The Texas Wildcatter's Baby. Cathy Gillen Thacker
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were correct—had she. She was just too stubborn to admit it.
Sensing she was about ready to bolt, he let out a rough breath and stepped closer. “Well, given that we have a little one on the way, we’re going to have to find a way to do better.”
His gruff reminder brought a much needed dose of reality back to the situation.
“I agree,” Ginger said. “Which is why,” she continued resolutely, looking straight at him, “I’d like the two of us to make it official, at least for a while.”
* * *
FOR ONCE, Ginger noted, Rand McCabe had absolutely nothing to say. And that left her scrambling to put a halt to whatever confused notions he had. Hating how awkward this all felt, she lifted a cautioning hand. “Naturally, it won’t be a real relationship.”
Something flickered in his blue eyes then fled. “Naturally.”
Trying not to think how attracted to him she was, she cleared her throat. “It’d be more like a business arrangement to get us through the birth.”
And since they were both small business owners, she figured he would appreciate her matter-of-fact approach to their predicament. To her shock, however, it seemed to have done the opposite.
Still trying to get some sense of where she stood with him, Ginger let out a shaky breath and added, “Although there are obvious social advantages to being a ‘family’ while we await the birth of our baby...legally, it would also be easier.”
He lifted a questioning brow, his gaze roving her head to toe.
Tingling everywhere his eyes had touched—and everywhere they hadn’t—Ginger explained, “Under Texas law, a child born to a man and woman who are not married has no legal father. Conversely, if we’re husband and wife when the baby is born, the child will automatically be yours in the eyes of the law. No additional paperwork will need to be done to establish paternity before we can put your name on our child’s birth certificate.”
“Looks like you’ve thought of everything,” Rand said dryly.
Ginger had certainly tried. “It’s all online. You can research it through the Texas attorney general’s website, too.”
Again, Rand merely nodded.
Frustrated he wasn’t more forthcoming with his thoughts and feelings, she groaned. “Fortunately, we won’t have to stay married too long.” A little less than nine months, the way she figured it.
This time he moved closer. He stopped mere inches short of her. She inhaled the scent of soap and sun and man.
His blue eyes gleamed. “So you’re proposing to me?”
Why did she suddenly feel as though that was a bad thing? “I know that’s typically a man’s domain.”
He lowered his head, until they were nose to nose and she had no choice but to look into his eyes. “Uh, yeah!”
His gruff words were a direct hit to her carefully constructed defenses. Aware there were times when he made her feel very safe, and times—like now—when he made her feel very off-kilter, Ginger shrugged nonchalantly. “But I didn’t want to wait for you to get around to it.”
He smiled. “You think I’d take my sweet time about it, is that it?”
He certainly took his sweet time about a lot of things. In bed, anyway. Ginger flushed, disturbed that the only way they knew each other all that well, was sensually.
She waved off his assertion. “Don’t know. Don’t care.” She moved to put her sunglasses back on, but stuffed them in her vest pocket instead. “I just want a ring on my finger before any more time elapses. So that by the time I’m showing and we have to start telling people I’m pregnant, we’ll already be married, and it won’t be such a big deal.”
His eyes never left hers as he stood there in that utterly disarming way that he had. “Oh, it’s a big deal, all right,” he said in a low, soft voice that sent ribbons of sensation coasting down her spine.
She craned her neck to meet his gaze. “You know what I mean, McCabe. If we’ve already been hitched for three months or so before I have to start telling people I’m expecting, then people aren’t going to think much of it. It’s going to be old news a lot faster than it otherwise would be.”
“Or in other words—” his eyes never wavered from her face “—you don’t want people to think we had to get married.”
Determined to keep him at arm’s length, Ginger fought the waves of sexual magnetism that always existed between them. “There’s no such thing as having to get married in this day and age. But...”
He frowned. “There’s always a caveat with you, isn’t there?”
So what if there is? Ginger liked to be prepared for any eventuality, especially the bad stuff.
She stiffened her spine and plunged on. “Since the majority of the clients I want to put under contract are very traditional in their outlook, it makes sense for me—us—to be married. So that I will appear more...”
“Settled?”
She gave him a withering look before finally conceding, “Traditional, too.”
Rand rubbed the flat of his palm across the nape of his neck. “Except for the fact that anyone who knows you at all kind of knows that you aren’t conventional, Ginger. Not in the slightest.”
True, she hadn’t been. Until she’d realized they had a baby on the way. Knowing she had to provide for someone other than herself had changed everything. Made her yearn for as much stability as possible in her personal—and professional—life. Which included finding a way to land her first big contract as an independent oil woman, ASAP.
“Marrying you will show everyone that I’m finally ready to settle down. That it’s safe to trust my skill as a geologist, and to sign with me.”
And that, in turn, would give their child the safe harbor he or she would need, even after she and Rand parted ways.
He sighed. “So this isn’t just about the baby. It’s about oil, too?”
Ginger nodded, as ready to be totally upfront about that as everything else. “The word on the street is that Summit County is going to lift their temporary moratorium on horizontal drilling any day now. When that happens, there’s going to be a stampede of wildcatters trying to get landowners signed up.”
“In particular Dot and Clancy Boerne.”
A brief smile flickered across her face. “The fifty-thousand-acre Boerne ranch is where the most oil is expected to be.”
“You think being pregnant and unmarried would eliminate you from the running?” he asked, sliding her a long, contemplative look.
In a word, yes. Ginger shrugged. “It’s no secret that I’ve had an uphill battle trying to convince people to do business with me because I’m young, and female and a lot less experienced than some of the others vying for business.”
He grinned, as if admiring her moxie. “And yet you persist.”
He was darned right she did. “Just because wildcatting is still primarily a man’s domain, doesn’t mean it needs to stay that way.”
Rand spoke with the respect of a son of the best lady wildcatter in the state of Texas, Josie Corbett-Wyatt McCabe. “Of course not.”
“Furthermore, I’ve already demonstrated time after time I have a knack for coming up with drilling plans that get oil out of places that were previously considered inaccessible.” Drilling plans that should have had her promoted at her previous job with Profitt Oil, if there had been any fairness involved. Which there hadn’t been. “I just need a chance to show everyone what I can do now that I’ve ventured out on my own.”
He