Claiming the Cowboy's Heart

by Brenda Harlen

  She smiled at that. “Don’t I know it? He outgrows new clothes almost as soon as I take the tags off them.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Her expression grew serious again. “I’m sorry, Liam. I didn’t know... Gord booked the room. The weekend away was a surprise for me and Simon,” she explained. “But if this is too weird, we can—”

  “No, it’s not too weird,” he told her.

  “Are you sure? Because it feels pretty weird to me.”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “I’m not going to be here most of the weekend, anyway, so you probably won’t see me again.”

  “Well, I’m glad I saw you now,” she said. “And I’m glad you finally got away from the ranch.”

  He just nodded and said, “You should get back to your breakfast—and your family.”

  After she’d done so, Liam remained where he was, a dull ache in the center of his chest. But that pain wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. It sure as hell didn’t compare to the gaping wound he’d been left with when Izzy took her son and walked out on him four years earlier.

  Or the gut-wrenching emptiness that had nearly consumed him when he shut Macy out of his life.

  Except that she was there now—and looking at him with sadness and sympathy in her beautiful blue eyes.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” Macy said apologetically. “I came in to reshelve the books that housekeeping had retrieved from various rooms and King—” she pointed to the lowest shelf in the bookcase behind the sofa “—goes between Kellerman and Koontz.”

  “Or anywhere on the shelf, for those of us who don’t have OCD,” he noted dryly.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, ignoring his remark.

  “Of course.”

  “I checked them in yesterday,” she said, and almost felt guilty for having done so.

  She remembered thinking they were a beautiful family: Gord and Isabella Jensen, and their inquisitive son, Simon.

  “Is the boy...is he...yours?”

  Liam immediately shook his head. “I would never have let him go if he was mine.”

  Macy nodded, his words confirming everything she believed about the man she loved.

  “But I dated his mom for eleven months,” he confided now.

  “Almost a year,” she murmured.

  A long time in the life of a child. She could only imagine how close the little boy and the man had grown in that time—and how hard it had been for both of them when the relationship between Liam and Isabella ended.

  “I thought we were going to get married,” he admitted.

  “You were in love with her.” Though Liam had never claimed to love Macy, the realization that he’d loved the other woman still hurt.

  But he shook his head again. “No, but I was crazy about her kid. Not the best reason to get married, I know,” he acknowledged. “But Simon really wanted a dad and I wanted to be his dad.”

  She hugged the books against her chest. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about her? About him?”

  He shrugged. “It was four years ago. Ancient history.”

  But she knew it wasn’t. And she understood now why he’d tried so hard not to let himself get close to Ava, Max and Sam. It wasn’t because he was incapable of letting them in, but because he didn’t know how to keep them out. Because he was trying to protect his heart, which had been bruised and battered already by the loss of a child who wasn’t his own.

  She started toward him, then remembered the books in her hand. Setting them on the edge of the closest shelf, she moved around the sofa.

  He watched her progress, a little warily at first, but as she drew nearer, his expression changed. Heated.

  Then she was in his arms and their mouths were fused together, their bodies straining to get closer as awareness gave way to want, want to need. Need to hunger—a desperate, aching hunger.

  “Macy, I can’t find—” The housekeeper’s words halted as abruptly as her steps in the doorway of the library. “Oh.”

  Macy gave a vague thought to pulling out of Liam’s arms, but they tightened around her, as if he wasn’t going to let her go. And it felt so good—so right—to be in his embrace, that she didn’t bother to pretend otherwise.

  “What is it you can’t find, Camille?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” the housekeeper decided. “I mean, it’s nothing that can’t wait.”

  And she turned on her heel and disappeared again.

  “Now the staff are going to talk,” Liam warned.

  “I think we need to talk,” she said. “Because there’s something I’ve been holding back, too, about Ava, Max and Sam’s father.”

  “You never wanted to talk about him,” he noted.

  “Because I didn’t know what to say—how to explain.”

  He waited, silently, for her to find the words.

  “Do you remember the first night we were together?”

  “In clear and vivid detail,” he assured her.

  She smiled at that. “Then you must remember my blurted and awkward admission that it had been a long time since I was intimate with anyone?”

  “It had been a long time for me, too.”

  “More than two years long?” she asked.

  “Not quite.”

  Then his brow furrowed, and she knew he was realizing that the length of a standard pregnancy—nine months—added to the age of her kids—nine months again—came up well short of her two-year claim.

  “How is that possible?” he wondered.

  “It’s possible because I never had sex with Ava, Max and Sam’s father,” she confided.

  “You’re not going to claim it was immaculate conception?”

  She shook her head. “No. It was intrauterine insemination—or IUI.”

  His brows drew together. “They were test tube babies?”

  “No, that’s intro vitro fertilization—or IVF,” she clarified. “IUI is what my friend Stacia refers to as the turkey baster method.”

  “So who is Ava, Max and Sam’s father?” he wondered.

  “He’s a college professor of English and German heritage, six feet tall and 190 pounds with curly brown hair, green eyes and a dimple in his left cheek. He volunteers as a dog walker at his local SPCA, plays guitar, enjoys classic literature and contemporary art, and he likes to read and cook in his spare time.”

  “That’s a pretty detailed description,” he noted.

  “But I don’t know his name,” she said. “I only know him as Donor 6243.”

  “Well, that clarifies some of your earlier and always abrupt responses to my inquiries,” he decided. “But it doesn’t tell me why.”

  “Because I wanted a family and my efforts to make that happen via more traditional routes were unsuccessful,” she told him.

  “So why didn’t you just tell me that when I asked about their father?”

  “I should have,” she said. “But when I told my parents, they were so vocal...and harsh...in expressing their disapproval that I worried other people might react the same way. And I didn’t want my parents—or my children—to be the subjects of gossip and ridicule because of the choices I’d made.

  “But when I told you that Ava, Max and Sam didn’t have a father, it was the truth. The man who contributed half of their DNA was literally nothing more to me than a sperm donor. And while I will admit to feelings of deep and sincere gratitude for that contribution, I’m not, and never have been, in love with him.”

  She lifted her hands to Liam’s face, so that she could look him in the eye, so that he could see the truth in her own. “But I am in love with you. And at the risk of freaking you out again, I happen to think you’d make a pretty great dad to Ava, Max and Sam someday...if that idea appeals to you at all.”

  The idea appealed
to him—a lot more than Liam was willing to admit. Even more appealing was the prospect of spending his life with Macy and her children.

  But love?

  That was more than he was capable of giving.

  Nope. No, thank you. No way.

  He drew back, and her hands dropped to her sides.

  She tucked them into her pockets and worried her bottom lip. “You’re not saying anything,” she remarked quietly.

  “It’s a lot to take in.”

  She nodded.

  He’d envisioned various scenarios to explain Macy’s reluctance to share any information about the man who’d fathered Ava, Max and Sam, but none of them had included a sperm donor.

  On the one hand, he no longer had to worry about Macy reconciling with the guy, because she’d never been with him. On the other, he had to wonder if she was really in love with him, as she claimed, or if she was looking for a father for her children who didn’t have one. To give them a normal family and spare them from becoming the focus of small-town gossip as they grew up.

  “I should probably get back to the desk,” she said lightly. “I don’t want my boss to catch me slacking off.”

  She was offering him an out, and he was only too eager to take it. “And I need to get back to the ranch.”

  She nodded again. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot or make you uncomfortable. I just wanted to clear up any miscommunication.”

  “I know,” he said. “And you didn’t. I just need some time...to process everything.”

  “Well, you know where to find me, if you want to talk.”

  “I do,” he confirmed.

  And then he fled, pretending he didn’t see the tears that shimmered in her eyes.

  * * *

  When Liam returned to the Circle G, his jumbled thoughts and feelings were forced to refocus when he discovered his father in the barn, measuring out grain and feed.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “The doctor said I could do with some fresh air and exercise.”

  “And lots of rest.”

  “If I was any more rested, I’d be dead.”

  “A few weeks ago, you almost were,” Liam felt compelled to remind his father.

  “It’ll take more than a heart attack to put me in the ground,” David promised.

  He didn’t doubt it was true, but he didn’t want to talk—or even think—about his father’s mortality. Instead, he said, “Well, it’s good to see you back on your feet.”

  “And now that I am, you can wash your hands of your responsibilities here?” his father guessed.

  “I never washed my hands of anything,” he pointed out. “Even when I was spending twelve and fifteen hours a day at the inn, I was here every morning to help with chores.”

  “We would have got along just fine without your help.”

  “I know you would have,” he acknowledged. “But maybe I didn’t want you to.”

  “You’re not making a heckuva lot of sense,” David said.

  “It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, either,” Liam said. “Especially considering that, for so many years, I felt trapped here.”

  “You made that clear enough.”

  “When I bought the inn, I thought I was freeing myself of the responsibilities and expectations that weighed on me here.”

  “You didn’t think running a hotel would come with responsibilities and expectations?” his father challenged.

  “Of course I did, but those were completely my own.”

  “You think I demanded too much of you?”

  “Maybe I did,” he allowed. “But I knew it wasn’t any more than you demanded of anyone else—including yourself. And when Caleb called to tell me that you’d collapsed—”

  “I staggered a little,” David interjected. “It’s not like I was lying in a boneless heap on the ground.”

  “You had a heart attack,” Liam said again. “And it was scary as hell for all of us.”

  His father didn’t dispute that.

  “So I came back.”

  “We needed you here, Liam,” David grudgingly admitted.

  “Maybe. But more than that, I wanted to be here. Because Gilmores are ranchers.”

  “They have been for more than a hundred and fifty years,” his father noted. “Because that was the choice Everett made when he bought this parcel of land. And then he built a modest home on that land and, with the help of his sons, they turned a small herd of cattle into one of the most successful ranches in the whole state.”

  “I know the history of the Circle G, Dad.”

  His father nodded. “But maybe you don’t know that I’m trying to offer you an apology.”

  Liam was intrigued by this grudging admission. “I’m listening.”

  “Over the past few months, I’ve realized that I might’ve been wrong in trying to force you into a life you didn’t want. Every time you tried to tell me that you wanted something different, I shut you down. I refused to consider the possibility that you might actually leave the Circle G because—” His gaze shifted away and he cleared his throat. “Because then I’d lose you, just like I lost your mom.

  “It was your grandmother who helped me see that I was holding on too tight—to you and your brother and sisters—trying to hold on to the only part of Theresa that I had left.”

  Liam was stunned by this admission. He’d been working through his own demons over the loss of his mother, and though he knew how deeply his father had been affected by the tragic death of his wife, he hadn’t considered how that loss might have impacted his subsequent actions.

  “She also pointed out that your mom would be disappointed in me for driving you away—not from the ranch, but from the family. She had such grand dreams for all her children. She didn’t care if any of you wanted to be doctors or lawyers or ranchers—she only wanted you to be happy. To find someone to love as we loved one another, to raise a family...

  “So, with that thought in mind, I’ve decided to support you—and your siblings—in whatever you want to do with your lives. Because maybe Gilmores can be anything they want to be.”

  “For a man of few words, that was a helluva speech,” Liam remarked.

  “It was a long time in the making,” his father said.

  “Well, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, too,” he confided. “And it turns out that this Gilmore wants to be a rancher.”

  David was understandably taken aback by his eldest son’s confession. “You really mean that?”

  “I mean it,” he confirmed. “Maybe I needed to take some time away from the ranch to appreciate what it means to me. To realize how much I enjoy working with you and Caleb and Wade and Uncle Chuck and Michael and Mitchell.”

  “You can’t know how happy that makes me,” his father said. “But...what about the hotel?”

  “It’s already proven to be a sound investment, and I’m confident that it will be in very capable hands under Macy’s management.”

  “And since you mentioned her name,” David prompted.

  “I’ve still got some things to figure out there,” he admitted.

  “Well, don’t take too long to figure them out,” his father cautioned. “Because those babies of hers shouldn’t have to grow up without a daddy.”

  He shook his head. “You’re already looking for the next generation of ranchers, aren’t you?”

  “The next generation of Gilmores,” David clarified.

  Though he was pleased to know that his father would accept Macy, Ava, Max and Sam as part of the Gilmore family, Liam knew that wouldn’t happen unless he found the courage to put his heart on the line again.

  * * *

  She thought about turning around.

  As Macy drove toward the Circle G, her fingers wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, she cou
ldn’t help but wonder if she was making another mistake and worry that she was setting herself up for more heartache.

  She’d told Liam to find her when he wanted to talk. Instead, he’d sent a text inviting her to come out to the Circle G to see Mystery’s new foal. She didn’t know if that was the real purpose of his message or merely a pretext to get her out to the ranch, but, remembering the promise she’d made to Liam’s father the last time she saw him, she went home first so that she could take Ava, Max and Sam with her.

  And maybe she was counting on the presence of her precious babies to help her hold it together if Liam told her that he had no interest in a future with her and her family.

  She didn’t regret the things she’d said to him earlier. He deserved to know the truth of her feelings and everything else. If, when he’d had his say, it turned out that he didn’t want what she was offering, at least she’d know that she’d given it her best shot and not held anything back.

  She strapped her little ones into their triple tandem stroller and was making her way toward the house when Caleb came out of the barn.

  “Liam’s in there,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the building he’d just exited.

  “Actually, I thought we’d say ‘hi’ to your dad first,” she said, because she didn’t know that she’d want to stick around after she’d talked to her boss.

  He pointed a forefinger toward the house.

  She took Ava, Max and Sam into the house. David was genuinely pleased by their surprise visit and unhappy when she tried to cut it short. He insisted that she could leave the babies with him while she went out to the barn, and her protests were silenced by the housekeeper’s assurance that she would keep an eye on Ava, Max and Sam—and the recovering rancher.

  Macy found Liam watching over the dappled mare she recognized as Mystery, along with a chestnut foal she was nursing.

  “Sky named him Enigma,” Liam told her.

  “Fitting,” she remarked.

  He fell silent again for a moment before confiding, “I’ve been waiting for you.”