The Rancher’s Baby Bargain

by Jackson, Mary Sue

  Lucy bought some time by taking another bite of her burger, her heart beating fast. It was so flattering that Andrea had come up with this plan. So flattering. She hadn’t realized that she wanted Andrea to think she was worthy until this moment, and it seemed she did.

  But there was the problem of her vision board.

  Creating the cleaning solution had been a fun side project. She’d loved solving the problem of stubborn stains. That was a given—Lucy loved anything to do with chemistry. Still, mass-producing a product like that was a full-time gig. A career, even. A totally different career than she’d envisioned and even represented on her vision board. The main goal for now was to test her pesticide and bring that to market.

  And yet Andrea’s idea attracted her. More than she wanted to admit.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said cautiously. “I’d have to change a lot of my plans.”

  Andrea looked at her knowingly. “So you and my brother are two peas in a pod. He doesn’t want to change course with the ranch, either.”

  Lucy grabbed at the chance to change the subject. “Why is that?” She shook her head. “He loves the brewery so much, but every time an opportunity comes to scale it up, he turns it down.”

  Andrea frowned down at her chicken tenders. “Aiden has always wanted to please the family.”

  “I’m sure you guys are supportive, though.” Lucy laughed. “That didn’t come out right. But I can see how much you love him, so…”

  “You’re right. But Aiden doesn’t see it that way.” Andrea paused, seeming to search for the right words. “My dad drilled it into us that the ranch was our family legacy and always would be. I was the black sheep of the family anyway—” She gestured to her clothes. “So it was easier for me to be up front about what I wanted to do. It wasn’t so easy for Aiden. Dad groomed him to be aware of his responsibility to the legacy, and now that he’s gone, it’s stuck with him. He’s stuck with it. Even though he’d be way happier brewing beer. Everybody knows it.”

  “Then why won’t he go for it?”

  Andrea crooked one eyebrow. “Probably for the same reason you’re hesitating about producing your cleaner. It’s just not what he expected to do.”

  Twenty-Three

  A storm lingered on the horizon.

  Aiden could tell it was coming the way he always could—by the old injury in his knee. That, and the heavy clouds coming over the mountain. The knee wouldn’t have been such a problem, only he’d had to take over for Lucy. Her growing belly gave her round ligament pains that had hit early on in the second trimester. He worried that they’d only get worse as the pregnancy progressed,

  “It’s not a big deal,” she’d insisted in the morning when he’d noticed how gingerly she climbed out of her car. “It’s a little sore. Nothing I can’t handle.” Lucy beamed at him. “See?” She’d taken one step toward the hops and winced.

  “Go.” He’d pointed toward the farmhouse. “You can crunch the numbers or run the data or whatever it is you do for your part. I’ll check for infestation.”

  Aiden meant for it to be a simple sweep, the way Lucy usually did, but once he’d turned over a few leaves, he realized he couldn’t leave it to chance. So he’d spent the entire day in the fields looking for any sign of the spider mites. Leaf after leaf, until they blurred together in his mind. Every irregularity made his heart pound, but the hops were mostly okay—the ones that were left, at least.

  But now the clouds pressed in closer to the ranch.

  His knee throbbed. Aiden normally didn’t spend so much time bending in the same way over and over and over to check every leaf. Plus, his time on the ranch had given him a heightened sense of the weather. It was going to be a bad one.

  He turned away from the plants, forcing himself not to look, and hurried for the farmhouse.

  The pain worsened with every step he took, but he breathed into it and tried to let it relax. He’d hoped for a football career in high school, but if he’d known it would end prematurely in a lifelong injury, he’d have found another dream.

  Aiden took the last step onto the porch when thunder rumbled overhead and the skies opened up as if the storm had waited for him. The electric thunderstorm energy rippled over his skin.

  He limped inside. Lucy had turned on several strategic lights, and though it was dark and cloudy out, his home seemed…warm. Comforting. Alive. He didn’t see her in the living room, so he headed painfully for the kitchen.

  “Aiden? Are you—”

  He came around the corner at the same time she did, and the two of them collided. Lucy gasped. Aiden’s knee gave out. He crashed to the floor, banging his elbow on the way, and rolled onto his back, looking up at Lucy, holding a tray of tacos.

  “Stay right there.” She rushed into the kitchen and reappeared a moment later, kneeling down by his side. “Are you all right?”

  “Only thing that’s hurt is my pride.” He waved off her attempt to help him up and climbed to his feet, Lucy following. “It’s my old football injury. I guess I spent too much time in the field, and with the storm—”

  Lucy shook her head, frowning. “You’ve been out with the hops all day.”

  “Well, yeah—”

  “You should have told me you were in pain. I could have come out to help you.” She looked so angry he wanted to laugh.

  “Luce, you’ve got your own aches and pains.”

  “Well.” She stuck her hand on her hip. “We could have done it together and finished in half the time.”

  He took one step toward the kitchen—he’d show her that he was just fine—and pain shot through his already-throbbing knee. Aiden went sideways, putting out a palm against the wall just in time to keep himself from toppling over again. Lucy gasped, tucking herself up against his side to keep him stable.

  “See?” she grumbled. “The two of us are going to be useless if we can’t be honest with each other.”

  She helped him hobble over to the couch where he sat down more heavily than he intended and rubbed at his knee. Lucy was still busy admonishing him. “So many options here, honestly. You could have had one of the guys do it. Or, you know, there’s no rush. Waiting a day wouldn’t have hurt a thing. I can use the data from tomorrow just as easily as what you collected today. I don’t think it’s supposed to rain.”

  He had no argument for that last one. Lucy fixed him with one last look, then knelt between his legs.

  “I’ve still got my pants on, if that’s what you’re interested in,” he joked, heart already racing.

  She rolled her eyes. “Keep ‘em on.” Lucy reached up and pressed tentatively against his knee, her gaze dropping to focus on her work.

  Aiden tensed, thinking it would hurt, but the more she touched him, the better he felt.

  “Black magic.” He dropped his head back against the sofa.

  “Massage,” Lucy said. “Is there anything else you can do about this? Physical therapy, maybe?”

  “I’d never have the time for that.” Aiden was firm. “It’ll get worse and worse until I finally need a new knee, and that’ll be that.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “What is?”

  “That you wouldn’t have time for physical therapy. If you think you have time for a knee replacement, you have time to spend a few hours a week with a professional to try and avoid surgery.”

  “The ranch wouldn’t make it.”

  Lucy looked up at him thoughtfully. “The ranch might not make it anyway, if you’re not willing to help yourself first. At the very least, you should consider shifting more of your work to the brewery. It’s less labor intensive.”

  “I can’t argue with that, but I was born to run a ranch, not a brewery. Besides,” he said, giving her a cheeky smile, isn’t the ranch lifestyle what attracted you to me as your baby daddy?”

  Lucy stood up, leaned forward, and kissed him hard. “I don’t care so much about the ranch lifestyle. I care about the ranch physique.”

  It fel
t so natural to slip his hand around her waist and pull her in close for another kiss. She might give him hell about overdoing it in the field, but Lucy was a sucker for his kisses. She yielded to him in a way that made him painfully hard, a fierce feeling rising through his core. When she teased him with the tip of her tongue, running it over his bottom lip, the game was over.

  Inside ten seconds, their clothes were on the living room floor, and Lucy straddled him, growing more frantic by the moment. She worked herself onto his thickness, her center hot and wanting, cheeks flushed. “Come on, come on,” she whispered.

  “I love when you’re like this.” It was true. Aiden’s chest ached at the sight of her face, all pink and eager.

  “I love it when you’re like this,” Lucy said, then moaned a little as she slid down the last inch of him and they connected, hard. Pregnancy hadn’t made her want him any less—he could feel it in the sway of her hips and hear it in the gasps slipping from between her lips.

  There were no more words after that.

  After Aiden had ridden his own release to its shuddering conclusion, Lucy dropped her head against his collarbone, breathing hard. He cupped his hand around the back of his head and tried to sear the memory of her body like this into his brain. If it didn’t work out in the end, he wanted to be able to revisit this moment every day for the rest of his life.

  It lasted until the moment she hopped up, her mouth a round O.

  “What is it?”

  “Tacos!”

  Lucy ran to the kitchen, her naked body a sight that Aiden would treasure forever.

  “I made tacos!” she called. “And now they’re getting cold.”

  “We can’t have that,” he said.

  “Do you need help getting up? Or do you want to eat on the couch?”

  “The couch. For sure.” This conversation was, he realized, the kind of talk a man would have with his wife.

  “Clothes or no clothes?” Lucy reappeared at the living room door, balancing the tray on her hands. “I take that back. I love the sight of you without clothes, but there’s no way I can eat tacos naked.”

  He laughed out loud. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It just seems…wrong, somehow. Like maybe the tacos would be embarrassed.”

  His stomach rumbled. “As long as we get dressed fast, I guess that’s fine. Though I will miss the sight of you running into the kitchen with your bare—”

  “Filthy. You have a filthy mind.”

  “You’re the one who refuses to be naked in front of your dinner. What does that say?”

  “Race you.” Lucy put the tray down on the coffee table and reached for her clothes.

  “What?”

  “I’ll race you. See who can get dressed first.”

  Aiden’s knee throbbed in protest, but he gave it a shot.

  Lucy still won.

  They ate their way through the tray of tacos with an old movie on the TV, and when she was done eating, Lucy leaned up against him. He could practically hear her thinking.

  “What is it?”

  “I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression.” The flickering light from the TV played over her face.

  “About what?”

  Lucy looked at him, dark eyes filled with concern. “You wouldn’t be less attractive to me as a brewer. You’d still be…you know. Yourself. Manly. Muscled.” Her eyes went a little unfocused.

  He put a hand under her chin. “You were saying?”

  “I’m saying, I picked you for you. Not for the ranch. But maybe you don’t see it that way.” She shifted so that she could look at him directly. “You have worth outside of anyone’s expectations, including mine. I hope you know that. And if you don’t, I hope…somehow, I can prove it to you.”

  “There might be one way.”

  “What?”

  Aiden leaned in and kissed her, drinking in the little sounds at the back of her throat.

  “There,” he said. “Proven.”

  Twenty-Four

  “I never thought I’d say this, but the colors are getting the best of me.”

  Lucy stood in the center of the living room with Linda, hoping against hope she found the renovation impressive enough to find her a great buyer for the home. Whenever Lucy wasn’t with Aiden, she was at the old house, turning it into something new and fresh by sheer force of will…along with half of the local hardware store.

  The living room had been her most recent finish. She’d torn up the carpet to expose beautiful hardwood floors. That, of course, meant an involved process of sanding and sealing that made Lucy’s hips hurt to think about, but it had turned out nicely. She’d also cleaned the sofa covers with her solution, and they looked as good as new. The sunlight made the room bright and airy.

  The only thing left was to paint.

  The whole house needed some color. Lucy had gone room to room, covering all the old layers of paint with a white primer.

  Linda did a slow turn in the middle of the living room, bringing the entire space under her critical eye. “Don’t give paint colors another thought. You shouldn’t decide.”

  “You mean I should leave it up to the buyers?”

  Linda gave her an amused smile. “You should leave it up to me. I keep an eye on the most popular neutrals for selling. There are quarterly reports, in fact. I always study them, unlike some of my colleagues.”

  “Actually…I was thinking—let’s step into the kitchen.” Lucy led her through the narrow hallway to the kitchen. The kitchen had been its own hard-fought battle. The cabinets had needed staining and sanding. Lucy had survived the hardwood floors in the living room, but they had been her breaking point. She’d hired the cupboards out, and they looked wonderful.

  “I love the cupboards,” Linda declared. “You’ve done a fantastic job in here.”

  “Thank you.” Lucy thrilled at the praise, even though she’d told herself over and over that Linda’s agreement to sell the house was enough approval to last a lifetime. She was still a grown woman with ownership of the home, and she could decide what she wanted. And one of those decisions involved the kitchen. “I thought a yellow accent in this space would put it over the top. The living room can stay white—I like how the walls look in the sunlight—but this room needs something else.”

  Linda shook her head the moment Lucy said the word yellow and kept shaking it until she was finished speaking. “Yellow is a divisive color. Some buyers love it, and some loathe it. You never know which you’re going to get.”

  Lucy put a hand on her hip and surveyed the work she’d done in the kitchen. “It doesn’t look like a home without a splash of color somewhere. It’s better if people can picture themselves living in a space, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but imagine if you hated the color yellow. You’d visit this kitchen and imagine yourself having to put up with a color you hated for an indeterminate length of time.”

  Lucy felt herself falling back through time and right into her very short-lived rebellious phase from her teenage years. It had lasted about the space of one weekend. She’d gotten into an argument with her mom about an all-night study session with her Scientific Problem Solvers group. Looking back, Lucy had gone into the discussion expecting to be shut down, and her mom had done what all moms do—shut down co-ed sleepovers. Even if they’re called “all-night study sessions.”

  “I’d like to give people more credit than that.” Lucy tried to keep her voice neutral. “They have to know they can change paint colors whenever they want.”

  Linda fixed her gaze on Lucy, who found suddenly that she wanted to look anywhere but near Aiden’s mother’s eyes. She scanned the room, pretending to tally up all the different changes she’d made.

  “On the surface, people know they can change whatever they want. But buying a home is an emotional decision as much as anything else. People aren’t necessarily rational when they come to see what you have to offer.”

  “Exactly. People aren’t rational. So why not put your best f
oot forward? Make it look…warmer in here? A little more lived-in and bright?”

  “Who wants a lived-in house? Nobody.” Linda was firm. “It’s a very fine line you’re walking. It has to look possible to live in, but not like anyone’s currently living here.”

  “Fine, but—”

  “Lucy.” Linda interrupted her with a kind, assessing look. “Do you even want to sell this house?”

  Her tone echoed the one Lucy’s mother had used when she’d said, “Do you think I’m going to sign off on a co-ed sleepover?” Lucy had known right then the answer was a hard no. She’d fought for it anyway.

  “Of course I want to sell the house.” Lucy forced herself to look Linda in the eye and convince her through sustained eye contact that she was, in fact, very confident about selling. In the back of her mind, a small voice said, Not true.

  “Let me level with you,” Linda said. “You’ve done an incredible job on this property. Beyond my wildest expectations.” There it was—that little thrill Lucy couldn’t help feeling. “But you’re not locked in.”

  “To what?” Lucy crossed her arms over her chest.

  “To selling the house.” Linda cocked her head to the side. “You don’t have to put the house on the market. You don’t even have to go back to Portland.”

  Lucy scoffed. “That’s not true. My entire life is in Portland.”

  “Oh? Is that why you’ve been back there so many times since you came to town?”

  The twinkle in Linda’s eye made Lucy want to roll her eyes.

  “You’ve got two viable products you could take to market,” Linda went on. So she’d heard about the cleaning solution. That was no surprise, really. “And you’re going to need a support system when the baby arrives. What could be better than a doting grandmother and a loving aunt?” Linda shrugged, and the movement struck Lucy as pointedly casual. “You’ll need some time off to live your life. You can’t be with the baby all day and night and still expect to run a business.”