by Maisey Yates
But she didn’t look like a woman with seduction on her mind. She didn’t look like a woman with anything happy on her mind at all.
“Is everything okay?” he asked, possibly the stupidest question in existence. Clearly, things were not okay.
“Not really.”
The back and forth was starting to irritate him. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
She took a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling. “I’m pregnant.”
The words just about knocked him back on his ass. He had wanted her to hurry up and spit it out. But, now he sort of wished she would suck it back in. Wished that he had time to prepare. Except there was no preparing for news like this. It wasn’t the first time a nervous woman had stood in front of him and told him that she was pregnant.
His stomach pitched. He was... Well, he didn’t know what he was. Because the one, dominating emotion that poured through him—unfiltered, unchecked—was pure, blinding rage.
“Are you sure it’s mine?” he asked, his tone fierce.
He had never asked Denise. Never. Because why on earth would he ever ask his girlfriend, the only woman he had ever slept with, if the baby she was carrying was actually his? No, he had done the right thing immediately. He had gone to her father and he had asked for her hand in marriage. Had bought a ring with what little money he had.
And then everything had gone to hell.
And it was going there again.
“Yes,” she said, drawing back as though he had slapped her. “I’m completely sure. There hasn’t been anyone else for a long time. I told you that.”
“I’m just supposed to believe everything you say?”
“Why would I lie to you? Do you think I want a piece of your bar empire?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been lied to before.”
“Oh, this is about your ex-wife.”
“Not exactly,” he said. He was lying.
“You need to tell me what it is about, then.”
He felt like someone had reached into his chest and grabbed hold of his heart, squeezing it tight. He couldn’t be numb, not to this. Of all the things life could throw at him...this was the one he hadn’t built up enough defenses to withstand.
He took a deep breath, rubbing his hand over his face. “I’ll tell you one thing. We’re going to make absolutely sure that this is my baby. And you’re going to marry me.”
* * *
OF ALL THE REACTIONS Sierra had imagined, none of them had been the world’s angriest marriage proposal. Was it even a proposal? It was more of a demand.
She hadn’t expected the anger at all.
He didn’t seem shocked, not like she did. He was just...mad.
“I’m going to pretend that you didn’t say that,” she said, taking a step away from Ace.
“Why, exactly?”
“Because I’m not sure how I feel about the father of my hypothetical baby being crazy.”
“The baby isn’t hypothetical. And there is nothing crazy about getting married when there’s a child involved.”
“I’m like less than three weeks pregnant. At this point, it’s pretty hypothetical. And a lot of people have kids and don’t get married.”
“Not me.”
“Well, fine. Great for you. But also, me. I’m not just going to marry you because we’re having a baby. That’s going to cause more trouble than staying apart.”
“Never. Leaving anyone without full protection isn’t okay with me. Divorce and separation cause more trouble than marriage ever could.”
She was suddenly very conscious of their age gap. Of all the extra living he’d done that she hadn’t scratched the surface of. All the extra years he’d spent being kicked around by life. She was sort of just getting to all that. To the pain. To losing what you thought you’d had. But he was...he was a veteran. And she knew no matter how crazy it all seemed, he was speaking from the kind of experience she hadn’t had the chance to collect yet.
“I know you had a bad experience,” she said, “but because of that I think you should realize the importance of being absolutely certain that you’re marrying the right person for the right reasons.”
“No. What my divorce taught me was that a man in my position has a lot less rights than he should. I lost one child, Sierra, I’m not losing another one.”
Sierra felt like she’d been kicked in the chest by a bronc. “What?”
“Do you want to know why I’m so bitter about my divorce? It has nothing to do with not being with my wife anymore. She can rot for all I care. I wouldn’t sleep with her again if my dick was going to fall off if I didn’t. No. I’m not bitter because I’m not with her. I’m not bitter because she left me. I’m bitter because she set out to hurt me in the way that she knew would cut deepest. And she was damn successful.”
“You have a child?”
He rubbed a hand over his face, shaking his head. “Not really.”
“You’re going to have to just tell me. You have to explain all of this to me, because I’m catching a bunch of the baggage that you’re carrying around right now. At least let me know what’s in the bag.”
He sat down on his desk, gripping the edge tight. “I got married the first time because Denise told me she was pregnant. I was living in Texas at the time, competing in the rodeo. Denise was one of the rodeo queens. I had lived in Copper Ridge most of my life, and my dad is the pastor, as you know. That meant that I behaved a certain way when I was here. And I behaved...less that way when I was gone. She was the first woman I was ever with. So when she came to me and she said she was pregnant I never questioned it. Not for one second. Never questioned her. I just asked her to marry me.”
“Okay, so as of right now, all I see is you repeating the same mistakes you already made.”
“The problem is, we were never compatible. I didn’t realize that because I was blinded by the fact that sex was fun, and she was the only person I had ever had it with. We really discovered that incompatibility once we were married. Throw a baby into the mix, then a toddler, and you realize just how unfit the two of you are. We were young. And we made a lot of mistakes. But Callie never felt like a mistake. Ever. She was the prettiest little girl I ever saw. All blond curls and bright blue eyes. When she called me daddy, nothing else seemed that bad.” A muscle in Ace’s jaw jumped, his hands curled into fists.
His tone was flat when he talked, something in his eyes flat, too. She could sense that flatness was only on the surface. But it was covering up a wealth of pain.
“I loved that little girl, Sierra. You have to understand. They grab a hold of you, in ways that you don’t realize they will. I never spent much time around kids. I never cared much about them one way or the other. I didn’t even think they were particularly cute. But let me tell you, my daughter... They don’t make anything else that cute in the whole world.”
My daughter. Sierra put her hand down flat on the back of the chair by his desk, bracing herself. “What happened?”
“Denise decided she didn’t want to be with me anymore. You see, the problem with being with a guy like me is that her daddy still had to bankroll her lifestyle. I wasn’t rich. And I wasn’t going to be rich. She encouraged me to quit riding in the rodeo, because it wasn’t like I was making big bucks. I had to get a job at her father’s ranch. That was fine. But it was very clear that she was married to one of the ranch hands, not to a ranch owner. Eventually, she told me she was leaving me. For the guy she had been dating just before the two of us had gotten together. And that’s when things went to hell.”
“Help me understand,” she said, her heart squeezing tight.
She wasn’t sure how she had gone from being completely enraged at him to feeling unchecked sympathy. But even without him finishing the story she felt hollow inside. Like she could ta
ste the devastation pouring from him.
“When we went to court about the divorce, she filed for full custody of Callie. I was livid. I couldn’t believe she would pull something like that on me. And when it was looking like things were going to go my way, she brought out a new piece of information. She wasn’t totally sure that Callie was mine. Now, I think I still might have ended up with custody except... Well, it turned out that the ex-boyfriend—the man she was now engaged to marry—was actually Callie’s father. She got paternity testing done and she proved it.”
“I... How can that matter? I mean, if she thought you were the father...”
“In an ideal world, sure. Or, my ideal world. But I didn’t have the money or the reputation that she did. That her family name did.”
As the possessor of an important name about town, that made her feel sick with shame. As if her every possible advantage because of her personal connections—and anyone it might have hurt—were suddenly written right across her skin for him to read.
It certainly made his issues with her a bit clearer.
“I guess the judge wasn’t impressed with you being a ranch hand, either?” she asked softly.
“Not particularly.” He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “She went to family court, managed to get a hearing date changed without notifying me. You can do that, apparently. And because I wasn’t there, I essentially waived my parental rights. With everything taken into consideration, the fact that the biological father was present and wanted to be in his daughter’s life, the fact that the two of them were getting married... The court sided with Denise. I lost custody. I fought it. I fought it for as long as I could. I spent all my money—as little as there was—I lived in Texas for another two years, just to try to get a judge to let me back into my daughter’s life.”
He looked up at the ceiling and for just one moment, Sierra saw the raw, open pain in his eyes. A window into that deep, private wound he carried with him. The story behind all of his behavior. His treatment of her. She felt like a voyeur for having witnessed it. And yet, she was glad she had seen it.
“Callie wouldn’t even know me now. That’s the worst part. I fought it for two years, and I never got to see her all that time. Just a couple of times. Here and there. About six months after our divorce was final, Denise married Callie’s father. Then they all lived together and...I was confusing her. Denise liked to tell me that. I was getting in the way of their real family. I was a mistake she’d made. They were family.”
“Ace... I don’t know what to say.”
“There isn’t anything to say. It sucks.” He shook his head. “I’m glad, so glad, that she’s alive. That she’s safe. That she’s happy. A lot of people lose kids in more traumatic ways than I did. She has a home, and a mother and father. I’m grateful for that in some ways, no matter how angry I am at them. But some days I don’t feel grateful. Some days I’m just pissed. Those wounds don’t heal.” He clenched his teeth together, his dark eyes hard. “I will never stop missing her.”
She felt completely unequal to the task of dealing with all of this. She felt like...well, she felt like what she was. A spoiled twenty-five-year-old who’d flounced away from her family to go and find herself. It had seemed noble at first. Right and principled and all manner of other things. But now it felt so small.
Small and insignificant as an accomplishment when rolled out next to his. This man who had spent everything for the love of a child. “Of course you won’t. No father would.”
For a moment, just one moment, she thought maybe he would keep the walls down. Thought maybe he would soften a little.
But then his eyes hardened, and any vulnerability she’d thought she’d seen was gone. “You’re going to marry me. Because I will be damned if I’m ever in a position where I will be blindsided again. I will not lose another child, Sierra, do you understand me? The minute that baby’s born, I need proof that it’s mine. And if she is...”
“Marriage didn’t protect you before, Ace,” she said, feeling like she was rubbing salt across a raw wound. She felt unkind. She felt downright evil. But she had to do it. Because she had to think of herself, too. “What makes you think it would protect you this time?”
“Oh, I damn well know there’s no real protection. But I’ll take every legal claim I have. And if you refuse to marry me when it comes time to do a custody agreement I’ll make sure they know that you, with your waitress’s salary, who refuses to take money from her mom and dad, wouldn’t marry me.”
Any sympathy she’d just felt for him evaporated in a hot rush of anger. “You’re not seriously suggesting you would try to take the baby from me?”
“I will not lose custody again,” he said. “I’m not the powerless ranch hand that I was. I’m not a West, but I have my own assets. I have my own money. I’ll throw that around if I have to.”
“The baby is yours. I have no intention of ever keeping him or her from you.”
“And I don’t trust that. I just don’t. I can’t. I have nothing in me to trust the word of anyone when it comes to something like this. The only person I can trust is myself.”
“That just isn’t going to work for me.”
“I don’t think I asked you, princess.”
“You can’t force me to marry you, Ace Thompson. We need to be adults and work something out.”
He stepped behind his desk and leaned forward, planted his hands flat on the top, like he did when they stood out in the dining area. Him behind the bar. He really liked to have things between them. “All right, how about this? You come live with me, and when the baby is born, we get married.”
“There was not even a little bit of compromise in that. In fact, there was just some additional crazy.”
“There’s nothing crazy about it to me. A child needs a mother and a father. And to not have their father ripped out of their life.”
She threw her arms wide. “I would never do that.”
“Right. And I think you should maybe understand why I can’t just take you at your word.”
“Counteroffer,” she said, not quite able to believe that she was having this conversation with him. Contending with the emotions that had swamped her during his confession about his child. Still reeling from the fact that she was actually having a baby. “We work on a way to figure out how we can co-parent our child without drama. If we never have a romantic relationship of any kind, then we’re not going to have some dramatic divorce.”
“You’re going to want to get married at some point,” he said. “And when the time comes you may decide you don’t want to deal with a third wheel.”
“I wouldn’t. I would never, ever take my child away from his father.”
“You say that now—”
“I would say it forever. Do you know the real reason I’m not speaking to my father?”
“An affair,” he said, rocking back on his heels and stuffing his hands in his pockets.
“But there was more. I know you were confused by the fact that Jack Monaghan was lobbying for you to take me on here at the bar.”
“Yeah, I was worried that something might be happening between the two of you and I might have to kill Monaghan for hurting Kate Garrett. Or at least watch for witnesses while Eli and Connor took turns dealing with him.”
“Well, Jack and I do have a connection. But it isn’t the one you were thinking.” She took a deep breath. She was committed to this now. To letting someone else in on the horrible, devastating secret. “Jack is my half brother, Ace. My father kept him a secret. My father paid Jack off. Made him sign an agreement keeping their relationship a secret. My father made Jack feel like he was worthless. Like he was dirty and shameful.” Her voice trembled, all of the pent-up rage she felt over the revelation about her half brother, all the fear she’d experienced in the hours since she’d taken the pregnancy
test, roaring through her like a thunderstorm over the ocean. “He took Jack’s birthright from him. Took his siblings, his right to the West family ranch. All of these things that I have simply because my father had me with my mother instead of someone else, he denied Jack. I could never do that. I will never do that.”
She could see some of the anger drain from him. The crease between his brows softened, the set of his jaw releasing a bit. Maybe now he believed her. Maybe now he understood.
Or maybe he was just shocked, processing the potential ramifications of that revelation. Well, he could join the club. She was still processing the ramifications.
“I’m so angry at him,” she said. “For doing that to Jack. For forcing him to grow up the way that he did. We were all... We had everything. A beautiful house, education. The luxury to pursue whatever we wanted. And Jack...he lived in a trailer. And everybody treated him like there was something wrong with him. Like he had done something bad to be born not knowing his father.”
She shook her head. “I would never, ever hurt our child by denying him or her access to you. I think the reason people do use their children like pawns is because they want to hurt each other. Because love goes wrong, and then when they separate they want to inflict pain. I think my father was angry at Jack’s mother for making him want someone that he saw as beneath him. I think that’s why he treated them so badly. I think he took it out on Jack. I think that’s what your wife was doing to you. She wanted to hurt you because your...love went wrong. So let’s just skip the love part. Let’s skip marriage. If we’re just two acquaintances who work at getting to know each other so that we can give our child the best life possible... I think in the end it will be better.”
“That sounds like some kind of New Age ridiculousness to me.”
“Maybe. But it makes more sense than the two of us getting married. We can’t have a conversation without yelling at each other. We can use this one as exhibit A.”
“Like you said—” he tipped his chin up, crossing his arms over his broad chest “—the only reason we have so much trouble dealing with each other is because what we really want to do is tear each other’s clothes off. That isn’t going to make for a very healthy parenting relationship, either.”
