Colton's Cowboy Code

by Melissa Cutler

  He bit the inside of his cheek, fighting the urge to tease her. Or kiss her. Maybe both.

  He cleared his throat. “The majority of Lucky C’s revenue comes from cattle breeding, but it isn’t the lucrative industry it once was. The Lucky C needs to diversify if the business is going to stay strong for generations of Coltons to come.” His attention darted to her belly for an instant. “The way I see it, the future of this ranch is in horse breeding and training.”

  “I don’t know that much about either industry. What kind would you breed?”

  “Cutting horses. My brother Daniel—well, half brother, technically—he’s the resident horse whisperer of the family. He runs a horse-training program on our property, renting the land from us. The Lucky C also gets a cut of his profit, so we’ve been able to watch that profit double every year he’s been in business.

  “This year, the demand for his horses has exploded, and my gut’s telling me that he’s going to outgrow the arrangement very soon. He’s already been approached by other horse-breeding ranches to come work for them. They’re wooing him with blank checks to buy the DNA for any prizewinning stud he wants.

  “Jack, my oldest brother, who runs the Lucky C, gave me the green light to buy a highly rated stallion named Geronimo for Daniel to breed, with the Lucky C splitting the profits with him as a way of testing the waters for getting the Lucky C into the horse-breeding business, but that’s not enough. If we want to keep Daniel and his profits at the Lucky C, then we’re going to have to play ball, big-time. One stallion’s not going to cut it. My plan is to set up a new arm of the Lucky C Corporation with Daniel and me as comanagers so we can finally give him the budget he needs to grow his breeding business. And I’d like your help in setting up that business plan to present to Jack and my dad.”

  She took his hand securely in hers. “Of course I can help with that. We’ll knock their socks off.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  They shared a smile, which brought Brett’s mind right back around to imagining what it would feel like to kiss those lips. He slipped his hand out from under hers and picked up his fork again.

  “Why isn’t Daniel already a part of the Lucky C Corporation?” Hannah asked. “I can already tell how important the idea of family is to you, and Daniel’s family, so why wouldn’t your dad and brothers invite him to be a part of the family business?”

  If she could already tell how important family was to Brett, then that was a very good sign, even though she was asking a minefield of a question. “It’s complicated. My mother isn’t Daniel’s biggest fan, to put it mildly. She sees him as a constant reminder of my father’s infidelity.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. But my dad’s terrible choices aren’t Daniel’s fault. None of the rest of us would ever hold that against him, but he feels it all the same. Add to that the fact that Jack doesn’t want to shift the ranch in a new business direction, especially a direction that’s my idea. He sees cattle breeding as our brand and he wants to keep with the old ways.”

  “Why would Jack oppose an idea just because it’s yours? Is that a sibling-rivalry thing?”

  “No. That’s not it. Until a few months ago, I wasn’t worthy of Jack’s trust.” He found her hand under the table and gave it a squeeze. “Or yours, either, for that matter.”

  “Hard on yourself much?”

  “With good reason. My father used to joke that the Colton family DNA ran out of ambition genes by the time I was born. All I got was the cowboying ones that revolved around whiskey, women and horses.”

  She eyed him skeptically. “I find that hard to believe. And that’s terrible that your father made you feel that way.”

  “It was the truth, as hard as it is to come clean to you about that. Growing up in the shadow of four smart, successful, career-driven older brothers, I never felt like I could live up to the lofty bar they set. By the time I hit high school, I realized just how easy it was to skate by on my looks and family money, so I stopped trying. In no time flat, I became my own worst enemy, hard drinking and partying all the time, nearly flunking out of school, and taking so many stupid risks.”

  Her look of skepticism gave way to a slow nod. “That I do remember. There were some girls from my high school who were sweet on you, even though you were in a school across town. Every Monday, it seemed, students whispered about the hell-raising you got into over the weekend.”

  Damn, this was rough. It made no common sense to be attempting to prove himself worthy of protecting and caring for Hannah and the baby by coming clean about what an entitled, shallow jerk he’d grown into, but there was no way around this guts-spilling to the mother of his child. “My hell-raising didn’t stop at high school. I went to college, but dropped out. I just couldn’t see past the moment-to-moment fun to the bigger picture of my life.”

  He paused, taking a long, slow swig of beer, fortifying himself to continue to the hardest, darkest, bleakest days of his life.

  She threaded their fingers together. “I’m not judging you, just so you know. Nobody’s perfect and it seems like you’ve been hard enough on yourself as it is. Too hard.”

  He really wasn’t being too hard. Maybe not hard enough. “The weekend that you and I met in the club, I was in the middle of a bender. The next night, I was at a different club, coming on to a different girl—or, rather, three girls.”

  Her expression shuttered and her fingers went stiff, though she left them twined with his. But what had he expected? It was such an ugly truth. She’d meant nothing to him that night but a moment’s pleasure—a terrible beginning for their child. All he could do now was keep telling her the story so she’d understand how much he’d changed, and why he couldn’t seem to shake his reputation with his family.

  He rubbed her knee. “Hear me out, okay? There’s a happy ending to this story. I promise.”

  Her gaze rolled up to meet his. In her eyes, he saw stubbornness, the same look that had made him instantly smitten with her in the diner the morning before. “I appreciate you telling me all this, but I already know all about the kind of man you were. I knew it when we slept together, too. Just like I now know that’s not who you are anymore.”

  Brett closed his eyes, overcome with a potent cocktail of relief and shame and affection for Hannah, his throat constricting painfully. He had to swallow before saying, “No, it’s not.”

  Hannah partially stood and scooted her chair around the corner of the table, flush with his chair. She snuggled in tight against his side and took his hand again. Then she set her head on his shoulder. “Keep going with your story. I want to get to that happy ending you promised.”

  He kissed her hair and left his nose buried in it, it smelled so sweet and feminine. “That night, those three girls followed me back to the ranch for an after-party. I never should have gotten behind the wheel, I was so drunk out of my mind, but thank goodness I was alone because, just past the entrance to our property, I drove my truck off the road and flipped it. It rolled twice, or so the girls said. I have no memory after leaving the club. I barely have any memory of that weekend at all.

  “The girls witnessed the whole accident. They left one person with me while the rest drove on to the Big House and got my dad. Dad called my brothers and an ambulance, and thankfully I was only bruised and banged up. No major injuries. The seat belt and airbags saved my life.”

  “Thank God for that,” she said.

  “It took me almost dying to realize that I was wasting my life. I wasn’t contributing to my family’s legacy or living by the code I’d been raised to follow. I was only hurting my family and myself.”

  “That was one heck of a strongly worded message that God sent you.”

  He pulled his arm out from between their bodies and wrapped it around her back, holding her close. “And effective.”

  They were quiet for
a long time, staring at the shadows of the French doors on the wall in the moonlight and the flicker of the candles on the table. Hannah felt good in his arms. Good in a way that reminded him that he’d never really held a woman just for the sake of being close to her, for the sake of contact—and now that he had, he loved it. The heat of their bodies together, a woman’s soft curves melting into him, Hannah’s sweet scent, the feel of her breathing and moving and simply being. What a simple, yet vital, pleasure his previous lifestyle had prevented him from experiencing.

  That cocktail of relief and humility and affection rippled through him again. He had to be the luckiest man alive to have been given a second chance at life. It wasn’t everyone who could claim to be living proof that people could change for the better and turn their lives around by sheer determination.

  Hannah’s hand spread over his chest in a lazy exploration until her fingers took to worrying a button on his shirt. “I was always so envious of you and your life,” she said in a dreamy, faraway voice. “You seemed so free and happy, while my parents were so strict. Growing up, I never felt like I wasn’t suffocating to some degree or another. It took coming of age and moving out for me to finally catch my breath.”

  “Given that your parents are the type of people who would disown their only child over one mistake, then I can imagine that your life was no picnic growing up.”

  “No picnic, indeed. I wasn’t allowed to go to any high school dances or mixers, or go on any dates in high school. According to my parents, I was always in danger of being snared by the devil’s slippery slope of sin.” She patted her belly. “I’m still reeling from the notion that, in the end, I proved my mother right about forbidden fruit leading to many jams.”

  He kissed her hair again, just because he could and she didn’t seem to mind it. “I’ve never been referred to as forbidden fruit before. It has a certain ring to it.” Then a horrible thought occurred to him and it took all his mental wrangling not to bolt upright and ruin their cuddly moment.

  Carefully modulating his voice, he said, “Please tell me you weren’t a virgin that night. I’d never forgive myself for tarnishing a memory that’s supposed to be beautiful by being drunk and careless with you.”

  She gave a soft laugh. “No, so you can relax again. I tarnished that memory all on my own, giving that gift away to a different boy who didn’t deserve it when I was eighteen. I was so starved for experience when I got out from under my parents’ thumb after I turned eighteen that I kinda went crazy. My friends called it my own personal Rumspringa, after the Amish tradition. True, I’d never had a bona fide one-night stand before I hooked up with you—or after that night, for that matter—but I don’t regret it. I was due for some fun. That was the day I graduated from college.”

  “I didn’t deserve your gift, either. For the record.”

  Her hand found his chest again. “I’m sorry you don’t remember much about that night, because you were quite good, actually. You lived up to your reputation.”

  The performance review was so unexpected, he couldn’t stop a surprised bark of laughter. “Good to know I did something right by you that night. Still, I’m sorry that I put you in this monumental jam.”

  The hand on his chest moved higher until it hit the skin of his neck. Chill bumps raced over his body at the contact as her fingers explored his neck and jaw and ear. “You didn’t do anything to me.” Her words came out as a purr, husky, seductive. “We got into this jam together. I was the one who suggested we take our conversation back to my place.”

  His hand slid from her shoulder down her ribs and lower still. He had no idea what the hell he was thinking, getting handsy with her when he’d sworn off sex until he got his life on track, but that logical place in his brain had gone radio silent. When she shifted her weight toward the leg nearest him, of its own accord his hand slipped even lower, cupping her backside.

  He splayed his fingers over her curves and turned his face into hers, brushing his lips over her temple. “If you’re calling what we did that night a conversation, then what do you call this right now?”

  Her fingers deftly popped open the top button on his shirt. “This is your pantie-melting charm mixing with my dangerously out-of-control hormones.”

  A chuckle rumbled up from his chest. He’d never thought about pregnancy hormones as lusty, but then again, he’d never given much thought to pregnancy hormones at all. All he knew was, he wanted to kiss Hannah in a bad way and there was nothing or no one to stop him.

  Hannah’s fingers were talented in the button-popping department. She had half his shirt undone before Brett knew what hit him, probably because she was distracting him from logical reasoning by smoothing her parted lips along his jawline.

  He tucked his chin in, his lips reaching for contact with hers, his hands itching to haul her up onto his lap. Brett had never wanted to kiss someone so desperately, but then his arm brushed her belly and he remembered who they were and why they were there. With a growl of frustration, he wrenched his face and hands away from her body. Though his body and heart protested, he pushed up to his feet and paced to the French doors, breathing hard.

  “I’m a changed man from the one who hooked up with you in that club.” He had a plan for his life now, and it didn’t involve taking advantage of the mother of his child on her first night at the ranch. He dropped his forehead to the window, relishing the sting of cold on his skin. “I didn’t bring you to the ranch so I could seduce you. I asked you to stay here so I could take care of you and the baby, not take advantage of you.”

  He felt her eyes on his back. “That’s a shame,” she whispered, breathless.

  He rolled his forehead along the glass, twisting to look over his shoulder at her. Her lips were parted and dewy, and even in the dim lighting, he could see the color staining her cheeks. With that good-girl conservative blouse she wore clashing wildly with her parted lips, dark eyes and mussed-up hair, she was a sight to behold. And he wanted her in a bad, bad way.

  As he watched, she stood and sauntered toward him—a seductress intent on the object of her desire. In a flash of memory, he saw her the night they’d hooked up, that same wicked gleam in her eye. Clearly, she was not a woman who demurred, and damn, if that didn’t just make him rock-hard and desperate to give her what she wanted.

  He braced for impact, but she didn’t touch him. She stood next to him and pressed her forehead and palms to the glass, her gaze searching the dark ranch grounds beyond the window.

  “Are your dangerously out-of-control hormones going to keep testing my resolve for the rest of your pregnancy?” He’d meant it as a jest, to break the tension, but his voice was still thick with need.

  “Probably. But if you’re expecting an apology, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.”

  He chuffed at that. What else could he do? One of these times, he had no doubt he’d cave and give Wicked Seductress Hannah what she wanted, but it wasn’t going to be tonight. “Let’s get out of here so Maria and the staff can do their thing cleaning up.”

  “Should we help with that?”

  “On a normal night, sure. But I wanted this dinner to be special, and how’s it going to feel like a proper date if we have to bus the table ourselves?”

  They strolled through the foyer to the grand staircase. “How’s it going to feel like a proper date if you don’t kiss me good-night?” she said in quiet purr of a voice as they mounted the stairs.

  Oh, man, she wasn’t making this easy on him. Then again, she hadn’t pretended that she was going to. “Your hormones again?”

  A mischievous grin graced her lips. “No. That was all me.”

  He fought a grin, way too turned on by her good-girl/bad-girl dual personae. “Hannah, we talked about that. I don’t think getting physically involved with each other is the best plan.”

  “It’s not the worst plan, either.”


  In loaded silence, he walked her to her suite door, then kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Sweet dreams, Hannah. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Chapter 7

  That night, not even Hannah’s teeth-gnashing frustration at Brett for leaving her as an unsatisfied puddle of need at her bedroom door kept her awake for long. After a good stomp around her suite, cursing Brett’s level-headed logic, she’d thrown herself onto the expensive, luxurious bed calling to her from the other room, figuring she could at least fume in comfort. But, being that it was her first time lying on a real bed in three months, she fell into a fast, deep slumber. She’d slept so soundly that she didn’t wake until long after the sun had risen on Friday morning, despite that she’d never so much as taken off her shoes or crawled under the covers.

  She had no idea what the day was going to bring or which of Brett’s family members she’d be meeting, but, despite Brett’s insistence that she wait to start work on Monday, she hoped to convince him otherwise. So she took a nice shower, blow-dried her hair and dressed for the career in a pair of black slacks that fit under her belly and a long, fitted blue cotton dress shirt that stretched over her belly, showing it off. With a touch of cosmetics, she felt fit, pregnant and ready for her first day on the job—right up until her stomach lurched.

  “Oh, boy.” She braced her hands on the vanity and breathed. The pregnancy book said that she should be getting over her morning sickness any day now, but apparently her stomach didn’t give a whit what the book said.

  She took a sip of water, then blotted her now perspiring face with a tissue. So much for fit, pregnant and ready for her job. With her ghostly pallor and clammy sweat, she only matched one of those three descriptors anymore. Maybe once she got to work, she’d be too busy to think about her nausea.

  She threw open the doors of her suite and marched through the hall to the stairs. The first scent she detected was bacon. That was a good start. Some nice salty bacon might do her stomach some good. She was nearly to the ground floor when she caught a whiff of coffee and—oh, heck, no—scrambled eggs.