The Rancher and the Baby

by Marie Ferrarella

  “When?” Cassidy challenged. “When would you have possibly gotten experience changing diapers?”

  He debated not saying anything, then decided he had nothing to lose. Besides, it was all in the past. And if it gave her ammunition to rag on him, well, so be it. “During those years I was away.”

  She was about to discount his statement when it suddenly hit her. Her eyes widened as she stared at Will. “You got married,” she said. There was no joy in her voice, no celebratory tone for a friend. If anything, there was a note of crushing disappointment in her voice.

  The simplest thing would have been to say yes—but it wasn’t true. And he didn’t lie.

  “No.”

  Cassidy didn’t think that she could feel so relieved over nothing—but she did.

  “Then just how would you have gotten that experience with diaper changing?”

  He smiled. Cassidy had overlooked a very uncomplicated answer to her question. “I briefly dated a woman with a baby, but I can’t say I’ve had much experience.”

  He had always attracted women, all the way back to the fifth grade. But she couldn’t picture him “dating” so much as just spending time and availing himself of the fruits that were being offered to him. Getting involved with a woman who had a baby was an entirely different scenario, and she was having trouble picturing him in it.

  “You?”

  “Yes, me.” He shrugged, as if the whole thing was of less than no importance to him. “But then I came to my senses. I realized that she reminded me too much of you, so it was never going to work.”

  “She reminded you of me?” Cassidy questioned, stunned. “Is that why you dated her?”

  “No, that’s why I stopped,” he said simply.

  She felt dismissed, diminished. “I came to tell you about Adam because I felt like I owed it to you, but I must have been crazy. To willingly leave myself wide open like this so that you could parade your pathetic wit at my expense—”

  “I dated her because she did make me think of you,” he admitted to the back of her head.

  Cassidy knew she was going to regret this, but she forced herself to turn to face him. “What did you say?”

  The woman annoyed the hell out of him—and he wanted her so badly that he ached. What the hell was wrong with him?

  “You heard me. She reminded me of you.” And then he tried to put it in the proper perspective. “I guess I was kind of homesick after all, and being around someone who looked like you was the closest I could get to home.”

  But Cassidy wasn’t about to let this go. Not yet. “Then why did you break up with her?”

  She had no idea how, but she could feel his eyes pulling her in and yet holding her in place at the same time.

  Cassidy realized that she had to remind herself to breathe.

  “Because she wasn’t you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Because they were so unexpected—the complete opposite of what she would have thought he’d say—it took a couple of seconds for Will’s words to sink in.

  And another second before she could actually answer him. Her mouth felt dry as she told him, “I would have thought, from your point of view, that would have been a good thing.”

  Will slowly nodded, his dark blond hair falling into his eyes.

  “It should have been.” His eyes held hers as he added, “But it wasn’t.”

  What had happened to all the space that had been between them, she couldn’t help wondering. When she’d turned, there’d been at least several strides between where he was standing and where she’d stopped. But somehow, in the last few seconds, they seemed to have just vanished.

  She didn’t remember walking toward him. When had he walked toward her? And why wasn’t she turning and leaving now that he’d answered her question?

  She wasn’t leaving, she realized, because he had answered her question.

  That and because she suddenly really, really wanted him to kiss her the way he had that one time, when he’d kissed her so deeply she became seriously in danger of forgetting how to ever walk again.

  But as much as she found herself yearning for that kiss, she knew that if he didn’t make the first move, she couldn’t very well just throw herself at him. If she did, she’d never live it down because Laredo would never let her.

  This was crazy.

  She couldn’t just go on standing there like some deer that had been caught in the proverbial headlights. She needed to leave.

  Now.

  “Well, I’d better be going,” she heard herself saying, “since I did what I’d set out to do.”

  His presence seemed to be almost looming over her, making the rest of the area shrink away. “What’s that? Drive me crazy?”

  That would require a very short drive, she thought, biting her tongue.

  “I came because I was trying to be nice,” Cassidy reminded him.

  “By driving me crazy,” Will repeated, because that was exactly what she was doing, just by standing there—driving him crazy.

  Driving him crazy because he wanted to touch her, to kiss her. To make love with her so badly he could scarcely breathe.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but for once, we’re not knee-deep in an argument.”

  Again, Laredo seemed to have come that much closer to her. He was so close now that if she took a deep breath, her chest was going to bump up against the lower part of his.

  “Kind of leaves a void, doesn’t it?” he asked her, commenting on her assessment.

  “I don’t notice a void,” she told him defensively. Cassidy turned her face up to his so he could hear her better. Her voice cracked for some reason, as if she couldn’t get in enough air to get her voice to carry the short distance between her mouth and his ears.

  She struggled to keep from squirming.

  “I do,” he told her. “The void starts right about here,” he went on, touching his chest and moving downward until he reached his lower abdomen. “And ends up here, cutting clear down to the bone.”

  “Maybe you should see someone about that,” she suggested, the words all but falling from her lips in slow motion.

  “I just might do that,” he responded.

  The next moment, there were no more words, no more nebulous speculations that went around in dizzying circles. Because the next moment, Will had finally given in to himself and lowered his mouth to hers, putting an end to the conversation and creating a whole new set of parameters for both of them.

  She knew, really knew, that she should put a stop to what was happening. Right now. But “right now” seemed to perversely be slipping further and further away from her grasp. Further and further away from what she had, until she’d crossed this line, perceived to be reality.

  Her reality.

  Suddenly, she wasn’t sure about anything, especially about the way she thought she felt about Will Laredo. Because if he was the man she loved to hate, why was every part of her lighting up like that huge Christmas tree that Miss Joan had the town decorate every year in the town square?

  Light up like it? Hell, she mocked herself, she could easily out-glow it any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

  She had dated a lot of cowboys in her time—thought at least three of them were “the one” in their own time. But she had never, ever felt about any of them the way she found herself feeling about Will Laredo. Like she wanted to seal herself to him forever.

  Wouldn’t Laredo get a laugh out of that if he knew, she thought, trying to work herself up and get angry. Angry enough to pull back and put a stop to this before it was too late.

  But it was already too late because she didn’t want to pull back, didn’t want to put a stop to it. What she wanted, Cassidy realized—Lord help her—was to make love with him. Make love with Laredo t
he way no woman had ever made love with a man before. She was prepared to go down in flames and be reduced to a pile of ashes, as long as those ashes were mingled with his.

  None of this was making any sense to her.

  Maybe she had died plunging into the river after that baby and this was all some wild, afterlife fantasy that had ensnared her.

  She didn’t know.

  Didn’t care.

  All she cared about was finding a way to scratch this overwhelming itch she was feeling. An itch Will had created and that only he seemed to have the power to scratch for her.

  * * *

  HAD HE LOST his mind? This was Cassidy he was all but wrapped around like some giant piece of cellophane. Cassidy. His best friend’s sister, for heaven’s sake. The woman who would have sooner argued with him than breathe—and always did.

  He was supposed to be doing everything in his power to avoid her, not trying to absorb her into his system as if she was every bit as vital to him for his survival as the very air.

  He had to put a stop to this.

  And yet, every second that he was kissing Cassidy only had him wanting to kiss her that much more. Who would have ever guessed that her lips tasted this good, this tempting, this life-affirming?

  Certainly not him.

  And yet here he was, kissing her. Wanting her. Wanting more.

  The little voice in his head that was so heavily grounded in common sense told him to stop, to make her leave. And if she wouldn’t, then he was the one who needed to leave. Right this second.

  Hell, he needed to run as if the town’s villagers were all coming after him with pitchforks and torches.

  But he didn’t run, he didn’t stop.

  He couldn’t.

  Not when he was on fire this way.

  Hell, he could barely remember his own name, much less how to walk away. He certainly couldn’t run.

  Will felt his head spinning so badly, he was certain that he’d fall on the floor if he made a move away from her.

  So instead, he made a move on her.

  With his mouth still sealed to hers, he began to undress Cassidy. To open buttons, tug out shirttails, unnotch the belt on her jeans. He wanted her completely to himself, the way she’d been created.

  Completely and utterly nude.

  * * *

  CASSIDY’S HEART WAS racing so hard, she thought it would burst right out of her chest. Not only was Laredo making the entire world around them shrink to the head of a pin and then just disappear, he was making her body temperature climb to dangerous heights in anticipation of each and every move.

  She urgently pulled at Will’s clothing, stripping him of his shirt, trying to tug off his jeans until she realized that she’d overlooked one important thing. Or rather, two.

  “Your boots, take off your boots,” she half begged, half ordered.

  And when Will didn’t seem to understand what she was saying, or to execute her order fast enough, Cassidy did it herself.

  Half nude, she began pulling at his boots, frustrated and eager at the same time.

  He thought he’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

  The moment his boots were off, Will maneuvered out of his jeans.

  And then there were no more barriers between them. They were free to do whatever they wanted to.

  But rather than take her there and then, the way she’d anticipated that he would, Will surprised her by continuing to up the ante. He did things to her that primed her body and made her anticipation all the greater.

  Will made love to every single part of her before he culminated in making love to the whole of her the way she’d been waiting for him to do.

  Before that final moment came, he’d made all of her quiver, all of her feel the small, hard surges of climaxes flowering one after the other until she was quite certain that her entire body was spent and there was nothing more left within her to feel anything else.

  But she was wrong.

  Because after the caresses, after the long, moist kisses along the length of her body that had her twisting and turning beneath his mouth in absolute sweet, sweeping agony and bliss, Cassidy discovered that there was one last, pulsating reserve she had left to offer up to Will.

  With his fingers entwined and locked with hers, he slid his body over Cassidy’s and into position. With his eyes watching hers, he entered her and took what had already become his from the moment this dance between them had begun.

  His hips against hers, he began to move, urging her to follow until she started to keep up with him.

  In sync, they moved faster and faster in anticipation of that one last glorious moment when their union would be finalized in a wondrous shower involving stars, fireworks and blazing sensations. A moment when free-floating was the norm, not the exception.

  And when it happened, when it finally captured them both, Will held on to her even more tightly than he had before, as if the thought of letting go meant permanently letting go of her.

  Time froze, then slowly moved forward again, bringing back reality as it reluctantly let go of euphoria.

  * * *

  HIS HEART WOULDN’T stop hammering, as if it was meant to break free of its earthly shell and then meld with the stars overhead. For a few minutes, Will thought that it was going to, leaving him behind in the process—a broken vessel in its wake.

  It still took a while for his heart to finally stop pounding. It took longer than that for him to catch his breath.

  What the hell had they just done?

  Will felt her stiffening beside him, felt the exact second when reality returned to her like a tsunami immediately after an earthquake.

  Will caught himself thinking that that was almost appropriate, considering that, at least for him, the earth had definitely moved the way it never had before.

  For a fraction of a moment, because it was against his nature to restrain someone who wanted to leave, Will thought of letting her bolt. Of letting Cassidy leave—if that was what she really wanted—without him saying a single word to stop her. He didn’t want to prolong whatever she was feeling right at this second that was making her want to flee.

  But another part of him, the new, improved part of him that had just been made to see the light, didn’t want Cassidy fleeing. He didn’t want her acting as if this was all one giant mistake that could somehow be erased with enough denial—especially if it was mutual denial.

  Most of all, he didn’t want to deny what had just happened.

  Because to him, what had just happened bordered on a miracle.

  And no good ever came of denying a miracle, especially when that miracle had just unaccountably landed right smack in their laps.

  The way this one had.

  So he closed his arms around Cassidy rather than letting her bolt off the sofa. And when she tried to wiggle free of his grip, he only held on to her that much more tightly.

  “Let me go!” she cried, angry at herself for what she’d allowed to happen and angry at him for fueling the flames of a fire that just refused to go out.

  He made no move to do anything of the kind. “Not yet. Not until you calm down,” he told her.

  “Okay. I’m calm,” she declared between gritted teeth. “Now let me go!”

  “Saying it isn’t going to make it so,” he told her in a voice she found maddeningly poised and self-contained.

  His calm tone just made her angrier. “You can’t hold me prisoner like this!”

  “Maybe not,” he said agreeably. “But I can dream. And for the record, I’m not holding you prisoner, I’m just holding you.”

  She would have thought that he, of all men, would have wanted to put distance between himself and a woman once the act of lovemaking was over. Will Laredo was the original carefree bache
lor.

  Just what was he up to?

  “Why?” she challenged.

  “Because you’re soft and, heaven help me, I like holding you. And, in case it escaped your notice, something really nice just happened here. Now, whether you want to admit it or not, it did happen, and I suspect that a part of you really enjoyed it despite your protests. I know that more than a part of me did. Actually, I’d say that all of me did.”

  She was not about to admit to anything of the kind. The only thing she would admit was that she was agitated about what had just happened. Agitated because all of her life she’d told herself that she couldn’t bide Will Laredo, and now to discover otherwise—to discover the exact opposite—well, it was too much for her to absorb all at once. And definitely too much for her to acknowledge.

  Cassidy needed time to come to grips with this. Time and space, and she needed it now.

  “I’ve got to go,” she insisted. “I left Adam with Connor.”

  “Wise choice,” he told her approvingly, a fact that only got her that much more agitated. “Connor’s levelheaded.”

  She was disoriented and disappointed with herself. Will’s words had her instantly jumping to a conclusion. “And I’m not, is that what you’re trying to say?”

  This was going to take patience, possibly more patience than he had. But he would give it his best shot.

  “No, what I’m trying to say is don’t run. Because no matter how fast you try to go, that feeling you’re trying to outrun is going to catch up to you.”

  “Maybe,” she said, pulling away from him and finally getting up. “But I’ve still got to try.”

  Clutching her clothes to her like a makeshift shield, Cassidy backed out of the room and then hurried away to get dressed.

  She needed to make good her escape before he broke through her resolve—again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Christmas was just a few days away, and Cassidy purposely made herself busier than ever. Christmas had always been her favorite time of year, and it didn’t have anything to do with the anticipation of gifts.