She nodded. “Good to know.”
Their food arrived along with a second beer for Zeke. He picked up his fork. “Okay, so middle name for Heath. Whatcha got?”
She scooped up some mashed potatoes smothered in brown gravy. Pure comfort food and, boy, was she in the mood for it. “You’ll think I’m kidding but I’m not.”
“If you want either Ezekiel or Manfred, forget it. Not happening.”
The potatoes were so creamy and delicious that she moaned in appreciation.
He pointed a fork at her. “And making sexy noises won’t help your case, no matter how turned on I get.”
“It’s the mashed potatoes. These are definitely not from a box.”
“No, ma’am, they’re not. That’s part of Scruffy’s promise, good cooking from scratch.”
“If I lived in Sheridan, I’d eat here two or three times a week.”
His head came up and his gaze sharpened. “Have you considered moving here?”
“No, I was only saying that if I did then—”
“I’ll bet you could get a teaching job here in a heartbeat. Rosie knows everybody in town and she’d help you.”
She should have seen this coming. Of course he’d want her in Sheridan so he’d have the comfort of knowing Heath was being watched over by his foster family while he was on the circuit. “I can understand why you’d think that was a good idea, but I’m not doing it.”
“Why not?”
“I own a house in Casper. A very nice house that Jared deeded over to me as a part of the divorce. I own it free and clear.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I’ve never mentioned it. Anyway, I probably will quit my job, but I don’t want another one. I’m going to open a day care in my home. It has the perfect layout and a great location. After Heath is born, a day care will allow me to stay home with him.”
“But if you moved here, you’d be close to Rosie and Herb, plus everybody else. The maternity ward at the hospital is awesome. There’s a nurse there named Joan. She has twenty years of experience delivering babies. You’d be in good hands with her.”
She stared at him. “And you know this how?”
“Rosie took me there this morning.”
“Why?”
“She thought I should see how terrific it was.”
“But there’s no reason for you to visit this maternity ward. I’ll be having Heath in Casper.” Then she got it. They all expected her to quit her job and move to Sheridan. Nobody had come out and said so, but that must be what they all were thinking. Otherwise why would Rosie take Zeke over to the Sheridan hospital? The audacity of it left her speechless.
Then it galvanized her and she pushed her plate aside. “You know what? I’ll just leave for Casper right now.” She picked up her purse and slid out of the booth. “We don’t have to be in the same room to work things out, Zeke. We can text and email. I’ll be in touch.”
Chapter Seventeen
Zeke caught Tess before she reached the door. “Please don’t leave.”
She glanced down at his hand wrapped around her upper arm. “I have to.” Her voice shook. “Let me go.”
“At least give me a chance to explain.” He had trouble breathing. He hadn’t had a panic attack in years but he could feel one coming on. “I think I know why you’re bolting and I want to set things right.”
She looked up at him. “I’m having this baby in Casper, Zeke.”
“I know you are.” He cleared his throat. “Rosie knows you are, too. She’s already trying to figure out if she can manage a trip over there in January.”
“Then why did she—?”
“Let’s step outside.” He’d become aware of people watching them. Although Tess wasn’t known around here, he certainly was. He’d rather not share his private business with the whole town or have it get back to Rosie that he’d had an argument with a blonde woman in Scruffy’s.
“As it happens, I’m on my way outside.”
“I can see that. Will you let me go out there with you for a bit?”
“All right, but please let go of me.”
He did.
“And don’t think you can solve everything by kissing me.”
“I would never think that.”
“Yes, you would.”
“Okay, maybe in some situations, but not this one.”
“You’d better believe it.” She sounded shaky but determined. “Let’s talk over by my car. That way when you’ve finished explaining, I can leave.”
He hoped to hell his explanation would be enough to keep her there, but if not, he’d have to let her drive away. That would be tough.
They reached her car and she turned to face him. “Go ahead.”
He tugged on the brim of his hat while he gathered his thoughts. Then he took a deep breath and told her about the book he’d downloaded. He bit the bullet and admitted he’d been terrified that something awful would happen. “So I told Rosie and she made an appointment for us to talk with Joan. It was designed to calm me down, and it worked. It wasn’t part of some devious plot to get you to move here.”
“But you want me to.”
“Sure I do!” He started to reach for her and thought better of it, shoving his hands into his pockets instead. “Obviously, Rosie would love it, too. But she wouldn’t try to manipulate you into doing it. She’d just say it straight out. Does she know about your day-care plan?”
“No. This is the first time I’ve mentioned it to anyone.”
“It’s a good idea.”
“I think so, too.” She peered up at him. “Do you have an e-reader?”
“No, ma’am. I read it on my phone.”
“Do you normally read books that way?”
“No, ma’am,” he repeated.
“So why didn’t you just wait until you could buy them or borrow them from Damon and Phil?”
He rubbed the back of his neck where tension lingered, although the threat of a full-blown panic attack was gone. “I wanted to get a start on the list so we could discuss some things while you were here.”
“Oh.” Her expression softened. “And you ended up scaring yourself.”
“The visit to the hospital helped. But if you wouldn’t mind looking over that reading list to see if there are any other books like that first one, I’d appreciate getting a heads-up before I dive into it.”
“I’ll do better than that. I’ll trim that list to a reasonable size. I confess I thought you’d get discouraged by the number of books and maybe not read any.”
“I knew that, which was another reason to get started and show you I was serious.”
“You don’t have to prove that to me anymore, Zeke. I do think reading some of those books will be helpful, but even if you don’t open another one, you’ll be fine. More than fine. I can tell you care about him.”
He let out a breath. “Thank you for that. It means a lot.”
“I just needed to be sure, for his sake.”
“Of course you did.” He searched her gaze and found warmth and sincerity there. And maybe, deep in those blue depths, a tiny spark of desire left over from their conversation before he’d screwed up the evening. “I had another reason for downloading that book to my phone last night.”
“What was that?”
“I couldn’t sleep and I needed a distraction.”
“You have insomnia?”
“Not normally. Turns out I missed you.”
“Oh, Zeke.” She cupped his face in her soft hands. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?” He didn’t dare touch her and ruin everything.
“I was so ready to leave a few minutes ago and now...”
“You’re not?”
She shook her head.
He wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss the living daylights out of her, but he didn’t. “We have food in there. Do you want to go in and eat it, maybe dance some more?”
“Would you...could we come back tomorrow night?”
“Absolutely.”
“Because what I’d really like, if it’s okay with you, is have them pack up our dinner so we can take it home. I mean, to Matt’s place.”
“Done. Why don’t you just wait in the car? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Whew. By some miracle he’d pulled his ass out of the fire. As he hurried across the parking lot, he heard her voice in his head—Take it home. I mean, to Matt’s place. He’d made a point about not having a home and she’d paid attention.
But hearing her correct herself was jarring. What had once seemed like a ringing declaration of independence—I don’t have a home—now seemed wrong for a man with a child on the way. He couldn’t manufacture a home out of thin air, but he could acknowledge the one he’d been offered. He could accept Thunder Mountain Ranch as his home.
That thought had an unexpected effect. He felt a loosening in his gut, tension that had plagued him for years letting go. As he opened the door to Scruffy’s, he dragged in a lungful of air and was astonished that he didn’t tighten up again. He walked in feeling ten pounds lighter. Was it just that easy?
Probably not. The tightness would come back and just saying that Thunder Mountain was his home didn’t make it so. But if he could start thinking in that direction, he’d have a more solid base, a sense of identity he could pass on to his son.
A server promised to locate his waitress so she could bring the check and a few to-go boxes.
Waiting for her gave him more time to think. If he allowed himself to call the ranch home, would it always be there for his son? Sure, because Cade and Lexi would keep it going. So would Damon and Phil. Although everyone obviously wanted Rosie and Herb to be around for years to come, the ranch’s continued existence didn’t depend on them anymore.
He was feeling pretty darned mellow about the future by the time the waitress arrived. She insisted on doggie-bagging everything for him and he left her a big tip. Food in hand, he returned to the parking lot and discovered Tess’s car was gone. Damn it! She’d reconsidered and concluded he wasn’t worth sticking around for, after all.
He trudged over to his truck because what else was he going to do? A note anchored by his wipers fluttered against the windshield. Meet you at Matt’s.
His heart leaped when he realized she wasn’t on her way back to Casper. On the other hand, he couldn’t imagine what she was up to because he’d locked the house up tight. Rosie and Herb had the luxury of not worrying about locked doors, but he was living on someone else’s property and the place was loaded with valuable building materials that could easily be carted off.
When he arrived, her car was parked beside the house. Carrying the food, he walked around to the porch and paused. She reclined on the steps wrapped in a blanket and she had her phone’s flashlight set to a strobe effect for some reason.
“Hi, Zeke.”
“Hi, Tess.”
“I thought maybe the house would be open but it wasn’t.”
“Nope. Not my property.” He shielded his eyes. “Could you please turn that off?”
“Oh, sure.” She switched off the app. “I didn’t want you to stumble over me in the dark.”
“Not likely.” He put the bags of food on the steps and crouched in front of her. “But I’m curious as to why you didn’t wait for me.”
“I felt the need to offer an apology for jumping to conclusions and messing up our evening. I keep a blanket in my car for emergencies. I decided this qualified.” She tossed it aside. The light from the stars was faint, but it was enough to reveal that she was gloriously naked.
He didn’t need more invitation than that. He took what she offered, reveling in her sexuality as she tore at his clothes. He kissed and caressed every inch of her he could reach. It was clearly make-up sex and they both gave themselves to the age-old ritual.
As they lay panting and spent in the aftermath of frenzy and need, he gestured toward the bags of food. “Dinner.”
“I am so hungry.”
He toyed with her breast and nibbled on her mouth. “We could take it inside and warm it up.”
“Why bother?”
“We don’t have utensils.”
“I don’t care.”
“Then let’s eat, ma’am.” Their feast was blatantly sexual. They ate with their fingers, which required much licking and sucking. He chose to clean off her fingers, an erotic experience that ended in another round of mutually orgasmic lovemaking. Afterward they collapsed on the steps, sticky fingers entwined.
Zeke sighed in contentment. “All food should be eaten this way.”
“Might be a problem in a restaurant.”
“Then restrict it to the privacy of the home.”
She chuckled. “Think of the kids.”
He turned his head to look at her. “You’re a spoilsport, you know that?”
“Hey, let’s remember who suggested we consume this food with our fingers while naked.”
“You’re right.” He sighed. “If it had been up to me, we would have driven home in tandem, warmed up our dinner and then had boring bedroom sex.”
“Sex isn’t boring in your bedroom.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” He scrambled up. “But we need to be sure that statement is correct. Let’s go test it out.” He pulled her up and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders as they hurried to the front door.
Which was locked.
Laughing, he went back to the pile of clothes on the steps and found his keys. About that time it started to rain. “Be right there,” he said. “I’d better get this stuff under cover.”
“I’ll help.” Wearing the blanket like a shawl, she quickly stuffed the food cartons back in their plastic bags while he picked up their clothes.
They’d barely made it inside when the sky opened up.
“Just leave everything on the floor.” He dumped their clothes by the front door and grabbed her hand. “I want to make love while it’s raining.”
“Like the first time?”
She remembered. “Yes, ma’am. Just like that.” He tugged her toward the hallway. “Only better.”
With the window boarded up, the master bedroom felt like a cave. They were giggling like kids by the time they groped their way to the bed and toppled onto it. As rain pounded on the roof, Zeke made slow, sweet love to her. He ignored the painful protest from his shoulder—something to worry about after she left. Maybe he could talk her into a couple of extra days, because this was good, so very good.
Afterward they lay side-by-side as their breathing gradually returned to normal. Zeke looked over at Tess, just able to make out her profile. “Good thing it wasn’t raining like this earlier.”
“Could have been interesting.” Her voice had a lazy, contented tone. “Ever made love outside in the rain?”
“No, ma’am. Wouldn’t mind trying it with you, though.” A bolt of thunder rattled the house. “Maybe not now.”
“No.” Her soft laughter was nearly drowned out by the rain.
“We might have lost power again. Want me to turn on a light and see?”
“In a minute. I’m in that floaty stage and I want to stay there a little longer.”
“Floaty stage?”
“You know, where you’re so completely relaxed that you imagine you could rise up like a helium balloon.”
“Can’t say I’ve ever felt that way. Only one part of me tends to rise up.” He made the joke because he wanted to hear her low, sexy laugh again. But he envied her ability to achieve that kind of deep rel
axation. He’d been in a constant state of alert all his life. Now that he was about to be a dad, it would likely get worse, but that was okay.
“The middle name I want for Heath is Abelard,” she said.
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m not kidding. It’s unusual and distinctive. When it’s paired up with Heath it becomes cool instead of weird.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“Let yourself get used to it and you’ll agree with me. Besides, it means resolute and I like that. I did a little research and someone with that name is considered a deep thinker. If he takes after you, he will be.”
“Now, that’s a joke. I’m not a deep thinker.”
“Zeke, you most certainly are. I didn’t realize that during our weekend together in Texas, but now it’s plain as day. You think long and hard about everything.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Consider the facts. As a teenager you made a conscious decision about how you wanted to live and followed through on that plan. How many kids do that?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’m no expert, but I’ll bet not many. And when this baby threw a monkey wrench into your plans, you started working on a solution. Ever since hearing I was pregnant, you’ve been thinking through various scenarios to find one that fits.”
“Huh.”
“Nailed it, didn’t I?”
“Guess so. That’s...sort of amazing.” It was also unsettling. She was right on target about how he operated. He hadn’t realized she’d been observing him so closely. But it made sense that she would after he’d announced that he wanted to be a part of his son’s life. She’d been evaluating his fitness as a father.
Apparently he’d passed the test. He’d never have categorized himself as a deep thinker, but when she put it that way, maybe he was. If she liked that about him and thought it would help him be a good dad, so much the better.
“Are you good with Abelard, then?”
“It’s growing on me.”
“Let it simmer in that deep mind of yours for a little while longer. I think eventually you’ll—oh!”
Say Yes to the Cowboy Page 15
