Cowboy Baby Daddy

by Claire Adams

He grabbed a condom from his jeans and hurriedly tore it open, sliding it on with practiced ease. Then, he plunged inside of me, penetrating deep into my warmth, and we both groaned in unison.

  “Fuck,” I whimpered, unable to explain how perfectly he completed me.

  “Yeah,” Eric agreed breathlessly. He began to move his hips in a slow, circular motion that dragged at my pleasure points and had me clinging to him within moments. On each drawn-out upstroke, he seemed to bury himself deeper inside of me.

  I twisted my head to the side, pressing my face against his forearm where he was resting his weight on the tile floor. He slowly lowered himself down so that he could kiss me sloppily once again. The kiss was firmer than before, and I shivered as he filled my mouth with his tongue even while he filled my needy pussy with his thick cock.

  He pulled back from the kiss just when I was becoming breathless, but he didn't give me time to recover. Instead, he gave a few quick, hard thrusts into me, sending me spilling over into oblivion. I came hard, my whole body going slack against the rug.

  But that didn't stop Eric, who was still chasing after his own orgasm. I was shaking by the time he came, and I could hardly breathe as he fucked me through it all, ignoring how overstimulated I was, ignoring the way I gasped and clung to him. He spilled into me in seemingly endless waves of passion, and then finally fell still.

  We lay there for a long moment, until he finally dragged his head up, smirking at me even as his fingers slid between my legs. I sobbed and reached down to catch his wrist, knowing that I couldn't handle the way he was flicking the pad of his calloused thumb against my nub; it was too much.

  Fortunately, Eric seemed to understand that, because, after a few last, slow strokes, he removed his hand and rolled to the side, off the rug, and onto the tile. He didn't even flinch at the cold, though.

  I turned on one side, propping my head up on my hand so that I could stare at him. “We need to talk,” I said finally.

  Eric laughed and looked over at me. “Probably,” he agreed.

  “Come here, off the tile,” I said, scooting to the side so that he could lie on the rug as well. When he did so, it brought the two of us closer together, and I pillowed my head against his shoulder. Eric's fingers came up to stroke my hair.

  I breathed out a soft sigh and snuggled closer. “I'm not sleeping with Buck,” I said, feeling sleepy and sated.

  “I'm sorry I stormed in like that,” Eric said, sounding embarrassed and upset.

  I smiled. “Actually, it was kind of flattering. Like you wanted to duel for me or something.”

  Eric laughed. “This isn't the Middle Ages,” he said.

  “Not all chivalry is dead, though, is it?” I asked. “A girl can hope, anyway.”

  “For the sake of chivalry, I want to clarify: I never meant for this to be about just sleeping together,” Eric said seriously. “I wouldn't do that to you.” He paused. “I want something more than casual. I just want to do it on our terms, without the whole town butting in.”

  “So we need to figure out a way to make that work,” I said thoughtfully, already trying to come up with a solution. My heart was singing at the thought that he might want an actual relationship with me. I only hoped we could manage it.

  “We need to find a way to make that work,” Eric agreed. “Easier said than done, but maybe if we set up all our dates when I stop by the daycare anyway, and then we both drive separately to where it is? I don't want it to feel like we're sneaking around, but just for now, I want to keep things quiet if we can.”

  “All our dates?” I asked, feeling warmth blossom inside me.

  Eric pulled me closer, kissing my hair. “All our dates,” he affirmed. “I know a certain Italian restaurant that you seem to like, and there's a Thai food place that I've wanted to take you to as well.”

  I hummed a response and then rolled away. “For now, I guess you have to get back to Emma, though?”

  “Yeah,” Eric sighed. He brushed my hair back, tucking it behind my ear. “I'll see you bright and early on Monday morning, though. Maybe I'll bring donuts, to make up for barging in here.”

  I grinned. “Well, the sex in the front hall more than made up for your jealousy, but I wouldn't say no to donuts!”

  Eric grinned as well and leaned in to give me a last, chaste kiss before he started putting his clothes on.

  I closed the door behind him when he left and leaned back against it, wondering if this really could work out between us.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Eric

  I was in the middle of an appointment on Monday afternoon when my cell phone rang. I frowned, planning to ignore the thing. I could give them a call back afterward. But as soon as the phone quit ringing, it started up again. I glanced at Mrs. Allbright as I finished up the prescription that I was writing for her. “So you'll need to take two of these twice a day until they run out,” I instructed her. “But they'll print those instructions on the bottle when you go to fill the prescription. Let me know if you have any problems or if your symptoms get worse.”

  Mrs. Allbright looked doubtfully toward my bag, where my phone had started ringing for the third time. “Aren't you going to answer that, dear?”

  “Is it all right if I do?” I asked.

  “It sounds like it must be important,” she said.

  I nodded and grabbed my phone, stepping out onto the back porch to answer, giving me a little privacy. “Hello?”

  “Eric! Eric, thank God. It's my mother. I don't know what's wrong with her or why she hasn't called 911, but she called me and said she can barely breathe and that she has severe pain in her chest. I don't know what's wrong, but I can't go over there right now because I have the kids.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said. “Olivia, I need you to take a deep breath for me, okay? In and out, nice and easy. Where is she?”

  “At her house,” Olivia sobbed. “She's at her house, and Eric, I don't know what's wrong. It's so unlike her to complain about anything; it must be really serious.”

  “I'm on my way over there now,” I promised. “I'll keep you updated. For now, just stay where you are. I'm sure everything is fine; we'll just do a couple of tests to make sure.”

  The truth was, I wasn't sure that everything was fine. But worrying would only make Olivia panic even worse.

  I hung up the phone and headed back inside, grabbing my things. “I've received an emergency call. I have to go,” I told Mrs. Allbright. “You can pay me later for the visit.”

  “All right, go!” she said, waving her hands at me.

  I ran over to Jeannie's house, bounding up the front steps in a single leap. Fortunately, the front door was unlocked, and I tore inside. “Jeannie?” I called, running from room to room. I skidded to a halt outside the bedroom, panting slightly.

  Jeannie was laying back on her bed, her breath rattling from her lips. She coughed lightly. “Good to see you, doctor,” she panted.

  “What seems to be bothering you?” I asked, putting on my professional voice as I strode into the room. “Olivia said your lungs were hurting you and that it was difficult to breathe?”

  Jeannie nodded but didn't respond further.

  Her breaths were coming irregularly, I realized, and I started to do a full examination, or as full of one as I could do here. I strapped a breathing mask over her face, but it didn't seem to help as much as I would have liked.

  I frowned, feeling grim. I had a feeling I knew exactly what the issue was, and if I was correct, it wasn't a good sign. “Jeannie, I need you to come with me to Kingsfield to go to the hospital,” I told her as gently as I could. The woman's eyes widened, and I could tell that she was scared. I hurried to soothe her. “I just want to have some X-rays taken of your lungs,” I told her. “Just to see if we can figure out what's causing your pain.”

  Jeannie's face clouded, and I thought for a second that she was going to argue. But she must have been in a decent amount of pain because, eventually, she nodded and let m
e help her up from the bed. I wondered if we would be better off taking an ambulance, but she was able to walk under most of her weight, although her breaths were still uneven and rattled.

  Besides, an ambulance wasn't going to be able to help her more than I could. I had a feeling that the problem was that she had tumors growing in her lungs. Only a CT scan could tell; we would be able to see the vessels of the tumors and be able to go from there.

  I swallowed hard, wishing that it hadn't come to this. Maybe if I'd been a little more insistent about the chemo treatments, we could have avoided this. Or at least delayed it, giving Olivia a little more time with her mother.

  I drove too fast on the way to the hospital, but fortunately, I wasn't pulled over. I used my connections to get Jeannie in immediately for the X-rays, doing my best to fill out her paperwork based on the information I already had in her file, which fortunately had been in my doctor's bag since I'd been planning on having another talk with Olivia soon anyway.

  I stood up as one of the doctors made his way over to me. “Dr. Halsey, good to see you,” I said, reaching out to shake his hand.

  “I wish I had better news for you,” Halsey said grimly. “It's exactly what you suspected: the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes, and the tumors in her lungs are growing. Pretty soon, they'll be large enough that she won't be able to breathe properly.”

  I closed my eyes and pressed my fingertips against my eyelids. “All right,” I said. “What do you suggest we do? Chemotherapy?” Halsey was one of the leading oncologists in the state; if anyone was going to be able to come up with a solution, it was him.

  Unfortunately, he looked grim. “There's not much that we can do at this stage, Eric,” he said quietly. “Even with chemo, the chances are slim to none that she'll survive for much longer.”

  I winced. “Could we surgically remove the tumors?” I asked, even though I knew that wasn't a viable option at this stage.

  Sure enough, Halsey sighed. “We could try to remove them,” he said. “There's a chance that could make things worse for her body because it would have to fight off possible infection as well as the cancer. But even if we were successful in removing them, I'm afraid the cancer is in her blood at this point. Nothing is stopping it from coming back or spreading. It would only be a matter of time before we have to face the high likelihood of death again.”

  I sighed. “I know,” I admitted. “I just hoped there was something else that we could do.”

  Halsey gave me a strange look. “This isn't the first patient that you've lost,” he said slowly. “Why are you so fixated on this one?”

  I grimaced. “I lost my wife to cancer a couple of years ago,” I admitted. “And Jeannie is the mother of my…of a good friend of mine.” I stopped just short of calling Olivia my girlfriend. We might have agreed that we were going to keep dating, albeit in secret, but I still remembered her insistence on not labeling this, on not putting undue stress on the relationship.

  “I'm sorry to hear that,” Halsey said sincerely, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder. He paused. “Where is her daughter?” she asked. “Her mother's been asking.”

  “Olivia runs a daycare,” I told him. “She's got kids at the moment so she couldn't get away. That's why she sent me here with her mom.”

  I knew that I needed to call Olivia, but I could only imagine how that conversation would go. Plus, I knew that she would have no choice but to bring Emma, but I didn't want Emma exposed to hospitals and death. She had been too young to remember everything that had happened when Emily had died, and I wanted to keep it that way. Keep her innocence, in a sense.

  But we didn't have a choice; it wasn't like she could go back with Nana for the day.

  Fortunately, Olivia made the decision before I even had a chance to call her. She burst through the doors of the hospital looking distressed but bravely staving off her tears. Emma came with her, clinging to the woman's hand, looking around in fascination.

  “Hey,” I said, moving to intercept them.

  Olivia gave me a brave smile and looked down at Emma. “Harlan went back home for the afternoon. Sorry to bring Emma here, but I had to see Mom.”

  “I know,” I soothed. “Come here, let's see if Emma can stay with one of the nurses while you and I go in to see her.”

  The nurse was more than happy to watch Emma, and Emma was more than happy to stay with her, once she was promised coloring pages, a sucker, and (if she was really good) a balloon. I breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that she'd chosen today of all days to cooperate.

  “What's happening with Mom?” Olivia asked as we hurried away from the nurse's station. “She's all right, isn't she?”

  I took a deep breath and pulled her into an empty room, closing the door behind us. “She's awake and aware, but she's not doing good,” I told Olivia. “The cancer has spread, and she's having a difficult time breathing. At this point, there's nothing else that we can do except make her comfortable.” I scowled, knowing that I shouldn't take my anger out on her, but I was frustrated. “You know, if the two of you hadn't ignored my warnings, we could have at least extended her life for a little while, if not managed to save her.”

  Olivia stared at me, her mouth falling open. “Excuse me?” she asked.

  “She's dying, Olivia. And soon. It didn't have to be this way. If you'd cared enough, you would have convinced her to take care of this when it first became an issue. And don't try to tell me you didn't know that it was this severe; you moved to Tamlin because you knew exactly how severe it was.”

  Olivia was silent for a long moment, tears welling in her eyes. “You ass,” she finally whispered.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Olivia

  I couldn't believe what I was hearing from Eric. My mother lay dying in a hospital bed, and he was blaming me for it? As though I hadn't done everything that I could.

  “Maybe if you had done your job and convinced her that she needed treatment, we wouldn't be here!” I found myself shouting. “Rather than have me try to talk to her, with my utter lack of medical experience, maybe you should have found some way to convince her. I'm sure you have experience with stubborn patients. But you didn't even try!”

  “As a doctor, I ultimately have to leave it up to the patient,” Eric snarled. “Which is what I did. I laid out all the facts, I told her how serious this was, and I even reminded her that it wasn't just herself that she'd be hurting if she didn't get the treatment. What else was I supposed to say to her? I don't know her the way that you do; you should have been able to find a way to reason with her.”

  It was like a slap in the face; basically, what he was implying was that Mom didn't care enough about me to want to prolong her life. I knew that wasn't the case. I remembered what Mom had said about chemo ruining a person's quality of life. She just wanted to make sure that if she was alive, she was able to do everything that she wanted to do, rather than just hanging around as an empty husk, unable to work or garden or do any of the other things that she loved.

  The fact that Eric would dare imply otherwise made me even more upset.

  “Well, I can't force someone to receive treatment either, even if she is my mother,” I snapped. “I did my best to convince her, but, as you said, ultimately it was her decision.”

  “You gave up too easily,” Eric said. “How many times did you even talk to her? You didn't want to have the conversation; you were perfectly happy just pretending that the cancer didn't exist, just like she was.”

  “I tried, over and over again to talk with her. She didn’t want to deal with it.” I asked. “Again, I don't have any sort of medical background. I never had all the details on what was wrong with her, all the facts. I didn't know how far along we were or what might happen to her if she didn't get chemo, not in anything more than an abstract sense. What was I supposed to do?”

  “You don't have to have a medical background to know that cancer often leads to death,” Eric said exasperatedly, rolling his eyes at me.

>   I was silent for a long moment, tears still streaming down my face. I wiped at them, but more just took their place. I didn't understand why we were fighting about this. I could understand if there was still that unresolved tension between us, but I had thought that we had solved that. I thought we were okay. I would have expected him to comfort me. That was why he had been the first person I'd called after Mom complained to me: not because Eric was her doctor but because Eric was my friend. Or so I had thought.

  I didn't know where this mean and angry-spirited man had come from. I had never seen Eric like this before.

  But it's not like I know him well, I realized. We'd been on a couple dates; that was all. If he'd just wanted to sleep with me, it would have been in his best interest to be nice on those dates. Look where it had got him. But maybe this was what he was really like.

  I didn't want to believe it, but a part of me was increasingly sure that the kind, charming Eric that I'd previously thought I'd known had been just a façade. I swallowed hard and shook my head.

  “I did the best I could,” I repeated, for my own benefit as well as his. “Apparently that wasn't good enough.”

  Eric didn't say anything.

  “Where is she?” I asked. “I can see her, can't I?”

  “She's down this hall, room 118,” Eric told me. “She's been asking for you.”

  “And there's nothing that we can do at this point?” I asked, hating the desperate note that crept into my voice. But this is where we were at at the moment. I was desperate to figure out some way to miraculously save her, even though apparently all hope was gone.

  “The chemo can't help at this point; the cancer has advanced too much,” Eric said dully. “We could try to remove the tumors from her lungs, but it would be a risky operation and a risky recovery, and at this point, the cancer is already in her blood. There's nothing we can do.”

  I folded in on myself, wishing stupidly that he had lied to me, that he had told me that there was something that we might be able to do. I had never felt so helpless in my life.