by Maisey Yates
Panic, the kind of panic he hadn’t experienced since he’d found out his little sister’s care was falling to him, since he’d first found out about his dad, since he’d gone to the clinic and found out a stranger might be pregnant with his baby, filled his chest.
He had to keep Kelsey with him. It had nothing to do with . . . needing her. But how would he keep her safe, the baby safe, cared for, if they weren’t with him? She was going to leave. Leave and take his baby. What if she gave birth and he couldn’t make it to the hospital on time? What if something happened? His head felt like it was spinning, or maybe that was the room. So much for post-orgasmic bliss.
The need to keep her with him was so strong. Almost as strong as the need to push her away.
He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.
***
The next morning his bed was empty, which didn’t surprise him too much. He doubted Kelsey wanted to broadcast the change in their relationship to everyone in the overcrowded house. He was a bit resentful of the high population on the ranch at the moment.
But with the alone time, which included a lukewarm shower, he came up with a plan. One that eased the panic that had tightened his chest into a knot and helped him start breathing again.
The sex could be separate. Sex and friendship. Perfect and detached. Detachment was a good plan. He’d been detached from women and relationships for years. And yes, that had meant no sex at all. But why not add the sex and keep the detachment? And yes, during sex with Kelsey it was hard to find it, but after . . . it would work. He could marry her, protect her, keep her with him. They could live together, but keep a good amount of space between them, which Kelsey would like, and then at night . . .
He still had to get her to agree to marry him, but he was feeling a bit better about his odds now that they’d slept together.
Married friends. A hell of a lot better than married strangers, like his parents had been without his mother even knowing. And a damn sight better than married enemies, which was his own personal experience with the institution. Commitment and companionship, that was the way to go.
He ignored the twinge of discomfort in his chest. Kelsey was the kind of woman with the capacity to love big. She’d chosen this baby. The way she loved the baby more than her own life when it was no bigger than an avocado pit was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. And he was going to offer lifelong friendship?
Maybe the baby would be enough. And having family surround them. Yes, because what Kelsey loved more than anything was the baby. He knew the baby trumped romantic love for her. Obviously it did, since she’d chosen to be a single mother.
He was offering her the best thing for their child, and he knew she would be on board with that.
When he went downstairs, there was no one in the house except for Kelsey, who was curled up on the couch by the big windows, her laptop positioned on the armrest.
“Good morning,” he said, approaching with caution. He wasn’t entirely sure what kind of mood she would be in, and reading complex female emotion, especially from a distance, wasn’t his strong point.
“Morning,” she said, her voice muted. When she raised her eyes from the computer screen, her cheeks flushed pink. Just looking at her felt like a punch in the gut.
“Did you sleep well?”
She looked around. “Yes.”
He crossed to the couch and sat down beside her. He leaned in and pressed a light kiss to her lips. “Really?” he asked, brushing his thumb over her cheekbone.
He couldn’t remember what his plan was, just for a second. Like it had evaporated, turned into a fog. And everything was replaced, filled, with Kelsey. Her smell, the softness of her skin.
“Well, I was a little sad I had to get up and brave the cold hardwood floor so I could get back to my room, but yes, other than that.”
He was supposed to ask her about marrying him again. He remembered now. But the words stuck in his throat. He didn’t want her to get angry at him. He didn’t want to ruin whatever this was between them.
He ignored the pang in his chest. It was the logical thing to do anyway, waiting for the right moment. She would just get mad at him if he asked now. She would accuse him of using sex to get what he wanted. That was one thing he didn’t want her to think. He’d tried to avoid using actual sex, had tried to avoid sex at all costs. And it certainly hadn’t been for his own well-being.
“There are definitely better ways to wake up.”
“I see you’re not a novice. Which is good, because you may have noticed that I am,” she said.
“I definitely wasn’t thinking you were a novice last night.”
“That’s a relief. As is the fact that you were better than I imagined.” The pink in her cheeks spread.
That was a bigger turn-on than it should have been. “You imagined how it would be?”
“Well, yes. And in my experience, sex is pretty good, but a lot of the time it’s really fast. And also men don’t usually like foreplay.”
“They don’t?”
“No. They want the main event.”
“You’re basing this off of how many guys?”
She coughed and looked away. “One.”
He tried to mask the shock on his face, because she really didn’t need that. She was embarrassed, which she shouldn’t have been. But it was surprising. “Oh. Well, that’s not a very good cross section of the male population.”
“Well no, but it’s also based on a survey of friends who have told me about their lame sexual escapades. And . . . anyway, I just was a little worried that since you’re so . . . nice-looking you would just try to ride on that instead of actual skill but . . . color me pleasantly surprised.” Her smile turned a little smug.
He felt something strange bloom in his chest, a feeling that hurt and warmed him at the same time. “Glad to know it worked for you.”
“It did. And it worked for you?”
“You have to ask?” He watched the expression on her face, saw the insecurity in her blue eyes. “You do? I swear, if I ever meet your ex I’m going to punch him in the face.”
“It’s not his fault. I mean, I just wasn’t . . . everything for him. Obviously if I had been, he wouldn’t have cheated.”
“No, if he hadn’t been a dick he wouldn’t have cheated. It has nothing to do with you.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I have some work to do,” he said. He resented it, because at the moment all he wanted to do was drag her upstairs and have a repeat of last night.
“That’s okay, so do I. I’ve used up my store of emergency columns, so unless I want to run repeats I need to get this out.”
“Then I’ll let you get to it.” He hesitated, thinking about kissing her again. He thought better of it. If he did that, he’d never leave.
Kelsey watched Cole walk out of the room. She sighed, laying her head back on the couch. She turned her attention back to her column, which was starting to take shape. And look less like an homage to the junk food that made her feel so good, and more like what she was actually paid to write.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket, and she retrieved it, holding it out in front of her so she could read the number. Her stomach sank a little when she saw “Mom” flash up on the screen. She hadn’t talked to her mother in weeks, so she should have known the reprieve was over.
They didn’t talk very often, but if she went too long without calling, her mother would take the initiative. And she would be mad.
She pressed the talk button. “Hi, Mom,” she said, wincing.
“Kelsey, I’m glad you answered.”
Kelsey looked down at her nails. “Of course I answered.”
“Did Kailey call you?”
“What? No.” She had only talked to her youngest sister a couple of times since her wedding. The overt, starry-eyed bliss put her off a bit, and frankly, she bet her sister noticed. It didn’t make her feel very good to know that she was probably mainly to blame for the silence.
“She’s pregnant!”
“Oh. Good.” Kelsey put her hand on her stomach, her heart pounding hard.
“Yeah, not very far along. She’s due in January.”
Two months after Kelsey. The words stuck in her throat. They weren’t words you said over the phone. Except her mother had just said them. She didn’t know how she was supposed to though. To tell her mother that she was single and pregnant.
Why was she such a coward?
“I’m so happy for her,” Kelsey breathed.
“Well, you should come down and visit.”
Kelsey thought about her house in Portland, and how she was due to go and take care of whatever she might need to take care of there. Forwarding mail. Checking to see if anyone had stolen her TV. Or her old Hanson posters.
“I should be able to head down that way in a week or so.”
“Well, your father and I would like to see you.”
For the first time, Kelsey wondered if she imagined some of the criticism she’d always heard in her mother’s tone. Right now, she sounded like she missed her. And when Kelsey’s baby grew up, she didn’t want him or her to ignore her for weeks at a time. She’d be pretty pissed. And hurt.
And that was what she did to her mother—a lot.
“I’m sorry that I don’t keep in touch as well as I should.”
There was silence on her mother’s end, and Kelsey waited, her eyes glued to her fingernails.
“I always like to hear from you,” her mother said finally.
“Good. Well, how about if I come up next Wednesday?”
“The door is always open.”
“I’m glad about that.” She was. Because she was having a baby, and as rocky as things were going to be when she told them, her baby deserved to know all of its family. Even her parents. Even when they drove her nuts.
The baby was why she did anything. It was why she was here with Cole.
She ignored the little kick in her stomach that said otherwise.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kelsey wasn’t sure what would happen after dinner. Everyone was there: the ranch hands, Cade and Lark. They lingered over coffee and pie, then filed out, headed to bed or, in Lark’s case, to play a game on the computer.
That left her and Cole sitting at the table. For a second. Cole stood up, his coffee still in his hand. “Want to go sit out in the living area?”
“Sure.” The living area–lobby–common area was divided into a few seating sections, and she took her usual position at the couch by the windows.
She didn’t really want to sit. She wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted. That was a lie. She knew what she wanted; she just wasn’t sure what she should do.
Cole joined her, keeping a respectable distance between them, which meant she had a hope of stringing together a coherent sentence. And not jumping him. “Did you get your article done?”
“Yes. And I talked to my mother.” Now was as good a time as any to bring up the fact that she was going to take care of her house and visit her parents in the next week. The subject of her mother might also kill any lingering lust that was between them.
“Did you tell her about the baby?”
“Uh . . . no. Turns out my sister, Kailey— the one who got married at the end of summer—is pregnant. So I didn’t want to steal her thunder by announcing I was about to birth a test tube baby with a stranger and spend my days as a single mother.”
“Yeah, no one can top that,” he said dryly.
She made a short whining noise. “She was nice to me. If she’d been dry and disapproving like she can be, it would have been easy. I would have felt justified. But she said she missed me. Things seemed so normal. And now I’m going to have to wreck it. I’m starting to actually look pregnant.”
“You look beautiful,” he said.
“I’m roundish.”
“Stand up.” She cast him a withering glare but obeyed the command. “Turn to the side for me. Let me see.”
She pulled her stretchy top tight at the back, molding it over her stomach. “See?”
A strange smile crossed his handsome face and he leaned forward from his position on the couch, resting his palm flat on her midsection. “Beautiful,” he said.
His touch was tender, and she imagined it should evoke feelings of tenderness in her. But Cole’s touch was never that simple. He made her feel warm, made her feel cared for. He also made her feel like her blood was rushing close to the surface of her skin, like she might lose every rational thought in her head if he would just keep on touching her.
He was always too many things. A stranger, in some ways. The father of her baby. Now, her lover. Her jilted suitor.
“I’m glad you think so.”
“Beautiful doesn’t quite cover it. It’s too simple.”
She laughed. “Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
“What’s that?”
“That there’s nothing simple about this. There never will be, will there?”
He shook his head. “I doubt it.”
“That . . . might be okay.”
She put her hand over his and he turned his palm so that it was facing up. He grasped her fingers in his. “Well, it has to be. It’s all we have.”
“Good point.” She lowered their hands and released his, sitting back down on the couch, sure to keep some space between them. So she could think. “So, I told my mom that I would come and visit. And that works out because I was going to go make sure my house was in order anyway.”
“You’re going to go by yourself?”
“Uh . . . Yeah. You have work to do here. I know you can’t take a lot of time. And anyway, it’s not going to be any fun.”
“I said we’d do the thing with your family together, and I meant it. Unless you changed your mind.”
“I . . .” She laughed. “Well, what am I going to tell them?”
“What do you need to tell them? We’re having a baby. They don’t need to know anything else unless you want them to. The baby will be their grandchild, you’ll take care of him, I’ll take care of him. What else is there?”
“There’s that whole traditional family unit you’re so big on. It’s something you have in common with my parents, actually.”
“I don’t think I explained myself very well when I asked you. It’s not about being traditional, or even necessarily doing the right thing, though that is a factor for me. It’s about taking care of you. Taking care of the baby to the best of my ability.”
“Do we really have to be married to do that?”
“I . . . I think we might.” She opened her mouth to disagree, but he held up his hand to stop her. “If we aren’t a couple, that means . . . dating, possibly marrying other people. That means having separate households and lives.”
“But we have no reason to believe we shouldn’t have separate lives.”
His dark eyebrows shot up. “None? Because I think last night is pretty compelling evidence that we have some reason to be together.”
“Sex? That’s the best you’ve got?”
“When it comes to sex I’ve got the best you’ve had, so that has to mean something.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Bastard. That’s not remotely gentlemanly.”
“I proposed to you, so let’s figure that erases my more non-gentlemanly comments.”
“Except I don’t really consider your proposal overly gentlemanly either.”
“Because you’re stubborn,” he said.
“Yep. I am.”
“You’re also incredibly sexy.”
“Low. That’s not going to work. Not even a little bit.”
“Yes, it is,” he said, leaning in. “It’s working already.”
She leaned back. “No, it’s not.”
“If you take me with you to talk to your parents, you won’t have to sleep alone.”
She laughed. “Oh, yes I will.”
“We could sneak.”
“My mom h
as ears like a collie’s. You’ll never get away with it.”
He leaned in. “I still might go with you.”
She moved closer to him. “No way.”
“You going to stop me? Because I think that could be fun to watch.”
“I need some alone time,” she said.
“Answer this then. Do you want to sleep alone tonight?”
No. She absolutely didn’t want to sleep alone. She wanted to get naked with Cole again and feel his hot skin against hers. Run her fingers over every inch of his delicious, muscled body, then collapse in an exhausted, sweaty heap against his chest.
She shrugged. “Eh.”
“Oh, you are a liar,” he said, leaning in, his breath fanning against her cheek. “You want me,” he said, his lips hovering just above hers.
“I could take you or leave you,” she whispered.
A wicked smile curved his mouth. “I don’t think so, Kelsey.”
Her heart was pounding so hard she was dizzy. “I’m cool as a cucumber.”
He lifted his hand and traced her lower lip with his thumb. “No. You’re burning up, baby.”
She nipped his thumb. It was supposed to make him stop. Supposed to diffuse tension. It did neither. Instead, a heat flared up in his eyes, his expression intensifying. And she felt an answering flame burn bright and hot in her belly.
“Sorry,” she said, putting her hand over his, not quite sure what she was thinking. She pulled his thumb back to her lips and pressed a light kiss to his skin.
He rubbed his thumb over her tender skin and she shivered. She wanted him. No use pretending otherwise. He was right, she’d never had sex like the sex she’d had with him. She’d thought sex like that was a unicorn. Wonderful enough to write it into books, put it in movies and on posters, but completely and thoroughly made up.
But it was real. And Cole had showed her that. And dammit, she wanted more.
“Kiss me,” she said.
“Changing your mind?”
“No. I could resist if I wanted to. I just don’t want to.”
“Not convincing.”
“I am in complete control,” she said.
“Really? I’m not.”
Her heart squeezed tight. “You aren’t?”