She rushed into his open arms and buried her face against his chest, burrowing in like a small wounded animal. He felt her shoulders tremble.
“Stop doing that,” he said.
“What?”
“Crying.”
“I’m only crying a little bit,” she mumbled.
“Well, stop it.” His own lips felt wobbly. “You’re breaking my heart.”
“So that baby won’t change things?” The fear in her voice overwhelmed her earlier anger.
“Between us? No.”
“Good. I love you, Dad.”
“I love you, too, sweetie.”
After a quick squeeze, she ran off.
“You got yourself a real problem.”
Nick turned at the sound of Mort’s voice. “No fooling,” he answered.
“What happened?”
“With Laura?”
Mort nodded.
“The usual,” Nick replied. “Man is in town alone because his daughter decides to stay with her uncle and friend. Man is lonely and attracted to beautiful woman. She’s lonely, too. They end up in bed together. Unfortunately, they leave the condom on the bedside table. Unopened and unused.”
Mort studied Laura. “She’s beautiful. Stunning. I don’t blame you for being tempted. Brave of her to come today. She seems strong. Good.”
“She is.”
“What does she do in Accord?”
“She owns the bakery in town. It’s highly successful, a real going concern. She’s the one who makes those cinnamon rolls I picked up the other day.”
“The ones that were ambrosial?” Mort whistled. “You need to marry that woman.”
Nick set his jaw. He wasn’t getting married and he wasn’t getting to know the baby.
He looked around for Ty and saw him at the barbecue with Gabe. The man was getting a piece of his mind for inviting Laura here today.
* * *
SHADOWS SETTLED OVER the three women and Laura looked up. Emily and Ruby stood watching them.
Emily spoke up. “You’re really going to have a baby with my dad?”
Laura felt herself blush. Yes, she had made the foolish mistake of sleeping with him to start with and then had compounded it by not using birth control. She nodded.
“He’s not going to marry you.” The girl’s tone held a world of spite.
Laura bit her lip so she wouldn’t respond in kind. She wasn’t the only one who’d made a mistake that night. Her father had screwed up, too. It wouldn’t do to tell this child so, though. “I know. I’m raising the baby alone.”
“But Uncle Ty says we all have to get along so Ruby and I can get to know our cousins. I don’t want to get to know that cousin.” She crossed her arms, jutted one hip and gestured with her head toward Laura’s still-flat stomach. “I want to get to know Callie’s baby and Tammy’s baby, but not yours.”
“Emily!” Callie tried to take the girl’s arm, but Emily sidestepped out of arm’s reach.
“This is my baby,” Laura said. “Mine and mine alone. I’m not forcing it on anyone else, especially not you or your father.”
Under those odd blue-hazel eyes was a keen intelligence that was overlaid at the moment with unhappiness and anger. Emily turned to Ruby. “I have to be alone for a little while. Okay?”
Ruby shrugged. “Okay.”
Laura watched Emily go, knowing that she had made yet another enemy just because of being pregnant. Her indignation urged her to give the girl a piece of her mind, to tell her to take her spite elsewhere, but Laura wasn’t twelve years old and trying to keep her father all to herself. Nick hadn’t done a very good job of raising his daughter if she’d grown up to be so spiteful.
Or maybe it was just the shock that made her so mean.
Either way, Laura was glad that Nick Jordan wouldn’t be raising her child.
* * *
TAMMY HAD BEEN waiting for an opportunity like this. She couldn’t let it pass.
“Ruby? While Emily’s busy, take a walk with me.”
She stood and wandered to the bison corral, hoping that Ruby would follow.
She leaned her forearms on the top of the fence and bison slowly shuffled over, the biggest one, Hirsute, in the lead. Hirsute was her favorite, used to be her buddy when she stayed here on weekends with Ty.
That was before Ruby had shown up at the beginning of a blizzard and the three of them had been trapped in the ranch house for a weekend.
Near the end of that forced confinement, Ruby had shown Tammy a photograph of her mother. Tammy wanted to know why. She’d just been too shocked at the time to wonder about Ruby’s motives.
Tammy had taught school for a dozen years, young teenagers, until this past spring. She knew kids. She wouldn’t have thought that Ruby had a manipulative bone in her body.
But she could be wrong.
She wanted to know for sure.
She felt Ruby draw near and pet the animals. She also thought she sensed fear in the girl.
“Why did you show me that photograph of you and your mother?” Tammy knew that Ruby would pick up on exactly what she was talking about and what she was asking.
Ruby touched Hirsute’s forehead. “I wanted you to see how much you looked like my mom.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted you to see that my dad still loved my mom. He must have. Otherwise, why would he go out with someone who looked so much like her?”
“Why did I need to know that? I could have lived the rest of my life without that.”
“Because I wanted them to get together again so we could be a real family.”
She sounded miserable, as though she were on the edge of tears.
Tammy understood Ruby’s reason, but the shock had been unbearable for Tammy, and the ensuing break from Ty painful.
“And how is that going? Do you think Ty is still in love with your mom?”
Ruby’s lower lip trembled. “No. Dad doesn’t like talking to her. He doesn’t even like her at all.”
Tammy’s happiness shouldn’t come at someone else’s expense, but God, it felt amazing. Vindicating. Take that, Winona! She’d heard a lot about Winona through the grapevine and not much of it had been good.
“Did I hurt your feelings?” Ruby asked.
“Yes, you did.”
“I’m really sorry. I liked you a lot, but I really wanted my mom and dad together.”
“That’s okay. The truth would have come to light eventually. Maybe there was no easy way for me to learn that I looked so much like your mother.”
“So, like, I’m going to have a little brother or sister?”
Tammy nodded. “How do you feel about it?”
“I think it’s awesome. Dad says he’ll send me for a St. John Ambulance first aid and babysitting course so I’ll be able to babysit if you guys want to go out.”
Tammy tried to frown, but couldn’t. Easygoing Ty was taking charge, making sure everything would go his way, and it didn’t bother her as much as it should.
* * *
NICK STOOD AT the grill with Gabe and Ty.
“Having fun with your meddling?” he asked Ty, tension pouring from him in waves. “Do you know how badly you hurt Emily?”
“I didn’t, Nick. You got Laura pregnant. Obviously, you hadn’t told Emily about the baby. Why not?”
“I hadn’t found the right moment.”
“Big mistake.” Nick wasn’t sure which one of his brothers said that, but, God, what an understatement.
He turned on Ty. “Are you nuts, bringing us all here together? You knew there’d be trouble.”
“I’m sane for the first time in years.” He flipped a couple of burgers too hard and one of them fell apart. Bits of ground beef slipped through the grill. The fire flared. Ty spritzed it with a water bottle. “We don’t have an extended family. We don’t have cousins or grandparents or aunts and uncles. We’ve only got each other. It’s stupid that we haven’t worked harder to hold on to what we have.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Ty countered.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re madder than hell and Laura will pay the price.”
“You like to get even with people,” Gabe said. “To get revenge. You’re mad at Laura for getting pregnant. It takes two to tango, buddy. You were there, too.”
“I know that.” Nick’s patience was wearing thin. “You don’t know the whole story. She told me I owed her a baby. Then she made sure she got pregnant.”
“Did she rope you to a bed and have her way with you?” Gabe asked.
“No!”
“So she didn’t force you to have sex,” Ty said.
“No.” He sounded as grumpy as a two-year-old.
“Did she lie about being on the pill or somehow prevent you from using birth control?” Gabe asked. “Condoms are cheap and easy.”
“I know. I had a condom. I just...lost control in the heat of the moment.”
“Did you hear that, Gabe? The mighty Nick Jordan lost control. I gotta mark that on the calendar. It needs to go down in the history books.”
Nick didn’t understand Ty’s sarcasm, but for the first time wondered how it must have felt to Gabe and Ty to have Mom coddle him so much. Could Ty have been jealous? Was he still carrying traces of it around?
“I wonder if Laura knows how much power she has over you.” Ty flipped another burger too hard. “So are you as angry with yourself as you are with her?”
Culpability had always been hard to admit. In business, it was lethal. But Nick had to give Ty credit for trying to right old wrongs and for wanting to put the past to rest.
“Yes,” he conceded. “I’m angry with myself, too. Furious.”
“How are you and Laura going to work this out?” Ty asked. “Long-distance parenting?”
He’d already done that with Emily, hadn’t he? Not literally, but in essence. He might as well have worked on the moon instead of in the same city for all the good he’d done her as a father. Was that what he wanted to happen with his second child? But he hadn’t wanted a second child. Laura was getting what she wanted. Let her handle it. “I haven’t figured out the details yet.”
“You’re a whiz as a businessman, but you screw up where everything else is concerned.”
Nick’s dander rose. “I do my best.”
“Sometimes that’s not good enough.” Ty stared across the yard to the women huddled together talking.
“Are things any better with Tammy?” Nick asked, turning the tables on his brother. The night before, Ty had filled him in on the story with Tammy, Winona and Ruby. Talk about a soap opera.
“Not yet.”
Nick turned to stare at Ty. He’d never heard his easygoing brother sound so determined. He exchanged a glance with Gabe that said who knew Ty had it in him?
“I’m making sure things will turn out.” Ty annihilated another burger.
“Give me that.” Gabe snatched the utensil from Ty and took over the grill. “We didn’t have the best example in our parents, but we can make things work as adults.” He glanced over at Callie. “Even if it does take us a few years to finally figure ourselves out and make it happen. Don’t quit working on Tammy, Ty.”
He turned the girls’ hot dogs. “Nick, make things work with Laura. It took me years to realize it, but you two belong together.”
“Me and Laura?” Nick stared at Gabe as though he’d lost a few marbles. “Are you nuts? All we do when we get together is make a mess of things.” We fly too high, too hot, too fast. Nick had one failed marriage under his belt. In fact, he’d never had a single successful lasting relationship with a woman, but even he knew that marriage had to be based on more than just mind-blowing sex.
The girls were talking to the women now. Emily separated from the group and entered the stable.
Nick started to follow her, but Ty touched his arm. “Looks like she wants to be alone. She has a lot to think about.”
“Can she get hurt in there? Will the horses bite or kick her?”
“Relax, city boy. The horses know her and like her.”
“Here comes Laura,” Gabe said.
Nick had been concentrating on holding himself back from running after Emily to make sure she was all right. He turned to find Laura striding across the lawn toward him.
“Excuse me,” he said, approaching her, taking her arm and steering her around to the far side of the house so they could have this out privately.
“Were you coming over to give me shit?”
“No. I want to clarify a few things.”
“Like what?”
“I did not sleep around. This baby is yours.”
A sigh gusted out of Nick. “I know. I’m sorry.” He deeply regretted being so rash in his assumptions. On a level deeper than his anger, he knew how good Laura was.
She looked skeptical, as though she didn’t believe anything that came out of his mouth.
“I apologize,” he said. “I do believe the baby is mine.”
“Apology accepted.” She stepped away from him, almost as though she didn’t trust herself to get too close. “Second, I didn’t seduce you to get this baby. This isn’t how I wanted things. I wanted a whole family. I wanted a father who would be available.”
He still wasn’t sure about the seduction part. You owe me a baby. I’m ovulating. About being a father, though, he had plenty to say. “I can’t—”
She raised her hand to stop him. “I don’t expect you to be here for the baby. I know you, Nick. I know you follow no one’s agenda but your own.”
“I—”
Again she raised her hand. “Stop doing that,” he said. “It’s irritating the hell out of me.”
She ignored him and plowed on. Talk about someone following her own agenda.
“I said no to your money earlier, but I’m amending that now.” Surprise, surprise. He’d been chased more than once for his money.
“I will expect child support from you. I need to pay for day care while I work. We both lost control that night. I’m willing to raise the baby on my own, but you should pay something.”
It takes two to tango. Nick stared straight ahead. “I’ll have my lawyer contact you with a fair settlement.”
She walked away.
Well, that bit of cold business had been fun. Cold wasn’t a word he would have ever thought to use with regard to Laura, but she’d just about scarred him with her dry ice.
This was turning out to be one hell of a celebration.
Thank you, Ty.
Emily skidded around the corner of the house with Ruby.
“Dad, will you teach us how to play basketball with the new hoop?”
He smiled. Good old Emily. His gem. She’d recovered.
“Sure.”
“See?” Emily spoke to Ruby and they headed toward the front of the house. “I told you he’d say yes.”
“How was I supposed to know? He seemed like he was in a bad mood.”
Yeah, he had been. Life wasn’t going as it should. The mistakes he was making these days were irreparable. Babies couldn’t be put back where they came from. You couldn’t pretend they didn’t exist. Once a baby was made, there was no turning back.
The thought of having another one left him shaky and sick. He’d entered into fatherhood so cavalierly the first time around. Marsha had wanted a baby and he’d said yes. What did he care? He had a business to run for her father. That was all that mattered to him. Only now did he realize the responsibility parenthood was. Only when he’d almost lost his daughter did he understand how much she meant to him.
It wasn’t a job contract that had a clear start and finish. The job of parenting never ended. Once you started down that road, the responsibility never stopped.
* * *
AT DUSK, TY BUILT a bonfire in a sand pit and they toasted marshmal
lows and made s’mores and did all of the hokey family things that Emily thrived on.
His girl looked happy and that made Nick smile.
He glanced at Laura; in fact, he’d done too much of that today. The firelight shot her chestnut hair with red. Her top slid off one shoulder. He knew her skin was covered with freckles there. He wanted to bite them.
She laughed at something Callie said and Nick’s libido shot through the roof.
He fought the urge to swoop in, to pick her up and carry her into the woods and have his way with her, to push her against a tree, to have her wrap her strong arms and legs around him while he screwed her lovely body and the both of them into oblivion.
She laughed again and he wanted to kiss the huskiness in it, wanted to swallow it whole and carry it with him.
Laura did this to him—tied him into knots so convoluted and tight that he barely managed to control himself.
* * *
OLIVIA WATCHED THE fireworks that the town put on every summer in a small park with a bust of Ian Accord at its center. Ian, a railroad baron, had founded Accord in the late 1800s. His large Victorian home had eventually become the Accord B and B.
She hadn’t felt like celebrating today, but had wandered over as soon as dusk fell, excited despite herself to see the spectacle.
A rough hand grabbed her arm and, before she could do more than let out a startled cry swallowed by the boom of the fireworks, pulled her behind a tree. In the darkness, a head descended and lips covered hers.
She had never kissed Aiden McQuorrie, but she knew him. Knew his scent and his heat and the way his body felt.
He kissed her with authority and passion and she gave in, to him and to her desires, for just a few brief, tempting moments.
His big hand cupped her head and his lips spoke a wonderful language. His tongue sang a marvelous tune.
With his body, he pressed her against the tree and his knee moved between her legs, starting an ache there.
Aiden. My darling.
She’d dreamed about this. Reality was so much better.
He pulled away and whispered in her ear, his breath fanning her hair, “This is us. In the dark, we are not old or young or rich or poor. We are only ourselves, sweetheart.”
The temptation to give in overwhelmed her and she pulled his lips to hers for more.
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