Claiming the Rancher's Heir

by Maisey Yates

  “I was taking pictures,” she said.

  She swung the door open wider, and Wren saw that the couch and coffee table were set just so, a glass of rosé in her sister’s glass, and a book sitting next to it.

  “Are you reading?”

  “I was taking pictures,” Emerson said dryly. “It’s a great afternoon to indulge in a little Maxfield luxury and hashtag self-care, don’t you think?”

  “I think that I’m glad you run the internet properties and not me. Since I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Luckily, you don’t have to. Because I’m a savant.”

  “An influencer savant.” But Wren smiled, because she really did find her sister to be a wondrous magical creature.

  Emerson should be annoying. She wasn’t.

  “Where’s Holden today?”

  “He’s gone to visit his sister. She’s getting settled in her new house after getting out of the rehab facility. We are hopeful that she’s going to keep doing better and better.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Holden loved his sister, and Wren and Emerson’s father had caused her immense distress. Wren was rooting for her.

  “So what brings you by? Because you look like an absolute disaster.”

  Wren stepped into her sister’s house and craned her neck so she could see her reflection in the mirror on the wall. Emerson wasn’t kidding. Her makeup was smeared, in spite of the fact that she hadn’t been crying. She assumed that maybe she had wiped her fingers firmly across her eyes to try to keep the tears back. But she hadn’t even been conscious of doing it.

  Her hair was in disarray, and there was just something...shocked looking about her expression. Her skin was pale, and her cheeks seemed especially hollow.

  “Well, I feel terrible,” she said. “So that’s fair.” She sighed heavily. “I have to tell you something.”

  Emerson looked bemused. “Am I hiding a body? Should I get a shovel? Because you know I will.”

  “I do know you will.” Wren sighed heavily again. “I don’t think I’ll need your help with that. Though, I guess we’ll see how all this goes. I’m pregnant.”

  Her sister’s schooled expression became very serene. Wren could tell that Emerson was covering shock, because there was no way she was that serene about such an announcement.

  “Congratulations,” she said. “I didn’t expect that.”

  “Well. Just wait until you hear the next part. Creed Cooper is the father.”

  A bubble of sound escaped Emerson that was almost a laugh, but not quite. “That doesn’t surprise me at all. I actually figured you were here to tell me that you slept with him. But obviously that ship sailed a while ago.”

  “Multiple times,” she muttered.

  “I mean, I can’t exactly lecture you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I jumped into bed with our father’s enemy while I was still engaged to somebody else. So, when it comes to making good sex choices... I mean look, luckily, I married him. It all worked out in the end. But, I get how men can make you really stupid. And I didn’t get that before Holden.”

  “Well, Creed doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t like him,” Wren said helplessly. “I don’t like him and yet... I want him. I want him so much. And the sex is so good. It’s the best sex I’ve ever had. I mean, that’s weak. It seems like just the thing you say. But sex with him is like a whole other thing.”

  “I get it,” Emerson said. “I mean, I profoundly get it.”

  “I guess you managed to use condoms, though.”

  “Yeah,” Emerson said. “That we did.”

  “We forgot. And...”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Well, I was all resolute. I’m not a kid. I’m in a great place to raise a child, and everything has been so out of whack I just... I kind of want to. I mean, I really want to. I was shocked by the realization, but it’s true. I want to have a baby. I want to have his baby. It’ll be...so cute. But I didn’t think he would want me to have a baby. And I didn’t think he would care. I thought this would be just my decision, but he told me today that I have to marry him.”

  That successfully shook Emerson’s composure. “He what?”

  “He demanded that I marry him. Like, demanded. With threats.”

  “I mean...” Emerson blinked. “Okay, that’s shocking.”

  “I know.”

  Emerson’s expression turned thoughtful. “Well, obviously something happened to him.”

  “You think?”

  “If I know one thing about hardheaded, alpha cowboys, it’s that usually demands like that spring from an emotional wound.”

  “With all the experience you have with them?”

  “I may not have experience across a vast section of them, but the one I married was basically a giant walking open wound.”

  “Gross.”

  “I know. But everything he did, seducing me, forcing me into marriage, tearing my dress off...tying me to the bed... What was the point I was making?”

  Wren narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t helping me, Emerson.”

  “Right. My point. My point is everything he did that was awful came from a place of being so angry on behalf of his sister. And a lot of things got twisted up inside him, but he couldn’t quite deal with all that anger. It took time for him to sort it out. But ultimately he did. Ultimately, we did. But he wasn’t being an asshole just to be an asshole. My experience is they’re all just lions with big thorns in their paws.”

  Wren’s mouth flattened into a line. “And you want me to... What?”

  “I mean, find the thorn. Identify it. Pull it out.”

  “I’m not going to end up like you,” Wren said. “I... I can’t say that I hate him anymore, but I also don’t really want to marry him.”

  She imagined the bleakness that had been on his face that last time they were together. She had cared about that. About the pain he was experiencing.

  “He is hurting,” Wren said. “I just don’t really know why.”

  “That’s what you have to find out.”

  “I don’t know how to talk to him. Every time we do talk, it... Well, it’s exactly what just happened—we fight. Or we have sex. Fighting or sex. Those are the two options.”

  “Would either one be so bad in this situation?”

  “I probably shouldn’t have sex with him again.”

  “Honey, the horse has bolted from the barn, and is in the pasture with the stallion, and is already knocked up.”

  “I meant emotionally, for emotional reasons.”

  “Right, right,” Emerson said, waving her hand.

  “You still think I should have sex with him?”

  “You seem to want to. And it sure makes men act nicer,” Emerson said. “Anyway. As established, I make bad decisions on that score.” An impish grin crossed her face. “But I don’t regret them.”

  “I don’t know if I regret this. I don’t know what I regret.”

  Wren wanted the baby. She was sure of that. It was all the other things she couldn’t quite figure out, including how she felt about Creed. That she couldn’t quite navigate.

  But if Emerson was right, if there was a thorn in Creed’s paw, so to speak, then Wren was going to have to approach him differently.

  She might not know all she needed to know about him, but she knew him well enough to know she was going to have to come in with a plan. A counteroffer. He wasn’t simply going to accept her no. She was going to have to come up with an arrangement that would make him happy.

  And in order to do that, she was going to have to identify that thorn.

  And she couldn’t identify the thorn without talking to him.

  That was the problem.

  She didn’t especially know how to talk to Creed.
/>
  She knew how to fight with him. She knew how to fuck him.

  She wasn’t sure she knew how to do anything else.

  But they were going to have to figure it out.

  For the sake of the baby, if for nothing else.

  She realized that for the first time in a very long time, her thoughts weren’t consumed with the winery. The winery was something she loved, but not something she had built with her own hands.

  She found herself suddenly much more concerned with her life, her future.

  And even in the midst of all the turmoil, that was an interesting development indeed.

  Seven

  Creed knew he had basically lost his mind earlier, but he didn’t regret it.

  In fact, he was making plans to call his lawyer. He was going to do whatever he had to do to get his way. That was when Wren showed up on his doorstep.

  She looked strange. Because she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and she looked smaller somehow, and yet resolute.

  It was the resoluteness that concerned him.

  “I’m sorry I left things the way they were earlier,” she said, breezing into his house without an invitation.

  She wandered into his living room, sat on his couch.

  When she had come before, she had been in his bedroom, his bathroom and his kitchen for a cup of coffee before she had run out in the early hours of the morning.

  Not his living room. But there she was, sitting on the couch like a satisfied, domesticated feline. Except he had the feeling that nothing about Wren was particularly domestic.

  “What exactly are you here for?”

  “Not to agree to your demands. Sorry. But it’s ridiculous to think that we have to get married just because we’re having a baby.”

  “Is it?”

  “It is to me. I’m pretty much one hundred percent not here for it.”

  “That’s a shame. Because I’m one hundred percent...” He frowned. “Here for it? What the hell does that even mean?”

  “Why?”

  She was glaring at him with jewel-bright eyes, and it was the determination there that worried him.

  “What do you mean ‘why’? I told you earlier. It’s because I’m not going to take a back seat to raising my child.”

  “Why? I mean, you don’t even know the kid.”

  “Neither do you, and you’re sure that you want it.”

  “Sure. But I’m...you know, carrying it. I sense the miracle of life and whatever,” she said, some of the wind taken out of her sails.

  “No, if you can be certain then I can be certain.”

  “You have to be honest with me,” she said. “Because when I left here earlier what I realized was that I don’t actually know anything about you. We have worked in proximity to each other for the last five years. And we fight. We... We create some kind of insane electrical surge when we are together, and I can’t explain it. And somehow in all of that, I convinced myself that I knew you. But that night that we were here together after the party, there was something wrong. I knew it, even though I didn’t know what it was. And when I told you I was pregnant... Look, I didn’t expect you to be thrilled about it. But I didn’t expect you to demand that I marry you. And I think the problem is, we just don’t know each other.”

  “We know each other well enough. I’d be good to you. I wouldn’t cheat.”

  She didn’t look convinced. Not by his offer, not at all. And she should be. What the hell more could she possibly want? Love, he supposed. But here they both were in their thirties, not anywhere near close to settling down, and they were having a kid. Neither of them was young enough or starry-eyed enough to think there was some mystical connection out there waiting for them.

  He’d lost his belief in that a long time ago.

  Maybe Wren hadn’t.

  But he didn’t see Wren as a romantic. Particularly not after the way things had worked out in her parents’ marriage.

  “What?” he asked.

  “There are other reasons to get married. I just... You would really be faithful to me?”

  “Wren, I can’t even think about other women when I’m with you. I can’t imagine taking vows to be true to you and then betraying them.”

  “That’s nice,” she said. “But a lot of men can. You know, my father, for one.”

  “So that would matter to you,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “If I was going to do it... I don’t share.”

  “So now you’re considering it.”

  “I need to know why.”

  “It’s not important.”

  “I have a feeling that it is.”

  Why not tell her? After all, his family knew. Well, Jackson did. And so did his father. Creed had never talked to Honey about it, but she had been a baby. A kid.

  But anyway, it wasn’t like no one knew. And he had never agreed to keep it quiet.

  Wren looked at him directly. “Does it have something to do with Louisa Johnson?”

  The name hit him square in the chest. “How do you...”

  “I saw you looking at her. At the barbecue. And afterward...”

  “It’s not what you think,” he said.

  “Look. If you needed to be with me to deal with seeing an ex, it’s fine. I knew what was happening.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of her. I wasn’t using you. Not in the way you mean.” He was surprised how much it mattered to him for her to know that.

  She looked at him, bemused. “Then what is it?”

  “Do you know her at all?”

  “They do birthday parties and things at the winery sometimes. That’s it. I know her in a vaguely professional capacity.”

  “So you know her husband, then, and her kids.”

  “I’ve seen them. Yes.”

  He shook his head. “Her oldest son is mine.”

  * * *

  For the second time in a couple of days, Wren felt like the ground had tilted beneath her feet.

  Her thoughts were coming in too fast for her to grab hold of them.

  He had a son.

  Creed had a son.

  “He... He...”

  “You may not remember this, seeing as you didn’t go to school here. But Louisa got pregnant in high school.”

  “I always got the impression that...”

  “Yes. By design. That Cal is the father of all her children. She and Cal were dating at the time. She and I started... We were in a study group together, and I developed some pretty strong feelings for her. I knew she was with Cal, but you know how it is when you’re young. And you think things will work out just because you want them to. That your feelings have to be good and true and right. Well, I thought mine were. I was a virgin, and what we got up to in the back of my truck sure felt like love to me. I thought it was the same for her. We made a mistake. So, now that you’re pregnant... This isn’t the first damn time I’ve made this mistake, Wren. I swore that I never would again. Twice is just... It’s damn careless. Especially when you’ve got eighteen years between who you were and who you are now. I ought to know better.”

  “I mean... Yeah, I can’t really argue with you there. I’d like to reassure you, but that does seem...”

  “She didn’t put my name on the birth certificate. She wouldn’t even look at me at school. She acted like she didn’t know me. And when I confronted her about it, she said we never slept together. She told everybody that the baby was Cal’s. She was a virgin when we slept together. I knew the baby was mine. But she must have gone and slept with him right after to make sure he believed her. I doubted myself sometimes over the years. I thought maybe... Maybe I was the crazy one. Maybe she hadn’t been a virgin. Maybe the timing was all off.”

  “He looks like you, though, doesn’t he?” She felt sick to her stomach. “I don’t know him that well
, but I remember seeing them all together, and I wouldn’t have looked at him and thought he was your doppelgänger or anything, but now that I know...”

  “I don’t doubt it either,” he said. “I haven’t ever spoken a word to him. Never been close to him. And the fact of the matter is, he’s not really my son now, is he? I didn’t raise him. I’m not the one who taught him what he knows. I’m not the one who’s been there for everything and paid for his upbringing and... I’m just a guy who had sex with a girl once a long time ago, and got left with a scar that’s never going to heal. I can’t do that again, Wren. I lost a child already. And I was never going to... I was never going to try to become a father again. I couldn’t see any reason to. After all, I never had my first kid. But now it’s happening. And I can’t go through a loss like that. Not ever again.”

  “And you think I would do that to you?”

  “I thought I was in love once, and I thought the woman loved me back. We don’t even like each other.”

  Her heart felt bruised, sore.

  He’d been so young to go through something like that. And she could see that it still affected him profoundly. How could it not? But she couldn’t go paying for the sins of another person. It wasn’t fair.

  “We are going to have to get to know each other,” she said, resolutely.

  “No,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m not budging on it. You’re going to marry me. One year. I want us to get married, I want legal acknowledgment of the kid, and I want us to try for one year. And then if you want to divorce, God bless you, but we’re going to have to work out a real custody arrangement.”

  “Creed, it doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “We can’t just get married.”

  “I won’t accept anything less,” he said. “I won’t accept anything less than marriage.”

  She looked at him, and she could see that he was absolutely serious. More than that, she could see that what her sister had said was absolutely right. His demand was coming from a place of pain. Unimaginable pain. And it wasn’t about simply pulling out a thorn. He wasn’t even going to let her get close enough to touch it, never mind remove it.

  It was going to require trust. A hell of a lot of trust, and she could see that he was fresh out.