“I never did get you a diamond,” he remarked.
She followed his gaze to the iconic store across the street. “We had other things to worry about.”
“Plus, I was broke.”
“You were barely twenty years old.”
“I’m not twenty years old—or broke—anymore,” he said, and then he wondered. “If I’d taken you to pick out a ring, what kind would you have chosen?”
“I did pick out a ring,” she reminded him.
And though he didn’t know it, since he’d returned that ring to her at the end of his last visit, she’d been wearing it on a chain around her neck.
“I mean, what kind of engagement ring?” he prompted.
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. You’re not buying me an engagement ring.”
“What kind of wife objects to her husband buying her jewelry?” he teased.
“The kind of wife who expected her husband to sign the divorce papers she gave him,” she retorted.
“Papers that no longer exist,” he reminded her. “And since we’re having a baby together, I want my ring on your finger.”
“Possessive, much?” she asked, unwilling to admit that his fierce protectiveness made her belly quiver. Because she was far too enlightened to be turned on by a man beating on his chest. Even if it was a spectacular chest.
“Yes,” he said, without hesitation or apology.
“Putting a ring on my finger isn’t going to solve all our problems,” she pointed out to him.
“What are all these problems that you’re so concerned about?” he asked.
“The biggest and most obvious one is the previously noted distance between your place and mine.”
“That’s one problem,” he agreed. “And I’m working on it.”
“What does that mean?” she asked. “Do you think you can somehow rearrange the geography of our country so that Nevada and New York are closer together?”
“Not likely.”
“So what you mean is that you’re working to convince me to move back to Haven,” she guessed.
“Right now, I just thought we could look at some engagement rings.”
“But we’re not engaged.”
“No, we’re married,” he reminded her. “And skipping the engagement part is an oversight I’d like to fix.”
“Not necessary,” she said coolly, resuming her journey toward the park.
“Hey.” Caleb caught her arm and turned her to face him. “What’s wrong? Why are you upset that I wanted to buy you a gift?”
“A teddy bear is a gift,” she said. “A diamond—especially in the form of an engagement ring—is a bribe.”
“There’s that cynicism again,” he remarked. “Most people would think of it as a promise.”
“I’m not asking for any promises.”
“Maybe I want to make one to you, anyway.”
She shook her head. “We did that once before,” she reminded him. “And then we broke those promises.”
“We were young. Scared. Heartbroken.”
“I’m still scared.”
“I am, too,” he admitted. “But maybe it’s time we stop worrying about all the things that could go wrong and focus on the things that are right.
“Our baby is one of those things—our second chance to finally be the family we were always meant to be.”
“That all sounds tempting and wonderful,” she acknowledged. “But there’s a major snag in your plan—I live here and you live in Nevada.”
“So you’ll move back to Nevada,” he said, as if it were a given.
“Excuse me?”
“It makes the most sense,” he remarked, in a reasonable tone.
“So all that stuff you said last time you were here, about how you could appreciate the life I’ve made for myself, et cetera—did you mean any of it?” she challenged.
“I meant every word,” he promised. “But that was before we knew you were pregnant.”
“And now, just because of two little lines on a pregnancy test, I’m supposed to give up everything I’ve worked for to be your wife?”
“Not just because of two little lines,” he argued. “Because those lines represent our baby.”
And okay, thinking of their baby did fill her heart with so much joy she felt as if it was overflowing.
But moving back to Haven where there was so much history? Where she’d loved him and lost him? Where they’d faced opposition and conflict with their families at every turn?
Thinking about that made her stomach cramp.
“I don’t want to move back to Haven,” she said.
He looked sincerely baffled by her statement. “Why not?”
“My job is here. My friends. My life.”
He scowled. “You have friends in Haven. Family there. Me.”
“Haven hasn’t been my home in seven years,” she reminded him. “And I’m not going to be bullied into moving back to the place where no one ever supported our relationship.”
“Forget about our parents,” Caleb urged. “Let’s focus on you and me—what we want.”
“I don’t want to be bullied into moving back to Haven,” she said again.
He sighed but seemed to relent. “And I don’t want to fight with you, so why don’t we drop the subject for now?”
“Okay,” she agreed. “But there is another possibility that you’re overlooking.”
“What’s that?”
“You could move here.”
“To New York?” he asked dubiously.
“You should at least consider it.”
“I can’t imagine there are many job openings for ranchers in Brooklyn.”
“There aren’t many job openings for kindergarten teachers in Haven, either.”
“You always said you’d like to spend the first couple of years at home with a baby,” he said. “By then, Mrs. Enbridge might finally be ready to retire.”
“And if she isn’t?”
“There’s a day care in town now, where you could work with preschoolers. Or you could look at teaching one of the primary grades.”
“You make it sound so easy,” she said. “As if it’s not a big deal for me to uproot my life, give up all the things I’ve worked for and move twenty-five hundred miles away.”
“I know it’s a big deal,” he said. “I just think that being together so that we can give our child a real family is a bigger deal.”
* * *
Valerie poured sauce over the spinach and cheese enchiladas, then sprinkled them with more cheese, set the baking pan in the oven and turned on the timer. The day after the family dinner disaster—as she’d overheard Caleb refer to it—Dave had called asking for a do-over, and she’d suggested that a more intimate gathering in a familiar setting might help put Ashley at ease. Somehow that had translated into Valerie cooking their daughter’s favorite meal.
But she didn’t really mind, and Ashley was so pleased that her dad was coming for dinner, she’d set the table without having to be asked. She also chattered nonstop while she completed the task, seeming to forget—at least for the moment—that she wasn’t talking to her mother.
She even followed her into the master bedroom, perching on the edge of the mattress as Valerie began to unbutton her blouse.
“Are you going to put on something sexy?” Ashley asked, in a tone that was more curious than judgmental.
“What? No,” Valerie immediately denied.
“So why are you changing?”
“Because I got sauce on my shirt.”
“Would you bother changing if Dave wasn’t coming for dinner?”
She frowned. “I really wish you wouldn’t call him Dave.”
“It’s his name, isn’t it?”
“And Jesse is my father’s n
ame, but I call him Dad.”
“When you bother to speak to him at all,” her daughter remarked.
“I don’t have a great relationship with my father,” Valerie acknowledged. “I hope that you’ll have a better one with yours, and that’s why I invited him to come here for dinner.”
She rummaged through the basket of laundry she hadn’t yet had a chance to put away, looking for a top to replace the blouse she’d tossed aside.
“The red sweater,” Ashley suggested.
She pulled the sweater out of the pile, then looked at her daughter. “You think?”
Ashley nodded. “It looks good on you.”
A compliment? She was surprised. And flattered. And of course Valerie wasn’t going to ignore her daughter’s advice, even if she did worry that the soft fabric hugged her curves enough that it might be considered sexy.
“And even better with jeans,” Ashley added.
“What’s wrong with these pants?”
“Nothing’s wrong with them, but this is supposed to be a family dinner not a business meeting, right?”
“Right,” Valerie agreed, and unhooked the button of her pants.
Ashley picked up her discarded shirt. “I’ll take this down to the laundry room to spray it.”
“Thanks.” She pulled on her jeans, then turned to check her reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of her door, chiding herself as she did so.
This dinner was an opportunity for Ashley to spend some time with her father—it wasn’t a date. So it didn’t matter what she was wearing or even if she had enchilada sauce on her shirt.
Still, she took another minute to run a brush through her hair and add a touch of gloss to her lips, because she wanted to look good. Not because Dave was coming over but because she was a woman who took pride in her appearance.
And maybe it was true, but that justification didn’t explain the flutter in her belly when she looked out the window and saw his truck pull into the drive.
It wasn’t fair that the rancher was as handsome now as he’d always been. Sure, he was older—they both were—but the years sat comfortably on the lines of his face and in the silver threads of his hair. She, on the other hand, spent far too much money on creams to hide the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes and hair dyes to pretend her shoulder-length tresses were the same natural honey-blond color they’d been twenty years earlier.
One thing that hadn’t changed, though, was the way her heart still pounded hard and fast whenever she saw him, but she was determined to ignore the inconvenient attraction—for the sake of their daughter.
And maybe the protection of her own heart.
* * *
“Did you like the enchiladas?” Ashley asked after Dave had cleaned his plate.
“I really did,” he said, surprised to discover it was true and, even more, that the meal—including a side of Mexican rice—had satisfied his hearty appetite.
“Mom’s a really good cook,” she said.
“I’m not going to argue with that,” he assured her, as Valerie pushed away from the table and began to stack the empty dishes.
He’d never been particularly adept at reading a woman’s moods or signals, but he sensed that she was on edge about something—though he had no idea what that something might be. Conversation throughout the meal had flowed smoothly, with a lot of help and direction from their daughter. The little girl who’d barely said a dozen words at his table the week before had been a veritable chatterbox tonight.
“We’ve got key lime tarts for dessert,” Ashley said now.
“Did your mom make those, too?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No, we got them from Sweet Caroline’s.”
“Can’t go wrong with anything from Sweet Caroline’s,” he said.
Valerie put the plate of tarts on the table. “Do you want coffee with dessert?”
“I don’t want you to go to any more trouble,” he said.
“It’s no trouble,” she assured him. “All I have to do is stick a pod in the Keurig and press a button.”
“In that case—do you have decaf?” he asked.
She nodded and turned away to make his coffee.
Ashley got up to refill her glass of milk.
“Help yourself,” Valerie said, gesturing to the tarts as she set a steaming mug in front of him.
“Aren’t you going to sit and have dessert with us?” he asked.
“No, I want to get started on the dishes.”
“I’ll help you—after dessert,” he said, snagging her wrist to draw her back to the table.
Mistake.
He immediately dropped his hand away but continued to feel the sizzle of the contact all the way up his arm.
The widening of Valerie’s eyes assured him that she wasn’t unaffected by the touch, but she sat back down at the table and reached for a tart.
When there were only crumbs left on her plate, Ashley excused herself to work on a science project and Valerie left the table to resume clearing up.
Dave carried his empty mug and plate to the dishwasher. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No. Of course not,” Valerie said, not meeting his gaze.
“Are you sure? Because you’re holding that pan in a white-knuckled grip.”
She set the pan in the sink, squirted dish soap in it and filled it with hot water.
He tried again. “I thought dinner went well.”
She nodded. “Very well.”
“So why do you look worried?”
She sighed. “Because a few weeks ago, Ashley was so furious that I’d lied about her father, she wasn’t even talking to me.”
“She seems to have gotten over that,” he remarked.
“You really are clueless, aren’t you?”
“So it would seem,” he acknowledged. “Do you want to tell me what I’m missing?”
“Our daughter’s playing matchmaker.”
He frowned.
“Now that she finally has a father, she’s trying to maneuver us together in the hope that we can be a real family.”
Valerie was right; he was clueless. Because now that she’d brought it to his attention, he saw his daughter’s pointed comments and compliments about her mother in a different light.
“And when she realizes that her plan isn’t going to succeed, somehow that’s going to be my fault again,” she said unhappily.
He took a step closer. “But what if her plan did succeed?”
“As if.”
But though her words expressed derision, her gaze lingered on his mouth.
Testing her—and maybe himself—he settled his hands on her denim-clad hips.
Her breath caught in her throat.
“Maybe it was more than grief and alcohol that drew us together that night,” he suggested.
And then he kissed her.
Chapter Twelve
There was a definite bite of winter in the air when Caleb rode out to check the fence around the perimeter of the east pasture Monday morning. On his way home from the airport the night before, he’d spotted what looked like a post toppled over. He could have stopped his truck and got out to check it then and there, but another flight delay had left him in no mood to do anything but hit his mattress for the three hours before he had to be up with the sun again.
He’d ridden out at first light, secured the post and returned to the barn to take care of his horse. Only then had he gone to the little office in the back, confident that someone would have been there before him to put on a pot of coffee. He nearly whimpered with gratitude and desperation when he saw the half-full carafe on the warmer.
In fact, he was so focused on his need for caffeine that Caleb didn’t see his father standing by the window until he spoke.
“Where the hell have
you been for the past four days?”
Caleb took a moment to swallow a mouthful of coffee before he responded. “I told you—I had something to do.”
“You didn’t tell me that you’d be gone four days and neglect all the things you’re supposed to take care of here,” his father pointed out.
“It couldn’t be helped,” he said.
“Dammit, Caleb. You have responsibilities that don’t just go away when you want to.”
“I know, and I’m sorry but—”
“Sorry doesn’t it cut it. We were vaccinating the stock and needed every pair of hands.”
Having already apologized—and had the apology thrown back in his face, Caleb remained silent.
“Were you in New York?” His father wanted to know.
He nodded.
Dave shook his head. “You couldn’t find a girlfriend a little closer to home?”
Irritated by his father’s dismissive tone, Caleb shot back: “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s the woman I love and the mother of my unborn child.”
The shouted words hung heavy in the room for a long minute before Dave responded. “You’re telling me that Brielle’s pregnant again?”
Caleb winced. “Damn—I promised her that I wouldn’t say anything to anyone until she was past the first trimester.”
His father’s brows drew together. “It’s your baby?”
“Yes, it’s my baby,” he confirmed.
“When? How?”
“We ran into each other in Vegas at the end of the summer,” he explained.
“It must have been more than a run-in if she’s pregnant,” Dave remarked dryly.
Thinking back on that weekend, Caleb couldn’t prevent the smile that curved his lips. “Well, it started with a run-in,” he said. “And led to something more.”
“Something more being unprotected sex?” his father guessed, frowning his disapproval.
“Are you really going to go there with me?”
“Yes, because I’m still your father,” Dave said.
“And she’s still my wife,” Caleb told him.
His father frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“We never got a divorce. I never wanted a divorce.”
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