by Maisey Yates
“Exactly,” she said.
She looked down at her hands and began to pick at her fingernails. “I just want to do the right thing. I don’t know if a relationship with him is in the future. In fact, I’m sure that it isn’t. But I do need to get to know the father of my baby, and work out the simplest way for us to share custody.”
She purposefully pushed Ace’s angry words from earlier today out of her mind. She wasn’t going to think about that. Wasn’t going to think about his commands and promises and intent. About that hastily issued marriage proposal.
Marriage demand, more like.
“You know you can stay here,” Colton said. “Don’t feel like you have to jump into anything. Even though I’m an ass, I’m here for you.”
“I know. Except this is something that Ace and I need to work out.”
He pushed his hand back through his hair. “I don’t like this at all. This you-growing-up thing. I’m afraid you’re going to get yourself hurt. That your life is going to be difficult now and I... I don’t want that for you, Sierra.”
“Well, look at it this way, this is kind of the worst-case scenario. And I’m pretty much living it already. What else is there to worry about? I mean, maybe a drug problem, except I’m pregnant. So I’m not even going to be drinking anymore.”
“Don’t joke,” he said, sounding even wearier than she felt. “It has been one hell of a weird few weeks and it just got weirder. There’s no insane scenario you could suggest that I wouldn’t believe was entirely possible right about now.”
“I guess. But look, this is why I wanted to tell you. And this is why I want things to work out with Ace. I mean, not work out, work out with him, I just mean I need things to be civil. I’m not going to do to this baby what Dad did to Jack. I’m not going to hide.”
Colton breathed in deeply, leaning up against the side of the house. “So, are you going to tell Mom and Dad?”
“Oh, hell no. I’m going to hide it from them.”
In spite of himself, he laughed. “How long do you think you can get away with that?”
“I don’t know. Celebrities seem to hide baby bumps pretty effectively. I thought I’d invest in a lot of baggy tops.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Don’t uh-huh me! You don’t know what it’s like. You’re all perfect and stuff. You never make mistakes. The rest of us are a damn disaster.”
“You’re not a disaster. And you just said you weren’t going to hide things anymore.”
“I meant more in the general sense. The overall sense. With people that I trust, and who don’t terrify me.”
“Is that where I went wrong? I don’t terrify you enough? Were you not as afraid of my wrath as you should have been?”
She lifted her shoulder. “It’s difficult to say. Actually mostly because I wasn’t thinking about you at all when this stuff with Ace went down.”
“Okay, well, fair enough.”
“Sorry the world doesn’t revolve around you.” She took a step forward, stretching her arms out. Colton returned the favor, pulling her in. She rested her head on his chest, wishing suddenly that she were a little girl again, and a bit of affection from her older brother was all it took to eradicate any fear or uncertainty she might be experiencing. “I love you,” she said. “I’m really sorry to add all this to the craziness.”
He released his hold on her. “This isn’t about me. It’s about you. But...still I think it would be best if we didn’t tell Natalie right now.”
Sierra frowned. “You would keep a secret from your fiancée?”
“If I had to. I mean, it’s for her mental health. And, as a result, mine. Trust me. She and Mom are going nuts planning this thing.”
“I know. Madison told me.”
“Does Maddy know about the baby?”
She nodded. “Yes. She was there when I figured it out.”
He nodded. “Well, thanks for telling me. I guess. I’m glad that I know what’s going on in your life. I just wish it were something a little easier for me to fix.”
“Yeah, life was easier when you could fix things for me.”
He forced a smile. “No kidding.”
“Except back then you would have gotten in trouble for swearing in front of me,” she said.
“Yeah, Mom would have yelled at me, and probably cussed at me while she did.”
Sierra laughed. “That sounds about right.”
Those memories seemed so easy now. Part of a simpler time. Of course, while she had been living it, it hadn’t seemed particularly simple. She had never felt like her life was easy. But she was starting to see how easy it had been. She hadn’t really appreciated it until it was gone.
She was such an idiot.
“If you need to borrow my truck,” he said, “I suppose that’s what older brothers are for.”
She smiled. “I have my own truck. Anyway, I have, like, a few duffel bags full of clothes and that’s it. I left everything else at Mom and Dad’s. I don’t have much. I guess that has to change, too.” She had a sudden, sobering thought. “I’m going to need a bunch of stuff for a baby. Oh, dammit. I’m really not ready to be this much of a grown-up.”
Colton looked stricken for a second. “Hell, I’m not sure I’m ready to be this much of a grown-up. I’m definitely not ready for you to be one.”
“Is that so?”
“Nothing, and I mean nothing, makes me feel older than realizing how old you are. Throwing in the fact you’re going to be a mom...”
Her insides crumpled. An intense, and not entirely unpleasant sensation overwhelmed her and she swayed slightly. “Oh, my,” she said, putting her hand flat on her stomach. “A mom. I didn’t... I guess I’m going to be a mom.” She squeezed her eyes shut tight. “Things can still go wrong,” she said. And she wasn’t sure whether it was a prayer for them to be okay, or for it all to go away.
“Sure. That’s life, I guess. It could always go wrong. But things could go right, too. I don’t really have any wisdom for you. Except if I know one thing about you, Sierra West, it’s that you are the strongest woman I know. You might even be the strongest of all of us.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You’re standing up for what you believe in. You told Dad just what you think of him. You left when it was hard. Not when it was easy, like Gage. Not just for yourself.”
“Gage is kind of an easy target at this point,” she said, feeling a bit badly how often and how easily they maligned their long-lost brother.
“Well, he’s not here to deflect the shots.”
“Fair enough.”
They stood there, just staring at each other for a moment. She felt it then. The passing of time. How much things had changed. The fact that they were going to change even more. Her entire life had become a spin-off of the life she’d been living before. And this was just one more spin-off into a different direction. She had no idea how this had become her world. No idea at all.
But it wasn’t going to become any less surreal standing there on her brother’s porch. She needed to make arrangements for the move. Needed to get her things packed.
And then she was going to have to go to work.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SIERRA HAD TEXTED ACE late the night before to let him know that she would be by his place early the next morning. No sleeping until noon, the very short message had read.
Well, he wasn’t sleeping at all right now, much less until noon.
The revelation about the baby had just about knocked him on his ass. But once he had regained his composure, he had found a single-minded focus. This was his second chance. He was going to be a father again.
He walked out onto the front porch and stared out across his property, and at the pastures beyond the grove of trees in the front. At t
he mountains past that, pale blue sentries standing guard over the perimeter. He had never stopped being a father, he supposed. Whether or not she was with him, Callie was his daughter. But he was ready to have another child in his life. He felt that, so intensely, so fiercely, it had shocked him.
Because when he had left Texas and any hope of reclaiming his daughter behind, he had thought he’d left any desire to ever have family again.
Apparently not. Apparently that desire still existed in him. Fierce. Almost overwhelming. He leaned against the railing, pressing down on his forearms until they ached. Sierra was going to see things his way, eventually. He would be damned if he had one more broken family. That certainty was another thing that surprised him.
If he had been given a quiz only twenty-four hours ago he would have said emphatically that he had no desire to get married ever again. After all, in recent years he would never have classified himself as a traditional man.
Sure, when Denise had come to him to say she was pregnant, he had acted like every good pastor’s son would.
Because he had been a good pastor’s son, and he’d had to make things right. They had fornicated and all of that, so he had been honor bound to make an honest woman out of her. So he had.
Now that he had spent the past few years almost making a career out of fornicating, he saw things a little bit differently.
Or he’d supposed he did. Because the minute Sierra had told him about the baby, he had known there was only one choice.
Yes, but that’s to protect you and the baby.
Sure, but also, he couldn’t exactly imagine leaving Sierra West an unwed mother. The town would crucify him.
There were a lot of reasons they had to get married. And she would come around to his way of thinking soon enough. She wasn’t thinking clearly about the stigma, he figured as much. Because, sure, it was tempting to believe that they lived in the twenty-first century and people were more modern about these kinds of things. But while that might be true in the wider world, it was definitely different in a small town like this. Or maybe things were different. Maybe people simply wore their opinions a little more transparently. And it would be especially brutal when everybody knew your name. That was the truth of the matter for both of them. Everyone knew him either as the bartender or the pastor’s son. Everyone knew Sierra West, golden girl of Copper Ridge.
If they didn’t take control of the rumor mill, it would grind them up and bake them into bread.
But she would come around. She had to.
He heard the rumble of an engine and he looked down the longer driveway, just in time to see the hood of a cherry-red pickup barreling his direction. Behind the wheel was that bouncy blonde who had turned his bar, and his life, on its axis. Sierra West was trouble, he had known it from the beginning. He just hadn’t realized how much trouble she would be.
She pulled up to the front of the house and killed the engine, getting out and stepping down from the oversize vehicle. She was a funny little thing with her gigantic truck. Another one of those rich cowgirl things he had a tendency to be hard on. A big old truck purchased by Daddy, to pull some tricked-out horse trailer full of pink tack.
But his judgmental view of her wasn’t exactly going to be helpful to his cause. So he was going to have to knock it off at some point.
“You came,” he said. “And here I half expected you to scamper off into the mountains.”
“Nah,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I’m not one for scampering.”
“Are you sure? You seem exactly like the type who would scamper.”
She crossed her arms and tilted her head to the side, cocking her hip out. “Oh, really? And why exactly is that?”
“Because you’re small. And you have the kind of bounce in your step that would lend itself to a scamper if the need ever presented itself.”
She nodded, blond hair spilling forward like a river of gold. “I see. Well, it’s not an unadorable attribute, I will admit.”
“You yourself are not unadorable,” he said.
He was gratified when her cheeks turned pink. That was when he realized just how he had to play this.
If he wanted this arrangement with her to work, he definitely needed to be a little nicer. He knew how to flirt. He knew how to be nice. All of that came easy. At least, on a casual day-to-day basis with people he interacted with on a surface level.
Sure, things had been more challenging with Sierra from the get-go, but that was only because he had been fighting the urge to strip her clothes off of her and satisfy his burning lust.
But his lust was satisfied. Curiosity dealt with. At this point, it should be easy. He should just treat her like he would any other woman he was trying to get into bed. Only, with her, instead of being after sex, he was after a marriage license. The very thought made him sick to his stomach. But he was going to have to get over it.
“That’s very nice of you,” she said, looking at him suspiciously. “Are you afraid I’ll get all emotional and cry if you’re mean to me?”
“Not an unfounded fear.”
“Right, because you’ve been through this before.”
He nodded slowly. “I guess I have. But it doesn’t really feel like it. That was thirteen years ago.”
He didn’t like thinking about how long ago that was. Because then he had to come to terms with the fact that the girl he still thought of as his daughter was a teenager now. A teenager he never got to see. It brought into sharp relief all of those missing years. Yeah, it was better not to think of it at all. “Besides, I hear every pregnancy is different.”
“Great. So, neither of us really knows what we’re doing.”
“I would say that’s an understatement.”
“You could lie a little bit. You can tell me you’re an unofficial expert on women and pregnancy and childbirth.”
“Sorry,” he said, knowing he didn’t sound it. “I forgot to tell you that I’m not just a bartender. I moonlight as an ob/gyn.”
“Oh my gosh, that would be the world’s worst pickup line.”
“I’m above cheap lines like that, Sierra West. I am much smoother. As you well know.”
She cleared her throat. “Okay, that I do know is true.”
“A little too smooth for both of us, it turns out.”
She wandered to the back of her truck and opened the tailgate. “I don’t know. Why are we crediting all of this to your skills? Maybe I’m the one who’s smooth.”
He leaned against the bed of the pickup. “You think so?”
“Maybe I’m the one who seduced you.” She planted her hands on the open tailgate, looking up at him, a little bit of glitter back in her blue eyes.
Right now, it was almost easy to believe that she wasn’t moving in with him because she was having his baby. It was almost easy to believe they were just having a normal conversation, like any other they’d had for the past few weeks. Entertainment mixed with tension and a hint of unease. The kind that was electrifying. As exciting as it was terrifying.
But that would have only been possible three weeks ago. Before they had actually had sex. Before she had found out she was pregnant with his baby. Before they had made mistakes that had irrevocably changed the course of their lives.
So no, this was not a normal moment.
“I guess we’ll never know,” he said. “Want to give me your stuff?” He rounded to the back of the pickup truck and saw that the bed was empty other than two large bags with Sierra embroidered across the side in pink. “Is this it?”
She nodded. “Yes, and just so you know I’ve had those bags since I was twelve.”
“Hey, I’m not judging.” Though he kind of had been.
She shoved her hands in her pockets. “I left a lot of my clothes and things at my parents’ house when I moved out. I mean,
my dad bought most of it, and even though it’s mine, I didn’t feel right about taking any of it. It just felt weird. It all feels weird. And obviously I took my truck, and my phone, but I didn’t really know how to get by without them. I’m able to pay my phone bill...”
“Look, I know that I made you feel like you had to justify everything to me. Because I was a prick. But you don’t have to explain yourself. I’m sorry that I put you in the position where you felt like you had to.”
“Have you been body snatched?” she asked, tilting her head to the side.
“Not that I’m aware of. But then, would I tell you if I had been?”
“Yeah, you’ve definitely been body snatched. You’re being a lot nicer.”
“Again, just trying to avoid the tears of a pregnant woman.”
Or he was trying to change the dynamic between them so she wouldn’t act like marriage was tantamount to getting thrown into a rabid badger den. But he wasn’t going to cop to that. Not while he was still a rabid badger in her eyes.
She reached into the back of the truck and grabbed one of her duffel bags. He took it from her, then picked up the other one. “I’m going to make myself useful. You don’t carry anything. You’re in a delicate condition and all that.”
She snorted. “Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, if that means you’re going to carry my stuff for me, that’s fine. I can’t drink, so there had better be other perks.”
“If memory serves, there aren’t that many.”
She winced. “Well, that sucks. I’ve never done anything for nine months,” she said, following him as they began to walk in the direction of the original house. “I’ve never even kept a hairstyle for that long. And I have to be pregnant for nine months? About the only thing I’ve ever made that serious a commitment to is barrel racing.”
“I wish I could tell you it wouldn’t be a big deal.”
She crunched her nose up. “But experience tells you differently?”