Had she lost all her good sense?
She was going home in just a few days. The last thing she needed as a souvenir was a crush on Jake. And that seemed to be right where she was headed. Two days and he had her eating out of the palm of his hand. Somehow he knew exactly what to say and the right time to say it. Except for his marriage proposals. She couldn’t marry him. She was a Georgia girl through and through. She had no business in Texas. If it hadn’t been for Rick and his love of the drummer from Synthetic Cowboy, then she would have never been in Texas on that fateful May night.
But she was.
And now she and her real cowboy were having a baby.
Except Jake wasn’t her anything. Baby daddy, maybe.
&nb
sp; She pushed up from the wall and made a face. Baby daddy. How . . . quaint.
She started and jumped nearly out of her skin as the office door opened and Jake stepped out.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked.
“Leaving,” she said, somehow managing to get her legs in motion. She might have been in control of the kiss but she wasn’t in charge of much else.
“Chicken,” he muttered as she headed down the hallway.
She turned back to face him, pinning him with a hard look. “You never took your turn at the game.”
“Game?”
“Two truths and a lie.”
“You want me to do this now?”
“Yes, please.” She crossed her arms and shifted her weight as she waited for him to say his three.
He thought about it a moment. “The first girl I ever crushed on is Wesley’s preschool teacher, I get regular pedicures, and my first car was a ’79 Firebird.”
“The car.” She shook her head. That couldn’t be right. He’d most likely been driving trucks since he could see over the steering wheel. “The pedicures. No, wait.”
“Don’t hurt yourself.” He laughed. “Why don’t you sleep on it and we can talk about it over breakfast?”
He pushed past her and was gone in a second.
Over breakfast? Sleep on it? Like she would be able to sleep at all picturing him crushing on Wesley’s teacher.
And that kiss . . .
It was going to be one long night.
• • •
Bryn dragged herself out of bed the following morning, once again wondering why everyone in the house let her sleep. Maybe that was their policy with guests. Let them fend for themselves.
It was late enough when she got to the kitchen that both Esther and Wesley were nowhere to be seen. And they seemed to be treating her like just another Langston. There was a note pinned to the coffee maker.
Sweetness—
I heard you wanted fruit and yogurt, so I sent Ol’ Buck into town to get you some. It’s in the fridge just waiting on you.
Come on out to the barn when you have a chance. We’re saddle breaking a few new horses. Could be something a Georgia girl might like to see.
