Cowboy's Baby. Victoria Pade
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her big brother taking liberties with her time.
“What do you have to do?” Matt challenged.
For the life of her, Kate couldn’t think of anything except that she wanted to strangle her brother.
Then Brady piped up. “It’s all right. Just draw me a map. I’m sure I can find the places myself.”
It was clear that Brady had noticed she didn’t want to play tour guide, and Kate not only knew she was being rude again, but she could feel the tension in the room because of it.
Yet Matt still wouldn’t let her off the hook. “Kate doesn’t have anything planned she can’t rearrange. Do you?”
All eyes were on her, and she knew her next words would set the tone for the rest of Brady’s visit. If she refused, everyone would be aware of just how much she didn’t want to be around him. They would all want to know why—especially since she and Brady had seemed to hit it off so well in Las Vegas. And her entire family would be embarrassed by her behavior and feel awkward whenever everyone was together.
But if she didn’t refuse she was going to end up spending the whole next day with Brady. Alone with Brady. And all the unsettling things merely being around him did to her.
Maybe strangling Matt wasn’t harsh enough punishment.
Kate took a breath and opted for keeping the peace and maintaining appearances. “Sure I can rearrange things. No problem. I’d be happy to show you around,” she said without enthusiasm.
“Great,” Brady answered much the same way.
With nothing more to be said, Kate finally told everyone good-night and went to her rooms, thinking of ways to get even with her brother as she did.
That was still what she was thinking about an hour later when a soft tap sounded on her door.
“If this is you, Matt, you’re dead meat,” she muttered to herself.
She’d undressed by then, and before answering the knock she pulled on a navy-blue velvet robe over the supersize T-shirt she was wearing to bed. But she didn’t fasten it, because she assumed her late-night visitor was her brother and he’d seen her in her sleep-wear innumerable times before. He’d probably come to gloat about his victory or chastise her for not being more warm and friendly to Brady, she thought, letting the robe hang open to her ankles and padding in bare feet to fling open her door.
But it wasn’t Matt standing in the hall outside. Or any of her other brothers, either. It was Brady.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, fumbling instantly with the open sides of her bathrobe to pull them around her.
But not before Brady’s gaze dropped enough to take in the Wyoming Women are Wild, Wicked and Willing printed across the front of her shirt—a gag Christmas gift from Matt that caused just the corners of Brady’s mouth to tilt upward.
Kate yanked the tie belt around her waist and tied it to make sure she was wrapped up good and tight.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Brady said in a hushed voice, obviously to keep his impromptu visit clandestine. He raised his chin, pointing in the direction of the room behind her. “Can I come in?”
She wanted to say no and avoid more of what it was doing to her to merely think about having him in her rooms, alone, this late at night, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and a bathrobe.
But he had a manila envelope in one hand and enough of an air of formality about him to let her know he was only there on business.
Business she needed to attend to.
So Kate stepped back and motioned him into the sitting room.
He didn’t hesitate to come in, but he did take a quick glance up and down the hall a split second before. And he made sure to close the door behind him as soon as he could. Very quietly.
That spicy scent that had caught her attention at dinner wafted in after him, and Kate had the urge to close her eyes and take a few deep breaths. But she resisted. She also tried not to notice how Brady seemed to fill the room just by his presence in it, tried not to feel the warm rush of something that seemed dangerously like excitement.
But trying and succeeding were two different things.
Brady held up the manila envelope. “Divorce papers. As promised,” he said, as if he’d brought a treasure map they’d both been searching for.
It didn’t feel good to her, though, and Kate didn’t know why.
“I wanted to go over them with you,” he continued. “To make sure you know what’s in them. Not that they’re complicated, but just to make sure we’re clear on everything.”
“Okay,” she said, hearing the clipped tone of her voice and resolving to amend it. The divorce had been at her insistence, she reminded herself. It was what she wanted. It was the logical thing to do.
And the baby? a little voice in the back of her mind asked.
But she didn’t know yet how she was going to handle letting Brady know about the baby, and she certainly wasn’t inclined to blurt out the news to him right then.
“Why don’t you sit down?” she invited primly, nodding toward the sofa, two overstuffed chairs and the coffee table that were positioned to face the fireplace and the French doors on the outside wall.
“Thanks.”
He crossed the room in long strides of massive legs she had no doubt could control a stallion with nothing but their pressure.
But the fact that he went ahead of her to the couch left Kate with a view of his backside, too. A view she couldn’t resist taking in. A view of broad shoulders and a straight back that narrowed to his waist and to a rear end that made her mouth go dry.
She might have been a virgin until two months ago but that didn’t mean she hadn’t done her fair share of looking at men’s physiques—especially their derrieres. And Brady’s was the best she’d ever seen.
Only when he sat down and deprived her of the sight did she realize she’d been ogling him and cut it short to follow him to the sitting area of the room.
He was at one end of the sofa, so she sat in the chair that was at a forty-five-degree angle to it, grateful that she wouldn’t have to sit beside him to see the papers he was setting out on the coffee table. But even from there she caught a whiff of the clean, spicy scent of him, and it went right to her head.
Maybe it was the pregnancy, she told herself. She’d noticed that her sense of smell was heightened, so maybe it wasn’t so much that he really smelled wonderful, but that she merely had some kind of illusion that he did.
Except that it didn’t seem like an illusion. It seemed as if he just plain smelled terrific.
“This is pretty straightforward,” he said then, flipping through the pages as he spoke. “A simple dissolution of marriage. Basically what’s on all these pages amounts to declarations that we have no joint property or assets to split up, no mutual residence for one of us to keep and the other to move out of, no children so no custody or visitation issues.”
Kate’s mouth went dry, and she didn’t hear the rest of what he was saying.
No children so no custody or visitation issues…
Somehow it hadn’t occurred to her that the baby she was carrying should be included in the divorce papers. Custody and visitation? Those were things she hadn’t even thought about.
Of course, she hadn’t really thought about much of anything in terms of Brady and the baby. She hadn’t had time to think about it. In the four days since she’d had her pregnancy confirmed, she hadn’t thought about much of anything except the fact that she actually was pregnant.
It had come as such a shock. The first period she’d missed hadn’t even made her curious. Her cycles had always been