Boot Scootin' Secret Baby. Natalie Patrick
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perpetually husky, so that even when he asked someone to pass the sugar, it sounded like an indecent proposal.
She laid her palm across the open V above her breasts. Her skin felt damp. Her head swirled. No mere mirage could make her feel this way.
Slowly, she opened her eyes. He loomed real and dangerously sexy before her. Cub Goodacre was here in the flesh.
Glistening golden and tinged with red light, he stood on her doorstep. He pulled his hat from his head and pushed his long, blunt fingers through his closely cropped black hair. “Looks like a perfect night for a few fireworks, wouldn’t you say?”
After three years, he’d hardly changed at all. His body still looked as hard and exquisite as any marble statue, his face rough-hewn as any jagged piece of South Dakota Badlands. The glittering sparks reflected in the depths of his ice-blue eyes, made them seem bottomless and cold—yet lit by some distant incandescent fire.
She didn’t need to look long into those eyes to know that he was angry. Good, she thought, she was angry, too. She had three years of anger and disappointment and pain in her. If he expected to let her have it for what she’d done to him, well, he’d get as good as he gave—and then some.
This wasn’t the old Alyssa he was dealing with now. This was Alyssa the strong independent thinker. Alyssa the savvy, charming businesswoman. Alyssa the mother.
Her stomach lurched. Jaycie. She whipped her head around to make sure the baby remained in Yip Cartwright’s capable grasp before she turned to Cub again. The best defense is a good offense, she told herself, going on attack.
“You have some nerve showing up here, Goodacre.” She planted her hands on her hips, hoping her moist palms would not stain her linen outfit and give her nervousness away. “I’d ask you what you wanted but that might give you the impression I give a damn.”
He had no answer for that. Clearly, he hadn’t reckoned on meeting up with anything but the docile, doting girl she had once been. He studied her from beneath the sharp angles of his dark eyebrows.
Taking advantage of his hesitation, she decided to make a hasty retreat. Yes, she would have to see him sometime, and she would have to find a way to tell him about their child, but not here, not now. She lunged for the door but as her hand closed over the big brass door handle, Cub closed in on her.
The heat of his body pressed down over her. Her racing heart stilled as a shudder crept up her spine. The fervor of the crowd and the rumblings of the fireworks faded in her ears; her entire world narrowed to just this moment, just this man.
“Whoa there, Alyssa Cartwright.”
She tensed at the name, his veiled accusation of her betrayal in proclaiming their marriage a fraud. His callused palm closed over the soft skin of her hand, stopping her from opening the door.
“I didn’t come out here to be treated to a view of your backside.” Cub’s chest rose and fell. The scent of her hair, her skin, her nearness filled his lungs and his very being. He held it trapped inside him as he fought to keep his cool exterior. He clenched his jaw and lowered his voice to a rasping, bedroom growl. “Not that I don’t thoroughly enjoy the view.”
It was no lie. The sight of Alyssa again startled his senses in ways he hadn’t thought possible. Her hair, her eyes, her willowy body aged into womanhood with a fullness and rounding like ripe fruit about to burst from its skin, all tempted him. He had no way to prepare himself for the reality of seeing her again, of being so close neither of them could move or even breathe without the other feeling it.
He had no way of preparing himself for the woman he now saw, full of grit and a grace under pressure he hadn’t suspected lurked beneath the blushing sweetness of her innocence. A woman who, it seemed, had no other response to him but scorn.
Something primal in him wanted to make her pay for that—not to hurt her, but to put things on equal footing between them.
“Listen, Goodacre.” She tossed back her hair, keeping her face forward. “One scream from me and you’re off this ranch on the next skyrocket.”
“Ain’t scared of that,” he murmured into the thick warmth of her hair. “I’ve ridden hotter things. Ridden ’em hard and fast, till I reckoned we’d both of us burn up from the heat and fury.”
He heard her pulling in a long, soft gasp and he smiled.
“Remember, Alyssa?”
Her spine went rigid. She turned her profile to him, her voice as dry as sparks when a knife scrapes flint, her words sharpened by her strangled emotion. “I remember, Cub. I also remember thinking I’d nearly drown in my own tears when I realized that for all its fire, that passion had only been a convenient lie.”
He should have seen that one coming, but he hadn’t. He knew she’d used his going back on the circuit to get herself an annulment—marriage under false pretenses, she said. But until this moment, he hadn’t understood that she thought that meant nothing they’d shared had been true or valid. The realization stuck low in his gut and sent searing pain through his entire body. A lie—that’s how she summed up what, for him, had been the pivotal experience of his life.
“I...I can’t have this discussion with you now,” she said.
The pleading in her tone, joined with the stark devastation he felt at learning how the woman who held his heart saw him, made him step back.
A liar. He’d been called worse but it had never sliced into his soul as Alyssa’s accusation did.
The lever of the door handle clicked quietly.
Somewhere behind them a band blared to accompany the frenzied finale to the fireworks show.
She pushed the door open. “Call the house tomorrow and maybe we can set up a time to talk.”
“No.”
“What?” For the first time, she turned to face him.
He forced his gaze to lock with hers. Don’t back down now, he told himself. He’d come here for a reason, to purge her from his system or at least ensure she wouldn’t be there to jinx his all-important next ride. Despite the pain just standing here caused him, he wasn’t about to go with that mission left unaccomplished. “We both know a busted-up bull rider like me ain’t good enough to be husband nor lover to a woman like you. No reason to pretend otherwise.”
Something flickered in the liquid pools of her hazel eyes. Her gaze denied his words but her lips did not.
He nodded and glanced down at his hat in his hand. “But I won’t be dismissed by you Alyssa. Not this time.”
“I never dismissed you.”
“No, you just had me annulled.”
Her straight white teeth sank into the glistening flesh of her lower lip. He kind of got the notion she wanted to say something, but didn’t have the courage.
Guess that meant she did need him, after all; she needed him to keep her from saying something her eyes told him she might regret. “You recall the last words you said to me, darlin’?”
She tilted her chin up but said nothing.
“You said, ‘If you can’t accept my help to support a ranch, then we aren’t partners. If we aren’t partners, then in my eyes we aren’t married and we never were. From this day out, you are not my husband, Cub Goodacre.”’
Alyssa’s gaze never faltered, though her voice did tremble as she said, “And do you recall your last words to me?”
“You know I do,” he forced the words hard through his teeth.
“You said you’d come home to me when you’d proved yourself worthy.” Moisture shimmered in her eyes but not a single tear fell, as if she willed them not to betray her. “If that’s why you’re here now, Cub, I have to tell you, too much has happened since you left. It’s too late.”
That’s