“Jesus,” he muttered.
“I look like a tart,” she said before he could.
“You look like jail bait.” His gaze was focused on her chest.
Flushing, she dragged the cheap blond hair over her shoulders so it covered her breasts. “Are you ready to leave or not?”
In answer, he opened the door and handed her the heart-shaped key ring. “Like we agreed. You first. I’ll follow in a few minutes. We’ll meet up at the Rocking-U. You remember how to get there?”
“I got there on foot. I imagine I can get there by van.” Squeezing the hard metal heart in her fist, she left the room.
This wasn’t her first rodeo, as they said, when it came to avoiding the paparazzi, but it was the first time she’d done so as a scantily clad teenage girl. Even when she’d been a teen, she’d never dressed like this. Her parents wouldn’t have allowed it.
She encountered no one on the stairs between the third and second floors. On the second, she could hear music coming from behind the door of the honeymooners who had arrived a short while ago. On the last flight, she descended more gingerly.
But Shayla, dusting again though there was surely no need for it, caught her eye and quickly nodded. “All clear, Lady Amelia,” she whispered loudly.
Resisting the urge to look back up the staircase to see if Quinn was watching, Amelia skipped down the rest of the stairs and sailed across the small lobby and out into the night air. She turned left, walking briskly to the end of the block, waiting with every footstep to hear a camera shutter clicking or see a camera flash lighting the night.
But there was nothing.
And soon she was jogging. Then running flat out, the knapsack bouncing wildly against her backside, until she reached the green van right where it was supposed to be. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she fumbled with the keys, nearly dropping them, before managing to unlock the door and climb inside. Once there, she worked the knapsack free and tossed it behind the seat before fitting the key into the ignition.
The engine started immediately and she cautiously drove away from the curb. She hadn’t been accustomed to her aunt’s car and the van—considerably larger—felt even more unwieldy to her.
She drove around the corner, then the next and the next until she was right back where she’d begun the day, near the post office. She waited for a car to pass, then turned again and headed out of town. Back to Horseback Hollow.
Going from one fire into the next.
* * *
Amelia was sitting at Quinn’s piano, rubbing her fingers over the keys but not really playing anything, when he arrived. He walked over to the piano and deliberately closed the lid on the keys as if he couldn’t stand the idea of her touching it.
“Here.” He tossed her a small white sack. “I stopped at the drugstore on the way back.”
She dumped out the contents on her lap.
A three-pack of pregnancy test kits.
Evidently, he really wanted to be certain.
“Decide you didn’t want to let your sister know?”
His smile was thin. “Something like that.”
She dropped the paper sack on top of the discarded blond wig sitting on top of the piano and turned the box over, pretending to read the instructions on the back, but not seeing any of the words.
She’d been waiting nearly an hour alone at his home before he got there. He’d told her the door wouldn’t be locked, and it hadn’t been. Only the fact that she needed the loo had made her go in, though.
Otherwise, she would have just sat in his sister’s van and waited.
It wasn’t as if he truly wanted her in his home, after all.
“You weren’t followed?”
He shook his head once.
She pressed her lips together and rose. “I suppose you want me to do this now?” She waved the box slightly.
“You want to wait until morning?”
She wanted to turn back the calendar six weeks and do things right. She wanted the warm, tender man back that he’d been the night they’d made love.
Her eyes burned. Not answering, she walked past him and down the hall to the bathroom there. When she was finished, she put the cap back on the stick and left it sitting on the bathroom counter.
She opened the door to find him standing on the other side and heat ran up under her cheeks. “Two minutes.”
He lifted his hand and she realized he was holding a pocket watch.
“My father used to carry a pocket watch,” she murmured.
He crossed his arms and leaned back against the bathroom door, his hooded gaze on the test stick. “So did mine. This one.” He dangled the watch from the chain. “One of the few things the fire didn’t take. This and the piano.” He could have been discussing the weather for all the emotion in his voice.
She chewed the inside of her lip.
Never had two minutes passed so slowly.
When finally it had, he picked up the stick and studied it silently. Then he flipped it into the little trash can next to the cabinet.
“It’s late,” he said, walking past her. “You need to eat.”
Amelia’s throat tightened.
Even though she knew, she knew what the test would show, she plucked the plastic stick out of the empty can and looked at the bright blue plus sign.
Tears slid out of her eyes and she dropped it in the trash once more.
She turned on the cold water and splashed it over her face until her cheeks felt frozen. Then she dried her face and followed him.
He was in the kitchen. Just as he had been the night he’d found her in his barn.
Only this time the sandwich was sitting on a plate, and a glass of milk sat next to that.
Her stomach lurched. Whether from a sudden attack of morning sickness-at-night or from the horrible day it had been she didn’t know. But the thought of choking down any kind of food just then made her want to retch.
She forced herself to sit down, though, in front of the plate. He, however, remained standing by the window, looking out into the night. “Aren’t you going to eat?” He had spent nearly as much time cooped up in the B and B as she had.
“We’ll go to the justice of the peace on Monday.” He didn’t look at her. “Unless you want a minister. It’ll be more complicated that way, but—”
“A minister.” She pushed aside the plate and stared at his back. “What are you suggesting?”
He turned, giving her a narrow look. “What do you think? My kid’s not going to be born without my name.”
Her jaw went loose. “So,” she said with false cheer, “now you magically believe it’s yours?”
His lips twisted. “Don’t push me, princess.”
She shoved back from the table so abruptly the chair tipped over and crashed to the tiled floor. “Don’t push you? I can’t believe I ever thought I—” She broke off, grasping for some semblance of self-control even though she wanted to launch herself at him, kicking and screaming. Which was altogether shocking, because she never lost her temper like that. “If I wanted a marriage without love, I could have stayed in England and married Jimmy! It certainly would have been easier than this!”
“That—” he pointed toward her midsection “—changes things.”
She lifted her chin, channeling her mother at her most regal. “It doesn’t change the fact that I won’t be arranged into a convenient marriage. I’ve done a lot of things in my life purely for propriety’s sake, but not this.”
He swore and planted his boot on one leg of the upturned chair and kicked it away from her.
She gasped as it slammed against the wall.
“Next time you give me that royal face, I’ll put you over my knee.” He leaned over her, tall and furious. “And I won’t let you tak
e my kid back there to be raised by another man!”
Shocked to her very core, she stood there frozen. “I wouldn’t do that.”
A muscle ticked angrily in his jaw and his eyes raked over her face.
“I swear to you, Quinn.” She stared into his eyes, wishing with all of her heart that he’d just take her in his arms the way he had six weeks ago. “I would never do that,” she finished hoarsely.
“Then you can prove it on Monday in front of the JP.”
She hauled in an unsteady breath. Marriage to Quinn Drummond was something she’d dreamed about since they’d made love. Since they’d unknowingly created the baby inside her.
But not this way.
Not ever this way.
“No.”
Then she retrieved the chair, turned it upright and tucked it under the table and walked out of the kitchen.
Chapter Eight
When he heard the front door open and close, Quinn bolted after her, catching her at the bottom of the porch steps. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
She yanked her arm out of his grasp and gave him a glacial look. “Where I go is not up to you.”
“You wanna strut out to the highway and hitch a ride, princess?” His lips twisted as he looked her over. “Imagine a trucker will go by eventually. Depending on what sort of guy he is, he might or might not stop for someone looking like you.”
She gave a futile yank down on the hem of the skirt that showed nearly every inch of her gloriously God-given stems. “You are not the man I thought you were,” she said through her teeth.
“And you aren’t the woman I thought, either,” he returned.
She turned on the heel of her little sandals, her hair flying around her shoulders and started walking away, her sweet hips swaying.
He cussed like he hadn’t cussed since he was fifteen and his mom had washed out his mouth with soap. “You’re not going anywhere, princess.” In two long steps, he reached her and hooked her around the waist, swinging her off her feet before she had a chance to stop him.
Her legs scissored and he slid her over his shoulder, clamping his arm over the back of her legs before she could do either one of them physical damage. “Cut it out.”
She drummed her fists against his backside, trying to wriggle out of his hold. “Put me down this instant,” she ordered imperiously.
“I warned you,” he said and swatted her butt.
She pounded his back even harder. “You...cretin.”
“Yeah, yeah. Sweet nothings won’t get you anywhere, princess.” He stomped back into the house and into the living room. He lifted her off his shoulder and dumped her on the sofa.
She bounced and tried scrambling away, but he leaned over her, pinning her on either side with his hands. “Stay,” he bit out.
She glared at him through the hair hanging in her face. “I. Don’t. Take. Orders.” Her chest heaved.
He didn’t move.
Didn’t do a damn thing even though he should have, because she was there, in his house and she was pregnant with his kid and he didn’t want to ask for a polite dance or gentle, moonlit kisses.
He just wanted.
With a need that was blinding.
She suddenly went still.
A swallow worked down her long, long throat and the glint in her eyes shifted to something else entirely.
She moistened her lips. “Quinn,” she whispered.
And then her hands weren’t pushing at him, they were pulling.
At his shirt that he ripped off over his head.
At his belt that slid out of his belt loops with a loud slither.
“Hurry,” she gasped, squirming beneath him as she yanked his fly apart and dragged at his jeans, nearly sending his nerves out the top of his skull.
He reached under that excuse of a skirt and tore her panties aside. She was wet and hot and she gasped when he dragged her closer and drove into her.
He let out a harsh breath, trying to slow down, get some control, get some sanity, but she wrapped her lithe legs around his hips, greedily rocking. And then she was shuddering deep, deep inside, her body clutching at him and her lips crying out his name.
And he was lost.
* * *
Every cell Amelia possessed was still vibrating when Quinn silently rolled away. She felt like they’d just been tossed out of a tornado.
The night they’d made love had been magical. Tender. Sweet.
This was...raw. Most assuredly not sweet.
And every bit as powerful.
She let out a shuddering breath, knowing that if he touched her again, she’d welcome him just as wantonly. “Quinn—”
“This shouldn’t have happened.” He sat up and slid off the sofa. He didn’t look at her as he fastened his jeans and his voice was low. “Did I hurt you?”
She caught her breath, aching inside. “No,” she whispered honestly. “Did...did I hurt you?” She dimly recalled her nails sinking into his flesh while pleasure exploded inside her.
He looked over his shoulder at that, genuinely surprised. His gaze raked over her and she trembled, muscles deep inside her still clenching. The thin cotton shirt felt rough against her agonizingly tight nipples and she tugged the skirt down where it belonged. She had no idea what had become of her underpants.
“No,” he said gruffly. “You didn’t hurt me.” He leaned over and picked up his T-shirt. The neckline was nearly torn right out of it. He looked at it for a moment, then bunched it in his fist. “I’ll get you something to put on.”
She sat up, curling her legs to the side. “Thank you.”
The roping muscles defining his strong shoulders seemed to tighten when she spoke. He went up the stairs and returned in minutes with a button-down shirt. “You still need to eat,” he said evenly, handing it to her. “And decide if you want a minister or not.”
Then he turned and went into the kitchen. Through the doorway she could see him readjusting the chair.
Her eyes stung.
She didn’t know what she was going to do.
But she knew she was not going to marry Quinn Drummond without his love.
Swiping her cheeks, she stood on legs that felt as insubstantial as candy floss. The shirt he’d given her was clearly a dress shirt but it definitely wasn’t the one he’d worn to Toby’s wedding. That one had been stark white while this one was a pale gray with an even paler pinstripe. When she unbuttoned it and found a tag still attached to the collar inside, she realized it was new. Never been worn.
She’d have preferred something he’d worn. At least she’d have been able to take a little comfort from it. And she wouldn’t be wondering who’d bought the shirt for him because it looked too fancy for anything he’d have chosen for himself.
She removed the tag and pulled the shirt over the one she already had on. New or not, there was something very intimate about wearing his shirt. She needed all the barriers against that feeling that she could get.
She buttoned it up, then folded the long sleeves over several times until they didn’t hang past her wrists. She spotted her panties and picked them up. The thin silk was torn in two.
Thank goodness the shirttails reached her knees, though just thinking why that was a good thing made her cheeks hot and her stomach hollow out.
She toed off the one sandal that she was still wearing, blushed some more over that as well, then hurried down the hall to the bathroom, the ruined silk bunched in her fist.
She washed up, dropped the panties in the trash next to the test stick, and tried to restore some order to her tangled hair with her fingers. Finally, with no other excuses remaining, she returned to the kitchen.
The sandwich was still there on the plate.
He was sitting in the chair
opposite it, his long legs stretched out across the floor, a dark brown bottle propped on his hard, tanned abdomen.
She ignored the curling sensation inside her belly at the sight and sat down. Unlike earlier, she was suddenly famished, but she cringed a little when she picked up the sandwich, because the bread hadn’t even had an opportunity to grow stale while they’d been...been—
“Don’t think about it,” he said abruptly and she jumped a little.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re thinking about what we just did on the couch.” His hazel eyes were hooded and unreadable. “My suggestion is don’t.” He lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long drink. “Safer that way,” he added when he set the bottle down again. The glass clinked a little when it hit the metal tab still unfastened at the top of his jeans.
She dragged her eyes away and took a bite of the sandwich. For something that had transpired in a span of minutes, she was quite certain not thinking about it wasn’t going to be as easy as he made it out to be.
“I didn’t have anything but peanut butter and jelly,” he said.
She chewed and swallowed. “I like peanut butter.”
His lips twisted a little. “So do my nephews. They go through a jar every time they’re here.”
She gingerly took a sip of milk. On a good day, she didn’t much care for it, and now was no exception. She slid out of the chair and saw his eyes narrow. “I prefer water,” she said quickly, lifting the glass. She dumped the milk down the drain, rinsed the glass and refilled it from the tap then sat down again to the sandwich. “Your sister really doesn’t have a daughter?”
“She really doesn’t,” he said evenly.
“How old are her boys?”
“Fifteen, thirteen, nine, six and two.”
“Goodness.” She toyed with the water glass. He might not have told her before about an ex-wife, but he had talked about his family. The death of his father. The fact that he had only one older sister.
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