by Maisey Yates
One that might keep her, and their baby, close to him.
Although he doubted that a kiss, even a good one, would make it worth the trouble of putting up with him.
Chapter Thirteen
Cole didn’t say anything until the cabin door closed behind them, which was a relief to Kelsey, since she suddenly felt sick and more than a little bit overwhelmed.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” He just looked at her, arms crossed over his broad chest. “Stupidly, I just realized that it’s not just you and me. I mean, really realized it. That Lark is going to be my baby’s aunt and that Cade . . . Cade is his uncle and . . . and they’ll want to see him, or her, and it’s . . . it’s not just me anymore. It was only supposed to be me,” she said, her words ending flat, defeated as she felt.
He still didn’t say anything. Which was fine, because if he wanted to let her word-vomit all over him, she was in the mood to do it.
“I wanted something that was mine. Outside of the expectations of my family. Something that was for me. And . . . I didn’t get it. I still have to figure out how to do this without hurting other people and I . . . I have to make decisions I don’t feel like I can make.”
He could relate.
“So, don’t make them right now,” he said.
“That’s . . . that’s fine in theory, but . . . but . . .”
“But what? This is our life. Our baby. I know having me involved is more than you really want, but right now, we can leave Cade and Lark and your family and the town out of this. It’s not anyone else’s business.”
“I don’t mind having you involved,” she said, her heart pounding as she made the rushed admission.
“You don’t?”
“No. I like it. I’m relieved. I don’t want to do this alone. Now that I have the option, I really don’t want to do it alone. And I feel horrible about that. I made this decision and it turns out I’m way too big of a wimp to stand behind it. I’m so . . . glad that I’m going to have you as the father of my baby, and that scares me. It scares me how much it matters. How I’m almost . . . happy about having Lark and Cade as aunt and uncle. It makes for a nice picture. I’m just not sure if it’s reality.”
It hurt to say the words. To admit that she was pretty weak when all was said and done. That part of her craved the traditional family thing, as much as she’d wanted to pretend it didn’t matter. It had been fine to be all balls to the wall “I’ll do it myself” in theory, but with another option on the table? It was hard to pass up.
But they couldn’t be a traditional family, not really.
“You’re not a wimp,” he said. “Some things . . . you don’t realize what it’s going to be like until you’re in them. You might think you can handle it, and maybe you even can. But if you have the option of help . . . you’ll take it.”
“Like you’ve ever taken help?”
“I talked to Cade today. About my dad. You helped me do that.”
“Oh. Well . . .” Heat bloomed around her heart. Dangerous, dangerous heat. “Is he okay?”
“Yeah. He . . . knew. Which makes me feel like an idiot. But . . . I was the oldest. I idolized our dad. Cade was the rebellious one. The one that’s always been more cynical. I actually get why now.”
“When did he find out?”
“When we were in high school. I can’t believe he carried it that long. The past year has been hard enough for me.”
“I guess people surprise you sometimes. I surprised me. How . . . how not strong I feel. How tired I am.”
“You’re allowed to be.” A half smile curved his lips, and her heart skipped a little bit. What she really wanted to do was reach out and touch his face, feel his stubble beneath her palm. She wanted to sit on the bed with him, have him touch her stomach, like he’d been doing when Lark had walked in.
She wanted to do more than that. Suddenly, she wanted it so badly she felt restless. Achy. A little bit shaken.
What would have happened if they had just met in a bar? A man by himself, drinking a beer, looking all sexy in his tight jeans and cowboy hat. Probably nothing. Because she didn’t go to bars and she didn’t flirt with men. She had disastrous half-dates that she lied to escape from.
Maybe for Cole she would have made an exception. Maybe.
She wanted to make one now.
She put her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. Because if she didn’t she might do something really stupid. Like reach out and touch his chest, just to see if it was as hard and muscular as it looked.
She swallowed hard and took a step back. Stupidity insurance. For when you’re so horny you don’t trust yourself not to jump the poor, unsuspecting father of your baby. How had emotional exhaustion morphed into this? Damn hormones.
Although she had a feeling half the problem was that she suddenly needed a vacation from reality. And Cole, naked, would be a very, very nice vacation. Except he was all tangled up in her reality, and there really was no extricating him for a little naked fun and acting like it would have no implications.
“I think I’m going to take a nap,” she said.
He looked at the bed and she felt a blush flood her cheeks, heat prickling her scalp.
“Sounds like a good idea.”
“Yeah,” she said, edging backward. “So, I’ll . . . I’ll come to dinner.”
“Why don’t I take you out to dinner?” he asked.
“What . . . like a date?”
He shrugged. “I knocked you up. I ought to buy you a meal.”
She took her hands out of her pockets. “I don’t know if a cheap steak is fair compensation for carrying your child in my womb.”
“It won’t be a cheap steak.”
She snorted. “That changes everything.”
“Six. I’ll pick you up at six.”
She should say no. Because there was no point in them having a date.
Except it’s that vacation from reality you were wanting.
Yes, it was. And she would just ignore the little panicky voice of reason in the back of her mind that was saying it was a bad idea.
“I . . . do you really think we should go on a date?” she asked.
“This has been . . . a lot of stress, and a lot of thinking, and a lot of . . . I don’t think it’s been easy for either of us. So, just for a few hours, why don’t we let it go, and go have a meal together.”
Kelsey nodded slowly. “Yeah. Okay. Sounds good.”
“See you then.” He turned and walked out of the cabin, and she couldn’t help but watch him leave. The sight of the back of him had become one of her great pleasures in life. Not because she couldn’t wait for him to be away from her, but because of how the, uh . . . back of him . . . looked in pair of jeans.
“I am not going to obsess over my outfit,” she said to the empty room. She turned and wandered over to the wooden dresser that housed most of her clothes. “I’m not.” She rifled through the contents of the top drawer and let out a long breath. “I’m only going to obsess a little.”
***
Cole nearly swallowed his tongue when he saw Kelsey. She was wearing in a slinky black dress that hugged her curves and reminded him that she was so much more than simply the woman carrying his child. She was a woman. An attractive woman. One he was having a very hard time keeping his hands off of.
“I’m ready. So is there a local greasy spoon we get to go haunt? I brought a cloth napkin to spread out on the bench. I can use it in your truck too.”
“You’re funny, city girl,” he said. “But we’re not driving my truck. And this is a tourist trap, remember? We have a lovely bistro that serves locally grown, organic cuisine, and I am taking you there.”
“So no steak? I was promised steak.” They stepped off the cabin’s porch and started down the trail, back toward the lodge.
“Organic, grass-fed, local steak,” he said, putting his hand on her lower back, his fingers tingling as the heat of her body seeped th
rough the dress and into him.
“Fancy,” she said. “Not unicorn meat or anything, but fancy.”
“I didn’t think you’d want unicorn. The glitter gets caught in your teeth.”
“Mean,” she said. “You would eat a unicorn. You’re the kind of guy who names his ranch a haven for elk and then eats them.”
“But then, you could pick the glitter out of your teeth with the horn.”
“Cole . . .”
“Unicorn bacon seems like it could be some kind of rare and magical delicacy.”
“Great, now you have me craving unicorn bacon. Do you know how cruel it is to make a pregnant woman crave something that doesn’t exist?”
She stumbled slightly on the crooked path, and that was when he noticed her shoes. Spiky and black. The kind of thing that gave a man very interesting fantasies. And made him want to call a woman “Mistress” and say yes to whatever she asked of him. He shifted and tried to relieve the pressure in his jeans. He’d never had that particular fantasy before.
“Those shoes probably weren’t the best option,” he said, his voice rough.
“I love these shoes. They’ve pretty much been languishing in my closet. This is my first date in . . . a long time.”
“How long?”
“Too long.”
“Me too,” he said, tightening his hold on her when they trail sloped downward before turning into a flat, open expanse of dirt.
He wasn’t going to think about anything right now. Nothing except how good Kelsey felt pressed up against him. He was on vacation from logic tonight. Just for a couple of hours.
“So what vehicle are we taking?”
“Cade’s premature midlife crisis. He bought some of it with the money he got from his insurance after the accident. He came out of that pretty nicely, since one of the organizers was potentially liable for the dangerous situation.”
“Poor guy.”
“Yeah. It’s been hard on him. He jokes about . . . well, about everything. But I don’t think he finds much about the situation very funny.”
“I can imagine.”
“But”—Cole pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and hit the unlock button. The headlights on Cade’s imported Italian sports car blinked—“we get to use his car.”
“Very nice. I am impressed. He has taste. Garish, obvious taste; but sometimes a girl likes that.”
“He spent most of his money in one chunk. But I think he was a little too pissed at life to care. I occasionally wonder if his original intent was to drive it off a cliff.”
“I can imagine that too. Sometimes I wonder if that was part of why I . . . No. That wasn’t it.” She waved a hand and walked to the passenger side of the sleek yellow car.
He reached past her and opened her door, holding it until she got inside. When he got into the driver’s seat, she was buckled, facing forward, a serious look on her face.
“What do you wonder?” he asked, turning the key over, a little thrill racing through him when the engine started to purr. He loved this car. He loved it even more with Kelsey sitting in it. Kelsey and her long, sexy legs . . .
“I wonder if I was just so mad at life that I pushed back. That I wanted to laugh at fate and say, ‘I don’t need a husband, see? I can do this by myself.’ See where my taunting got me? Ass-bit, that’s where my taunting got me.”
“You consider me a bite in the ass from life?” he asked.
“A little bit.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been more flattered. I need a t-shirt that reads, ‘Cole Mitchell, Ass Bite.’”
“My mom could embroider it on a pillow for you. Of course, she could never, ever embroider the word ‘ass,’ so it would lose its impact. You’d become a tushie bite or something.”
He laughed, and then silence settled between them. “I don’t think that’s why you did it,” he said, throwing the car into drive and inching off of the dirt and onto the paved portion of the road. Even a little dust would be frowned on by his brother.
“Oh, you don’t?”
“No. I think you wanted a baby and you didn’t want to wait. I get that.”
“Well, that’s true. But I also think . . . I think part of me feels like I’ve been punished for my bad decisions, and this was me trying to prove that I could work around the punishment. And it turns out that I really . . . can’t.”
“Why do you think you’re being punished?” he asked.
“I don’t know. For moving to the big city. For getting a job. For having sex with my boyfriend and living with him before we got married.”
“Scandal,” he said dryly.
“Yes, they won’t let me into Almack’s for the season now,” she said.
“What?” The reference was lost on him.
“I read a lot of Regency romances in my spare time. It’s . . . never mind.”
“Do you really think you’re being punished?”
“I don’t feel terribly punished right at the moment,” she said, sliding her hand over the leather seat. An arrow of heat shot to his groin, like she’d been running her palm over him instead of the lucky, lucky car.
His cock pulsed and he winced, trying to keep his focus on the road.
“You aren’t, anyway. You aren’t being punished, I mean. That’s stupid, and I mean that in the nicest way. Crap happens. It happens to good people and it happens to bad people.”
“And it happens to women who are idiot enough to drag their lazy-ass boyfriends around just because they’re a habit. To get engaged because there hasn’t been anyone else and there might not be. To deal with the fact that the sex is mediocre and the housekeeping skills are downright abysmal. Yeah, those women have crap happen to them because they don’t ask for better.”
“Well,” he said, his mind stalled back on the line about mediocre sex. “Now you’re asking for better. You have been. You’ve been so successful, and now you’re having a baby.”
“I am,” she said slowly. “And I should own it. And other people can suck it if they don’t like it.”
He laughed at the absurdity of the statement. “Yeah. They can suck it.” He ignored the uncomfortable twinge at the apex of his thighs.
“Because it’s my life,” she said. “I’m the one who has to live it.”
“Damn straight.”
“Yeah, damn straight!” she echoed.
“Glad to see you’re feeling empowered.”
“It comes and goes.”
“Yeah, that kind of thing does.”
She sighed loudly. “Why is that?”
“I don’t know. One of those things. Keeps us from getting cocky?”
“No danger of that. Every time I think I have it together life pulls a Tonya Harding on my kneecaps with the metal rod of reality.”
“This might be great, you know?”
“Yeah. It might be.”
“And tonight let’s forget about the pesky future, huh? Let’s just be on a date.”
She nodded. “I’m good with that. So tell me, would you have asked me out if we would have met when I didn’t have your bun already in my oven?”
“Probably not. Not because you aren’t hot; you are. But because I haven’t asked anyone out since my ex left town with my balls.”
“You get them back?”
“Yeah. Working on it.”
“Right. Good to know. Well, I wouldn’t have asked you out either. Also not because you aren’t hot, but because I haven’t had a real date since Michael. Well, I have had dates. But they’ve been dodged, ended early, and self-sabotaged. I once played Angry Birds on my phone during dinner and barely spoke to the guy. Don’t worry; I paid.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Another one of life’s mysteries. Mainly, because I always think I’d like to date again, and then I realize how much I kind of hate the dating thing. Which is another huge reason I stuck with Michael despite the lackluster. I just like to be comfortable. Settled. I don’t like having to try to meet som
eone new. I don’t want to be in that stage where you fall crazy in love with someone ever again.”
“Why is that? Isn’t that the part everyone likes?”
“Sure. But the disillusionment is so bad. It’s such a high that the low is . . . the low is horrible.”
“Yeah, I know something about the low. Hell of a thing.”
“She really knocked you on your butt, didn’t she?”
“Unfortunately. I did crazy stuff for her. Made an idiot of myself. Taking off to Vegas to marry her because it seemed spontaneous and romantic. I jacked off—sorry—in a semi-public bathroom with dirty magazines on the rack so I could give the woman children conceived with sperm that was in its prime. I was insane, Kelsey. Insane. Mainly because I loved the idea of commitment more than I loved the woman I committed to. Because I wanted to have what my parents had. Permanent and solid. And then it turned out that was as real as my marriage. Love blows.”
“Well, it’s clear neither of us should get into the greeting card business. We would kill Valentine’s Day for millions of Americans.”
“But it’s nice to know we’re both on the same page.”
“True.”
Cole turned from the unlit two-lane highway and into town. The streetlights were bright, the lanterns strung between them adding further illumination and that old-world charm the town was so proud of. Cars already lined the streets, with the little restaurants filled mainly by tourists and local retirees.
And probably people on dates.
He pulled up to the curb and killed the engine, pocketing the keys and getting out of the car. Kelsey was already standing on the sidewalk by the time he got over to the passenger side.
“I was going to open your door for you,” he said.
“No need.”
“This is a date. That’s how it works.”
She laughed. “Really, is there a point in us dating, since we’re anti-love?”
“I’m sorry—did you want steak, or not?”
“I so do. I am anti-love, but I am pro-steak. But it’s been so long since I went on a whole date I can’t really remember the protocol. Though, now that you mention it, Michael may have done that for me on prom night. But he was, um . . . after something.”
