The Rancher’s Baby Bargain

by Jackson, Mary Sue

  The moment peaked and crested, and Aiden tumbled off Lucy to the comforter beside her as she panted, struggling to catch her breath. The rain had tapered off, a gentle tapping on the roof now, as if the storm had been watching them.

  “I was wrong,” Lucy breathed.

  Aiden pushed himself up on one elbow. “About what?”

  “I was wrong about pregnancy sex. I kind of thought it would be different. And worse.”

  “Oh, yeah?” The grin on his face sent an aftershock of pleasure tiptoeing down her spine.

  “Yeah,” she said, a smile spreading across her face. “It might even be better than pre-pregnancy sex.” Lucy pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I might need a few more rounds to be sure, though.”

  Twenty-One

  When they’d finally exhausted themselves, it was early afternoon, and the sun was struggling to come out from behind the clouds. It was largely failing, and Lucy burrowed into the blankets. She felt loose and limber and floaty, and the last thing she wanted to do was put her clothes back on.

  “This is your guest bedroom?” she asked. Aiden laughed from his spot on the bed behind her. “I can’t believe this goes to waste every night.”

  “It doesn’t have to,” he said, and she heard the sincerity ringing in his voice. “You’re welcome here anytime, Luce.”

  “Oh, you’d hate it. I’d always be in and out, going back and forth to my parents’ house. And you never know what kinds of projects I’d get up to.”

  Aiden was quiet for a long moment. “It’s something to consider.” She rolled over quickly and watched him. He stared at the ceiling, then flicked his gaze to the side. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Are you seriously inviting me to move in with you?”

  “No,” Aiden said, too fast. “I mean. Yes.” He shook his head. “No.”

  Lucy reached out and put her hand on his startlingly toned bicep. “Listen, Aiden. You made a mistake when you first spoke, and I get that. We just had mind-blowing sex. Nobody can be expected—” She was getting a case of the giggles.

  “Aren’t you a barrel of laughs?” Aiden looked exasperated. “I’m not inviting you to move in, or pressuring you to move in, anything like that. I was only thinking that as things progress, you might not want to be alone at night. In case.”

  Lucy didn’t have to ask what he meant. She tried to hold her fears at bay, but there were lots of things that could happen in pregnancy. It was full of surprises. And lying here in Aiden’s guest room, she felt the security of having another person nearby. Aiden, to be specific.

  But would it be too much for both of them? Her mind still felt muddled from the sex. It was all Aiden’s fault. He was too good at it.

  She rolled onto her back and looked up at the ceiling along with him. The ceiling fan turned lazily, wafting the conditioned air back down onto her shoulders, giving her a delightful little shiver. “It does sound nice,” she said softly. She didn’t want to be the kind of woman who kicked things off by relying on everyone else—independence was going to be important as a single mom—but she was pregnant, for heaven’s sake. She should take some precautions. “It’s not so bad now, but the nights could get longer.”

  “Yeah. Think about it.”

  Aiden lay next to her for a few more minutes, and Lucy caught herself drifting off to the sound of his steady breathing. But before she fell completely asleep, he shifted his weight on the bed, sitting up slowly. She watched him stretch, the glorious pull of his muscles a sight to behold. Then he turned back to her with a wicked grin. “You liked that pregnancy sex, huh?”

  “Don’t tempt me,” she said, and buried her face in the pillow.

  He laughed as he got out of bed and headed for the bathroom. Aiden had just shut the door behind him when a phone rang on the bedside table. Lucy picked it up without thinking, realizing too late that it felt different in her hand—it was Aiden’s. But the call had already connected. Too late to back out.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m calling for Aiden Harper,” said a deep voice on the other end of the line. “This is Christopher Jones.”

  She recognized the name. “Hi, Mr. Jones. Aiden is—”

  “I’m calling because I hope he’ll reconsider,” Chris said. He sounded slightly winded as if he was walking quickly out on some windswept sidewalk. “He never got back to me after our last conversation, and I was hoping—”

  “Hang on a minute. Let me get him.”

  Lucy rolled over and swung her legs over the side of the bed at the same moment Aiden reappeared in the doorway, frowning.

  “It’s for you,” she said, jumping up to hand him the phone.

  “This is Aiden Harper.”

  Aiden strolled toward the window as he listened. She could hear snippets of the conversation—words like backers and brewery and consideration.

  He stood framed in the light of the window, his shoulders slightly bowed, and Lucy wondered what could possibly be wrong. This was an exciting offer. His brewery business finally had a chance of getting off the ground. Yet from the tension in Aiden’s shoulders, this wasn’t a call he relished taking.

  “I need more time to think about it. This is a busy season on the ranch, and I’m not in a place where I can commit to anything…Sure…Yes. Sure.”

  Aiden ended the call with a stab of his thumb and a sigh, then ran his hand over his hair. Any sign that he had been caught in the rain had evaporated.

  “Well, that sounded great!” Lucy said way too enthusiastically.

  He turned to face her with a skeptical look. “In one way, it’s great. In another…it’s not.”

  She pulled the comforter over her shoulders. “What could be bad about that? He sounded like a nice guy. And very interested in your beers.”

  He huffed out a breath. “There are other factors in play.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like…private factors.”

  It made her die a little inside, that she had just been lying in bed with him, just been considering spending her nights here, and Aiden clearly didn’t trust her with the details of his life. Or maybe she was just being dramatic. It was hard to say in the aftermath of a sex hangover.

  “Stuff I’m not proud of,” he admitted, and her heart ached for him. “The bottom line is, I’m not taking his offer.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “How can you be sure?” Lucy stood up, taking the comforter with her. “I mean, how can you refuse? Don’t you want the brewery to succeed?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then why—”

  “I can’t have the brewery at the expense of the ranch.” Aiden met her eyes with a fierce determination. “There’s no way I could do that.”

  She didn’t understand. “But why would this be at the expense of the ranch? Don’t they want to make a…nice deal with you?”

  “Yes, but I can’t…” He shrugged. “I can’t have both things at once. Not with the way this year’s crop has gone. I need the money from the hops to keep the ranch afloat.”

  “But your brewery is—”

  “A hobby,” Aiden said firmly. “It’s a hobby, not a legacy. This land has been cared for by my family for generations.”

  “I know that. Everybody in town knows it. But…” Lucy could feel the wrinkles in her forehead as she thought. “But this could be a legacy, too. And I can tell how much you love the process. Isn’t that worth something?”

  “I have a responsibility to this ranch, Luce. It has to come before my pipe dreams.”

  “Aiden.” She held his gaze. “You have won a beer competition. This is not just a pipe dream. Suppliers are trying to make deals with you. I think your dream came true a long time ago, and you didn’t notice.”

  “My dream is to keep this ranch going for another few generations.”

  The thought swung into her like a hammer, sudden and painful. With the way things were between them—the contrac
t, the temptations, everything—Lucy couldn’t see how things would turn out. It wasn’t clear. But it made her throat go tight to think of those future generations of Aiden’s family, and how she might not be part of them. Even if he got involved with the baby, that wasn’t a guarantee of anything. He’d probably want the care of the ranch to go to a child that was fully his own, with no strange agreements or extenuating circumstances.

  She forced herself to look back at him. “I want your ranch to succeed, too. But I don’t think you should write off these deals just yet. You never know how things could change.”

  “Oh, I know how things can change.” His expression was somewhere between nostalgia and a fresh lust. “You came back into my life like a cyclone. Only you didn’t destroy everything in your path.”

  “Yet,” Lucy joked. “But you should think about it. You don’t have to listen to me—I’m not a beer professional—but don’t turn your back on this guy. He sounded very…wholesome.”

  Aiden laughed out loud. “Did he? I didn’t notice.”

  “He sounded very committed to your beer. I don’t know what more you could want in a…” Lucy didn’t know exactly how to describe Christopher Jones. “A business associate.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Aiden agreed. “But the most important thing is the ranch.” He straightened his back, standing tall. “I won’t be the weak link in my family that loses it all.”

  Twenty-Two

  In a surprising twist of fate, swinging on the porch swing at Aiden’s house did not make Lucy want to throw up.

  Well, maybe it wasn’t surprising, given the pills from the doctor and the swing’s expert installation. She reveled in it nonetheless. It still seemed exciting not to wake up every day with her stomach lurching, even though it had been three weeks since that appointment and the medicine had proven itself to be very effective. That wasn’t to say Lucy tested its boundaries. She didn’t push the swing very hard. Though that was also because she was busy taking notes.

  Data gathering always required her to take notes, and today she didn’t mind. A refreshing day had burst through the late summer heat. That had been a real treat, too. She was always doubly hot when she was pregnant. In fact, she’d taken Aiden up on his guest bedroom once or twice when the lack of air conditioning in her parents’ house had become unbearable.

  Come to think of it, she should come over more often. The porch swing had had a layer of filth on it that almost hid its white paint. She’d had to spray it down with some of her cleaner and scrub before she sat down.

  He was a relatively neat man, that was true, but there were some details that he overlooked.

  A barn cat hopped up onto the porch railing, catching her attention out of the corner of her eye. It considered her thoughtfully.

  “Hi, cat,” she said, putting her pencil down on her lap. “How’s your work today?”

  Maybe it was stupid to talk out loud to the cat, but nobody was around. Aiden was out checking the irrigation system, probably. He hadn’t been at the house when she arrived, or making the rounds through the hops. His truck was there, but the four-wheeler was gone.

  “It’s a little frustrating, you know.” The cat cocked its head to the side, raising a paw to lick at it. “He’s here, but he’s never…here.”

  Lucy had thought they were closer after the conversation at the Italian restaurant. She’d looked into his eyes the day of the storm, too, and seen how much he’d missed her. At least…that’s what she thought. She’d missed him, too.

  But after that, Aiden had just…stopped talking about it.

  Sure, he was at the ranch, tending to the hops, doing chores, and talking amiably with the ranch hands. In its own way, it was relaxing. But it had been three weeks of this, and Lucy was beginning to think he was ready to let their try at a relationship fade into the past.

  “The biggest question is,” she said in the general direction of the cat, “why wouldn’t he be more invested in his brewery? Things are looking up with the hops, and by next year he should be on track, but I can tell his heart is really in the idea of the brewery.”

  It was true. Aiden’s eyes lit up when it was time to go work in the brewery.

  “But why?” she asked the cat, aware that this was probably crossing the line into a new level of weirdness. “He doesn’t love the ranch. He feels a responsibility to it, but even that, I think, is mostly related to the brewery.” She shook her head, and the cat bobbed hers along, too. “Those hops are going to be successful. But I wonder if the process of growing them will stand in his way.”

  She sighed. “You’re probably bored with this little monologue, cat, but it’s the truth. I’ve been all over this ranch gathering data, and he has to diversify if he wants the ranch to succeed. He only has the one crop—no wonder it’s been so stressful lately. But he’s got nothing else out there. Nothing to sell at the market or to restaurants except a few cows, and not enough of those to put a dent in the mortgage.”

  Lucy leaned her head back against the porch swing. “So then why isn’t he jumping at the chance to move forward with the brewery? The big companies are interested. He could take that cash infusion, sell the ranch to pay the rest of the mortgage, and move on.”

  She sat in silence, rocking, looking out over the ranch and the fields and the sky, big and blue. The sky, at least, reminded her that the world was bigger than whatever was going on between her and Aiden. It was only natural that Lucy would want to focus on herself and the baby and, by extension, Aiden during this time, but in the end—even if it hurt—there was a great big world out there for them.

  That’s the kind of thing her parents used to say. Thinking of them still made her throat ache, but…that’s what they had wanted her to do. Go explore—and succeed. It’s why she’d missed so much of their final years. A part of her, of course, regretted not spending more time with them. But she didn’t have to pretend to know what they “would have wanted,” when it came to living her life—they wanted her to have all the happiness in the world. To see that world. To experience everything it had to offer.

  Some of that world was right here at Aiden’s ranch, and yet…he wasn’t happy here. Not exactly.

  Which brought her back to the same line of thinking as before. It was an endless loop, and there was nothing Lucy could do to think her way out of it. The person who had to make a decision—about her, about the baby, about the ranch—was Aiden. Things were simpler in the lab where she could just…change the setup. Out here in the real world, the experiment was already in progress, and they could only move forward.

  “He’s a frustrating man, cat. Very frustrating. Very good in bed, but very frustrating. He should sell this place, gather up all the money, and make some decisions.” The cat meowed and hopped off the railing.

  “My brother is frustrating.”

  Andrea’s voice startled Lucy badly enough that she jumped, sending her notebook tumbling to the porch. “Andrea—hi. You…heard.”

  “Yes,” Andrea said with an amused smile. “I heard you talking to a barn cat.”

  Lucy tried not to blush wildly at what Andrea had definitely heard. “It’s about the same as talking to Aiden these days.”

  Andrea gave her a sage nod. “I take it he’s out on the ranch somewhere and not hashing things out with you.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  “Well…” Andrea shifted her weight, sticking one hip out, surveying the land. There was no sign of Aiden. “I’m not the right sibling, but I’m available. Come have lunch with me.”

  * * *

  Aiden, with his jeans and T-shirts and broad shoulders, looked like he belonged at Harold’s diner whenever they ate there.

  Andrea…not so much.

  His sister reminded Lucy of the edgy women in Portland she’d seen when they went out for a rare night at the bar. Dark clothing, dark eyeliner, dark lipstick, and all of it stunning. It was a breath of fresh air, to be honest, in the middle of the endless parade of Ladies
Auxiliary Club members who came through town every day in their coordinated pastels.

  Though this was not exactly a new development. Andrea had always looked like she could pull her current look off. She’d always been stunningly, sharply hot. Not that Lucy had ever been jealous.

  She realized she was staring at Andrea while she spoke instead of listening and tuned back into the conversation. “…stain remover?”

  Right. The rest of what Andrea had said caught up to her—Holly Jackson had mentioned it. “Yes. Right. You were there to witness the miracle.”

  “And you’re not selling it in every store across the country? Girl, you could be rich.” Andrea took another bite of the chicken tenders she’d ordered.

  “I mean…I’ve thought about it, once or twice. But it’s a lot of work, and I’ve been pretty focused on other projects. It was something I developed with a bit of money left over from when my dissertation got funded, and since then it’s been all pesticides, all the time.” Lucy’s burger was the best burger she’d ever had. Pregnancy was funny like that. Some foods tasted off to her no matter what, but burgers? Heaven.

  “I know Holly thinks it was sent down by a choir of angels, and I’d have to agree. She showed me a bit of it in action and sang your praises the whole time.”

  “Really? Holly doesn’t seem like the type to sing my praises.”

  Andrea waved this off. “She just wishes she hadn’t broken up with Aiden, that’s all. Though why a person would get hung up on that is beyond me.” She gave Lucy a playful smile, but then her expression grew serious. “But she does love your product. And we could help you get the process started.”

  Lucy raised her eyebrows at Andrea, her mouth full of burger.

  “We’d be early investors. We could put up some cash for a share of the action, plus we both have skills you need.”

  “Like what?”

  “Holly’s got connections with other boutique owners across the state—she could help get it into people’s hands. We could generate great word-of-mouth through smaller businesses before we approached the larger chains. For any of that to work, you’d need good branding, and that’s where I come in. My firm can take care of the packaging designs, website—everything else.”