Savannah smiled and placed the report into the “to file” stack. “Relied on your other bookkeeper would be my guess.”
That’s what he liked about her. The fact that she didn’t have so much as a hint of an inflated ego. The woman was as unassuming as they came.
As he picked up his hat, he glanced at his watch. He had a plane to catch in less than two hours, and there was still the trip to the airport to face. But he lingered a moment, determined to exchange a few words with Savannah. In the ever-hurried pace that surrounded the ranch, there never seemed to be enough time for amenities.
“Nathan was never as efficient as you, Savannah. Thank God, Vanessa had the presence of mind to offer you the position when she did.”
Savannah thought of how the job had been a godsend to her; it had put an end to the soul-wearying task of trying to find a job, while debating just what to say about her “condition.” This might be the tail end of the nineties, but some things resisted change. Such as an employer’s desire not to waste money on a woman who might not return to her position once her baby was born.
She was the one who was grateful to them for helping her out of her dilemma, at least the financial end of it. “Thank you.”
Their eyes met, and work and plane schedules were tabled for the moment. “Is there anything I can do for you, Savannah?”
No, there wasn’t anything he could do—any more than he’d already done. The kind tone almost made her cry. Savannah shook her head as she picked up a stack of reports.
“Just throw in a compliment like that every now and then, and I’ll be fine.”
“No problem.” He followed her to the file cabinet. “I’ll be in Europe for about four weeks, but if there’s anything you need to reach me about, here’s the number of my hotel. I don’t want Dad dealing with any more than he already has to.” Dallas frowned, his features darkening slightly. “He’s got enough on his hands trying to extricate himself from the wicked witch of the west’s clutches.”
No one, Savannah had quickly discovered, liked Sophia Fortune. She hadn’t met the woman herself, but from all reports, Ryan’s soon-to-be ex-wife was selfish, self-centered and despicable. It was a wonder that the woman had pulled the blinders over Ryan’s eyes long enough to get him to marry her. But he’d been vulnerable right after his first wife Janine had died, and Sophia had apparently used that to her advantage.
A lot of wrong moves could be chalked up to vulnerability, Savannah thought. She closed her fingers over the paper with the hotel number.
Dallas picked up the travel bag he’d thrown together. “Then I’ll see you when I get back.” Turning, he almost ran into Cruz on his way out. “Sorry—didn’t see you standing there. Want to see me about something? I’m in a hurry, Cruz.”
Cruz shook his head, his easy smile betraying none of the emotions simmering beneath. “No, I just came to see Savannah.”
Dallas’s mouth curved. “Then I’ll get out of your way.” The next moment, he was gone.
Damn, when was she going to be able to look at Cruz without feeling her heart leap into her throat?
Nerve endings rose, stiffening like tiny hairs in a breeze. Savannah didn’t know where to look, what to do with herself. She hadn’t been alone with him for almost two weeks—ever since she’d told him that she was pregnant.
But because of her office’s orientation, she found herself watching Cruz work with his horse far more than she should. Watching, and letting her mind drift to a world that was perfect. A world where resentment and repercussions didn’t exist. And love did.
Forcing a smile to her lips, she looked at him. “What can I do for you?”
You can tell me the truth.
His smile remained, sensual and teasing, as he shoved his hands into his back pockets. She looked a little pale, he thought. He wondered if that was because of the baby, or because she never seemed to go outside. At least, he hadn’t seen her around lately.
“Just stopped by to see how you were doing.” He took a deep breath. The room smelled of wood and lemon polish—his mother’s handiwork. But the scent of exotic flowers was new. Savannah’s. “It’s been about two weeks since I’ve seen you.”
Two weeks in which he’d tried to blot Savannah out of his system. It might have worked, too, if he didn’t have dreams that insisted on sneaking up on him in the middle of the night. Dreams about limbs as soft as cream, eyes as blue as the sky, and a smile made out of sunshine.
She came to him like that—a misty, unattainable dream—making him yearn for her. Making him doubt his own sanity when he awoke.
With the studied air of a man whose most serious thought was of his latest conquest, Cruz sat down on the edge of the desk and looked down at her. His eyes swept over her with familiar ease.
“So, tell me, how’s it going?” Her figure was as shapely as ever; there wasn’t so much as a hint of the baby that was to come.
She raised her eyes to his. “Professionally or personally?”
“Whatever you want to tell me.”
She pretended that she was still talking to Dallas. It was easier for her that way.
“I miss teaching, but the work is interesting and everyone’s been very kind.” She looked around at the stacks of files that were still piled up on the desk. “I never realized that there was so much involved in running a ranch.”
He knew about that end all too well. It wasn’t just about the horses. Unbeknownst to his family, he’d taken several correspondence courses in management to learn that end of it. He meant to have his own ranch—not just dream about it.
But the ranch was the furthest thing from his mind right now. It took a great deal of effort not to reach out and touch her; he was so close.
With renewed determination, he kept his hands still. “And personally?”
Savannah would have looked away if she were able. Instead, her eyes were held prisoner by the look she saw in his.
“Like I said, everyone’s been very nice.”
The sensual smile melted into a genuine one. “You’re an easy person to be nice to. What do you do when you’re not working?”
She said the first thing that came into her head. “Read.” Savannah had gathered together an arm-load of baby books and books on parenting. She felt hopelessly unprepared for the coming event, but was trying to get a handle on it.
“I was wondering if maybe you’d like to go for a ride later.” He heard himself fumbling. He hadn’t fumbled around a woman since he was fifteen. He didn’t know whether to be amused, or sincerely worried, about the implications. “If there’s no problem?”
Her brows furrowed in confusion. “Problem?”
His eyes lowered to her flat belly. “I mean in your condition…”
Cruz didn’t know how to put it. He hated this awkward feeling. Part of him wasn’t even sure what he was doing here. He only knew that he missed seeing her. Who knew? Maybe she even needed a friend. He could do that much for her.
Hell, he wanted more than that and he knew it. But it was a start.
“It’ll be a peaceful ride in the country, not the first lap of the Kentucky Derby. I think I can safely manage it without worrying about my ‘condition.”’
Cruz nodded, pleased at the answer. Maybe too pleased, but he’d deal with that later, he told himself. “When’s the baby due, anyway?”
“The beginning of March.”
Absorbing the information, Cruz rose. “All right, so I’ll see you about five. Will that be all right?”
She was free to make her own hours, Dallas had been very liberal about that. But she wasn’t sure about Cruz’s time table. “Is that when you get off? Five?”
The idea of regular, restricting hours had always rankled him. That was why he could have never left to hold down a job like his sisters. Confinement, any sort of confinement, visible or otherwise, wasn’t for him. He had to be free.
“I told you, it’s not like punching a clock. I put in a certain amount of time to train a ho
rse. How I do it depends on me—and the horse.”
“Then make it for three o’clock.”
With a wink, he inclined his head. “Three it is.”
For the first time in two weeks, as she got back to her work a few minutes later, Savannah really felt like smiling.
The beginning of March.
The words hummed through Cruz’s mind. He had made love with her at Bryan’s christening. The beginning of June. That left the count at nine months.
He’d bet his soul that the baby wasn’t a consequence of any aborted, short-lived reconciliation between Savannah and her ex-fiancé. The baby she was carrying was his, plain and simple.
Despite the jealousy he’d felt when he’d seen Dallas dancing with Savannah and paying attention to her, Cruz knew in his heart that Savannah wasn’t the kind of woman who slept around. He needed no affidavits, no sworn statements to sway him one way or another. Some things a man just knew.
Which made the responsibility he was grappling with all the more difficult.
On the one hand were his dreams—dreams that required hard work and the kind of sacrifice he had no right to ask anyone else to make for him. The kind of sacrifice that would test his own metal.
On the other was a wide-eyed, gentle woman who, for reasons he didn’t understand, refused to use what was at her disposal to ensnare him. Many of the women he had bedded had been manipulating and self-absorbed. But not Savannah.
Unless… Was she such a grand master at deception that she had him completely fooled? Completely blinded to the truth?
His mouth curved in a mocking smile as he stopped at the corral. Somehow, he doubted it, but he’d walked too long on a cynical path to be completely divorced from the possibility.
At the very least, he’d suspend making a decision until he knew just what, if anything, she was up to. Climbing over the railing, he jumped down into the corral, picking up his lariat where he’d left it. The horse, a new stallion he’d been working with since only the day before yesterday, eyed him like an adversary.
That would change soon, Cruz silently promised the animal. Easily, with soft words of assurance, he approached the skittish quarter horse.
Cruz had to admit that for reasons that weren’t entirely clear to him, he wanted Savannah to own up to the baby’s parentage. It wasn’t because he had a crying need to pass on his genes and his name to another, or to see himself immortalized in the small features of a child’s face. That had never been even a remote desire. If he thought of children at all, he thought of them as belonging to other people.
True, he loved his sisters’ children. His nieces and nephews always generated a warm feeling within him, but they were family, and feeling that way was safe. They were not his to provide for, only his to spoil. He had the best of all worlds, and he meant to keep it that way.
He meant to reach his goals and not end up like his father: a man who took off his hat to someone else, who obeyed someone else and came home at the end of each day to a small house on someone else’s land.
The horse stood still, watching his every move. He advanced slowly, gaining ground. Gaining the animal’s confidence.
Savannah wasn’t going to trap him, Cruz thought.
But she isn’t trying, a small voice reminded him. If anything, he had been the one to seek her out, not the other way around. She’d done nothing to place herself in his path.
Nothing—but prey on his mind.
It was enough.
“There,” he murmured to the horse, running his hands along the animal’s silken muzzle. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
As he slipped the lariat around the animal’s neck, the question echoed in his head, replaying itself over and over again.
Fall was in the air, crisp and fresh, accompanied by a wind that was a little less than gentle, a little more than soft. It whipped through Savannah’s hair in sudden spurts of energy before settling down again to an even rhythm, and running long, stroking fingers through the tall grass.
It was brisk, and Cruz half expected Savannah to turn her horse around a few minutes into the ride and suggest that they return to the ranch. But she’d surprised him by urging her horse on into a canter, her face radiant. Her laughter blended with the sound of the wind, equally intriguing to him.
She seemed one with the elements, yet so much above them that she made him ache just to see her.
She made him ache, just being near.
They finally stopped by a stream, dismounting to let the horses rest and graze. He watched as Savannah turned her face up to the sky. She closed her eyes, still glowing, as if she wanted the breeze to caress her. As if she were soaking up everything that the day had to offer.
He’d never known another woman quite like her.
The wind teased her hair into her face. Very gently, Cruz pushed it away before she could. He knew he should move back to give her space, but he couldn’t do it. “If it’s too windy for you, we can go back.”
“Oh, no, this is perfect.” She stepped back, spreading her arms as if she were about to embrace everything around her. “I love it like this. It makes you feel glad to be alive.”
Bemusement filtered in. She made him think of a little girl playing hooky. “Why?”
The question caught her off guard. It was just a feeling; she hadn’t bothered to explore it. Savannah shrugged, laughing as she spun about in a circle. When she swayed a little, he was quick to lock his arms around her, as if he was afraid she was going to fall down.
But she’d done all the falling she intended to.
Very gently, she disengaged herself and moved away.
“I don’t know, it just does. It’s a rush.” She took a deep breath. “Smell it—the air’s sweet and clean and wonderful. It makes me remember when I was a little girl.” A flood of memories crowded her mind. Picnics with the grandmother who doted on her. State fairs and long rides in the country on a horse named Strawberry, in the company of a groom who frowned too much and worried that she would fall.
The radiant look on her face made Cruz envious. What was it like, to feel like that? To harbor a ray of happiness so closely that it shone out of every pore?
“What were you like as a little girl?”
She picked up a daisy, almost withered now that autumn had planted itself, and began picking at the petals one by one.
“All knees and elbows.” She could step outside of herself and see the little girl she’d been. “I was very skinny and very tall for my age.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
She laughed, tossing away the stem. “So did my parents. Neither one of them could understand how they could have created between them such a homely child. They were both very beautiful people,” she said almost wistfully. When she was little, she would have given anything to look sleek and sophisticated like her mother. Savannah pressed her lips together. “My father suspected that my mother had lied to him.”
“Lied?”
“That she’d lied when she told him that she was pregnant with his child.” Savannah really wasn’t sure why she was sharing this with him. The words just seemed to be coming on their own. “They weren’t married at the time. But they were when I was born.” Unwilling to see the look in his eyes, Savannah turned her face forward. The day didn’t seem quite as pretty as it had been a moment before. “Biggest mistake they ever made.”
He was silent as he considered the import of what she’d just said. “Is that why you won’t admit the baby’s mine?”
Regret was instant. She knew she shouldn’t have said anything. “I won’t admit the baby’s yours because it isn’t. I told you—”
He knew what Savannah had told him. Knew too, in his heart, that it was a lie. He didn’t need his mother prodding at him the way she’d done over the past few days, telling him to take charge of his responsibility. Telling him that she “felt” the baby was her grandchild.
“I don’t have a fancy college degree, but I can do the math, Savannah. I
f you’re due at the beginning of March, the baby was conceived at the beginning of June. When you slept with me.”
She raised her chin, a bittersweet smile twisting her lips. “As I remember, sleeping wasn’t part of it.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Cruz placed his hands on her shoulders so that she couldn’t turn away from him again. “Don’t try to distract me, Savannah. You’re very good at distracting a man.” So good that even now it was hard for him to hold himself in check, to keep from taking her into his arms and losing himself in the taste of her lips. “You made love with me at the beginning of June.”
She knew she was going to pay dearly for this. Still, she forced the words out of her mouth. “How do you know you were the only one I made love with in June?”
His pride reared at the implication, but he left the bait where it was cast. It was a ruse, a ploy.
“Because I know.” His eyes held hers. “I know you.” Time had nothing to do with that kind of knowledge; it came when one soul understood another. “You told me then that you and your boyfriend had broken up. That he had changed his mind about wanting to get married. A woman doesn’t make that kind of admission unless its true.”
She pulled away. If he continued holding her, touching her, she was going to weaken. “Women say all kinds of things.”
“Maybe they do,” he allowed. “But you don’t.”
Confused, weary, her temper flashed. She was trying to do the right thing. Why wouldn’t he let her? “And since when have you become such an expert on me?”
“I don’t know. It’s just something that happened.” Cruz took a deep breath. His father was right. Confronted with the situation, there was only one honorable thing to do. “Marry me, Savannah.”
For one thrilling second, the word yes hovered in her mind. But then she squelched it. She wouldn’t say yes to something that he would live to regret and that she would live to hurt over. He didn’t even want to do it now. She saw the reluctance in his eyes, the resignation. How long before that resignation turned to resentment?
“No.”
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