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It wasn’t going to happen. “I’ll help out, all right,” he said. “We’ll get married. You’ll live with me. You can paint your paintings in Meadow Valley just as well as in L.A.”
“I said no, Logan. And I meant it.”
He folded his arms across his chest—mostly to keep himself from reaching out and strangling her. “This isn’t last September. You can’t just explain to me how I don’t love you and I’m only on the rebound from your sister and it’s time we both moved on.”
“You happened to agree with me last September, in case you’ve forgotten.”
Had he agreed with her? Maybe. He’d been confused as hell last September. Hard to remember now what he had felt then.
Jenna had left with Mack McGarrity.
And then, out of nowhere, her little sister, who had always irritated the hell out of him, showed up on his doorstep, real concern for him in her gorgeous blue eyes and a big chocolate cake in her hands.
“You need chocolate, Dr. Do-Right,” she had said. “Lots of chocolate. And you need it now.”
Dr. Do-Right. He hated it when she called him that. He had opened his mouth to tell her so—and also to tell her to please go away.
But she just pushed past him and kept walking, straight to his kitchen. She put the cake on the counter and began rifling the drawers. It didn’t take her long to find the one with the silverware in it.
“Ah,” she said. “Here we go.” She grabbed a fork, shoved the drawer shut and thrust the fork at him, catching him off guard, so that he took it automatically. “Eat.”
He looked at the fork and he looked at the cake.
Damned if she didn’t know just what he was thinking. “No,” she said. “No plate. No nice little slice cut with a knife. Just stick that fork right in there, just tear off a big, gooey bite.”
He stared at her, stared at her full mouth, at her flushed face, her wide eyes…
And he realized that he was aroused.
Aroused by Jenna’s troublemaking little sister, damned if he wasn’t.
He had set down the fork, backed her up against the counter and spoken right into that deceptively angelic face of hers. “Shouldn’t you be back in L.A. by now?”
Her breathing was agitated, though she tried to play it cool. “I told Jenna I’d take care of things here.”
“I don’t need taking care of.”
She didn’t say anything, just looked at him through those blue, blue eyes.
“You’d better go,” he had warned.
She made a small, tender sound.
And she shook her head.
They ate the cake some time after midnight, both of them nude, standing in the kitchen, tearing into it with a pair of forks, then feeding each other big, sloppy bites.
Lacey shifted in her chair. Logan’s eyes looked far away. She wondered what he was thinking.
He blinked and came back to himself. “I don’t want to analyze last September. It happened. We weren’t as careful as we should have been and now you’re having my baby. You know damn well how I feel about that.”
Yes, she did know. He was just like Jenna. He wanted children. Several children. He also wanted a nice, settled, stay-at-home wife to take care of those children while he was out healing the ills of the world. A wife like Jenna would have been.
In almost every way, Logan and Jenna had been just right for each other. Too bad Jenna had always loved Mack McGarrity.
Logan held out his hand.
Lacey knew that she shouldn’t, but she took it anyway. He pulled her out of the chair. He would have taken her into his arms, but she resisted that.
Her belly brushed him. They both hitched in a quick breath at the contact and Lacey pulled her hand from his.
She turned toward the table, toward the grocery bags still waiting there, thinking that the move might gain her a little much-needed distance from him.
It didn’t. He stepped up behind her, so that she could feel him, feel the warmth of him, close at her back.
He spoke into her ear, his voice barely a whisper. “You need me now, Lace. Don’t turn me away. Give me a chance. I want to marry you and take care of you…of both of you.”
Oh, those were lovely words. And, yes, they did tempt her.
But it wouldn’t work. She had to remember that. It couldn’t work.
He did not love her. He couldn’t even say that he no longer loved her sister. He’d marry her out of duty, in order to claim his child.
And she would spend her life with him feeling like second best, wondering when he kissed her if he was imagining her sister in his arms. She didn’t want that. They had too many differences as it was. Without love on both sides, they wouldn’t stand a chance.
Gently, he took her shoulder, the touch burning a path of longing down inside of her, making her sigh. He turned her to face him.
And he smiled. “I’m feeling pretty determined, Lace.”
She smiled right back at him. “So am I.”
“We’ll see who’s more determined of the two of us. I’m not going away until you come with me.”
“Then you’re in for a long stay in Wyoming.”
“I can stay as long as I have to.”
“You couldn’t stay long enough.”
“Watch me.”
“What about your practice? How will your patients get along without you?”
“Don’t worry about my patients. I have partners to cover for me. I can stick it out here for as long as it takes.”
“Oh? And where will you be staying? Have you made reservations at the motel in town?”
“No. I’ll stay here with you.”
He looked so certain, so set on his goal. She couldn’t stop herself. She touched the side of his face. The stubble-rough skin felt wonderful—too wonderful.
She jerked her hand back, thinking how much one thoughtless touch could do. In a moment, she’d have no backbone left. Whatever he wanted, she’d just go along.
“You can’t stay here,” she said in a breathless tone that convinced neither Logan nor herself. “It’s out of the question.”
He pressed his advantage. “Look. You’re alone here. The baby’s due any day now. I don’t even see a phone in this cabin. How will you call for help if there’s an emergency?”
She tipped her chin higher. “I’m in no danger. The main ranch house is nearby—you must have driven past it to get here.”
He nodded. “I stopped in there for directions, as a matter of fact. And it’s too far away. You could have trouble reaching it, if something went really wrong.”
“I have a cell phone. I can call for help if I need to.”
“You’re telling me that a cell phone actually works out here?”
“Yes.”
He made a small chiding noise. “Not very dependably, though. I can see it in your eyes.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m perfectly safe here.”
“Not in your condition. You know you shouldn’t be alone.”
He was starting to sound way too much like her cousin. Zach—and Tess, too—had been nagging her constantly of late, trying to get her to move to the main house now that her due date was so close. She kept putting them off.
She did plan on moving, as soon as the baby came. Tess already had a room ready for the two of them, with a nice big bed for her, and a bassinet and a changing table and everything else that the baby would need.
But right now, Lacey felt she was managing well enough. And the cabin did please her. She had music—a boom box and a pile of CDs in the sleeping nook. She read a lot and she sketched all the time. Lately, since just before she’d come to Wyoming, she’d discovered that she no longer had the kind of total concentration it took to work seriously on a painting. But that was all right. She sensed that it would come back to her, after the baby arrived—no matter what Xavier Hockland, her former teacher and mentor, chose to believe.
And certainly she could manage to make it to the main house when her labor began. Tess could take her to the hospital from there.
Logan began prowling around the room. He stopped by the big stove. “What do you use to heat this place?”
“Wood. Lately, the weather’s so mild, I hardly need heat, though. And if I do, I only have to build one fire, in the morning. By the time it burns down, it’s warm outside.”
“How do you cook?”
“Same thing. I build a fire.”
“You’re chopping wood in your condition?”
She made a face at him. “No. Zach takes care of it. He keeps the wood bin out in back nice and full.”
“But you have to haul it in here and build the fire yourself?”
“It’s not that difficult, Logan.”
“Heavy lifting is a bad idea at this point. Your doctor should have told you that.”
“Logan. Come on. Stop picking on sweet old Doc Pruitt. I only carry in a few pieces of wood at a time. There honestly is no heavy lifting involved.”
He marched over to her again. “You need help around here. And even if you won’t marry me, I think I have a right to be here when my baby is born.”
She opened her mouth to rebut that—and then shut it without making a sound. He was right. If he wanted to be here for the birth of their child, who was she to deny him?
“Who knows?” he added. “You might even need a doctor in a hurry. Then you’d be doubly glad that I stuck around.”
Score one more for his side. She could go into labor any time now. If, God forbid, anything should go wrong before she reached the hospital in Buffalo, it wouldn’t hurt to have a doctor at her side.
And who was she kidding, anyway?
Beyond the issues of her isolation in the cabin, of a father’s rights and Logan’s skills as a physician, there was her foolish heart, beating too hard under her breastbone, just waiting for any excuse to keep him near for a while.
It astonished her now, to look back on all those years growing up, when the name Logan Severance had inspired in her a feeling of profound irritation at best. Logan Severance, her sister’s perfect, straight-A boyfriend, who played halfback on the high school football team, took honors in debate and went to University of California in Davis on full scholarship. Logan Severance, who seemed to think it was his duty to whip his sweetheart’s messed-up little sister into shape. He was always after her to stand up straight, carping at her about her grades, lecturing her when she ran away or got caught stealing bubble gum from Mr. Kretchmeir’s corner store.
Sometimes, she had actually thought that she hated him.
But not anymore.
Now she knew that she loved him. She had figured that out last September, on the fifth glorious day of their crazy, impossible affair. It turned out to be the last day. As soon as she admitted the grim truth to herself, she had seen the self-defeating hopelessness of what she was doing. She had told him she couldn’t see him anymore.
He had called her three times after she returned to L.A. She’d found his messages on her answering machine and played each of them back over and over, until they had burned themselves a permanent place in her brain. She had memorized each word, each breath, each nuance of sound…
“Hello, Lacey. It’s Logan. I was just—listen. Why don’t you give me a call?”
“Lacey. Logan. I left a message a month ago. Did you get it? Are you all right? Sometimes I… Never mind. I suppose I should just leave you alone.”
“Lace. It’s Logan. If you don’t call me back this time, I won’t try again.”
She had started to call him a hundred times. And she had always put the phone down before she went through with it, though she had known by his second call that she was carrying his baby, known that eventually she would make herself tell him.
Known he would come to her as soon as she did.
And that once he came, it would be harder than ever to send him away.
He smoothed a coil of hair back from her cheek. She savored the lovely, light caress.
He murmured so tenderly, “Say I can stay.”
She put off giving in. “I don’t want to hear any more talk about marriage. It’s out of the question, Logan. Do you understand?”
His eyes gleamed in satisfaction. “That’s a yes, right?”
“Not to marriage.”
“But you’ll let me stay here with you.”
“Just until the baby’s born. After that, you have to go. We can make arrangements for you to see the baby on a regular basis, and we can—”
He put a finger against her lips. “Shh. There’s no need to worry about all that now.”
She pulled her head back, away from the touch of that finger of his. It was too tempting by half, that finger. She might just get foolish and suck it right inside her mouth.
His grin seemed terribly smug.
She told him so. “I do not like the look on your face.”
“What look?” He reached for one of the grocery bags. “Come on. I’ll help you put this stuff away.”
Chapter Three
As soon as the shopping bags were emptied, Logan went out and got his things from the car. There was only one bureau in the dark little cabin. A scarred mahogany monstrosity with a streaked mirror on top. It loomed against the wall by the rear door, sandwiched between a pair of crammed-full pine bookcases. Lacey gave him three of the eight drawers. He’d traveled light, so everything fit in the space she assigned him.
As he unpacked, Lacey sat in the old rocker in the corner, watching him, rocking slowly, her abdomen a hard mound taking up most of her lap, her head resting back, those blue eyes drooping a little.
When he finished, he shoved his empty bag and extra shoes under the daybed. Then he dropped onto the mattress, which was covered with a patchwork quilt. “That’s that.”
“Umm,” she said softly. The rocker creaked as she idly moved it back and forth.
He leaned an elbow on the ironwork bedstead and allowed himself the luxury of just looking at her.
She looked good. Her skin glowed with health and her golden hair still possessed the glossy sheen he remembered. Pregnancy seemed to agree with her. That pleased him. He wanted more children, after this one. A whole house full. It wouldn’t be the way it had been when he was a boy, just him and his father and the endless string of housekeepers who had never managed to take the place that should have been filled by a wife and mother.
His kids would have more than that. His kids would have brothers and sisters—and both of their parents. There would be noise and laughter and a feeling of belonging.
Lacey went on rocking—and she smiled.
He wanted to touch her, to put his hand on the fine, smooth skin of her cheek, to run it down over her throat and then over her breasts, which looked sweet and firm and full, even beneath the shapeless denim dress she wore. He wanted to spread both hands on her belly, test the hardness of it now, when she was so close to term, maybe even get lucky and feel his baby kick.
But he knew she wouldn’t allow such intimate explorations of her body. Not now. Not so soon after he’d forced himself back into her life.
He was going to have to wait to have his hands on her. Probably until after he had managed to convince her to marry him.
Well, fair enough. He’d waited nine months, telling himself most of the time that this physical yearning he felt for Jenna’s little sister would eventually pass.
It hadn’t. And recently he’d allowed himself to accept the fact that it was only Mother Nature playing at irony.
Lacey Bravo, of all people, was his sexual ideal.
Explain it? He couldn’t, didn’t really even care to. Human beings were primates, after all, aroused by things they didn’t consciously understand. By certain scents and secretions. Desire had nothing at all to do with logic. It was a chemical reaction, the natural attraction of one healthy specimen for another, designed to perpetuate the species.
Now that Lacey was having his baby and he meant to marry her, he found it a real bonus that he wanted her so much. They might have their problems in a lot of different areas, but he didn’t think sex was going to be one of them.
She stopped rocking and lifted her head off the backrest. “Are you tired?”
He almost said no. But then he reconsidered. He could use a nap, as a matter of fact. He’d been up well before dawn. And he hadn’t been getting much sleep in the last week anyway, not since her letter had arrived.
“A little,” he said. “I’ll lie down for a while if you will, too.” He wanted to make certain she got plenty of rest.
“It’s a deal.” She put both hands on the rocker arms and levered herself to a standing position.
He asked, in a tone as offhand as he could make it, “Is there a double bed behind that curtain?”
She gave him a lazy grin. “Nice try. You get the daybed.” She shuffled out the back door. After a few minutes, he heard the toilet flush. She came back in, only to disappear behind the curtain in the corner.
He paid a short visit to the bathroom himself, then took off his shoes and lay down. Like every other piece of furniture in the cabin, the bed appeared to be something salvaged from an earlier era. It had creaky springs and a lumpy mattress and it wasn’t long enough to fully accommodate his six-foot-three-inch frame. But he stretched out as best he could, letting his stocking feet hang over the edge and pulling one of the long sausage-shaped bolster pillows under his head.
A strange kind of peace settled over him, a deep relaxation, a sense of well-being. It was a state he hadn’t experienced in a long time. He dropped off to sleep like a rock falling down a well.
The next thing he knew, someone was knocking on the door.
Logan bolted to a sitting position, blinking and staring around him, wondering where the hell he was.
Then it all fell into place. The long trip from California. To this cabin. In Wyoming. Lacey. Pregnant with his baby. She was resting now, on the other side of that curtain over there. He glanced at his Rolex. She’d been in there for less than an hour.
And whatever idiot had dropped in for a visit would probably wake her with the next knock.
He jumped to his feet and padded swiftly to the door. When he pulled it open, he found a cowboy on the other side. Behind the cowboy, hitched to one of the poles that held up the porch, a handsome horse with a reddish-brown coat let out a low snort and flicked his shiny tail at a couple of flies.
The cowboy lifted his hat in greeting, then settled it back on his head. “I’m Zach Bravo.” His gaze shifted down, paused on Logan’s stocking feet, then quickly shifted up again. “Just thought I’d stop by and check on things out here.”
“Logan?” It was Lacey’s voice, sounding slow and sleepy, from the other end of the room. “Who is it?” She stood just beyond the curtain in the corner, her feet bare, her face soft and her hair mussed from sleep.
“It’s Zach,” said the cowboy, craning to see around Logan, who had positioned himself squarely in the open doorway.
Lacey grinned and started toward them. “Come on in. I can probably scare up a beer if you want one.”
Zach Bravo stayed where he was. “No. Got to get a move on. Never enough hours in a day around here. But Tess asked me to see if you wanted to come over to the house for dinner tonight. Around six?”
Logan stepped aside a little as Lacey came up next to him. “Zach, this is Dr. Logan Severance, a…dear friend.” Logan didn’t miss her slight hesitation over what to call him. He’d bet his license to practice medicine that Zach Bravo didn’t miss it either.
“Pleased to meet you.” The rancher held out a tough brown hand.
Logan took it, gave it a firm shake. “The pleasure is mine.”
“You’ll come for dinner then…both of you?”
Lacey lifted an eyebrow at Logan. He nodded and she smiled at her cousin. “We’ll be there. Six o’clock.”
“So I’m your dear friend,” Logan challenged the minute Zach Bravo had mounted his horse and trotted away down the dirt road that led to the cluster of ranch buildings just over the next rise.
Lacey made a noise in her throat. “What should I have said? Former lover? The father of my child?”
“How about husband?”
“But that wouldn’t be true, now, would it?”
“We could make it true.”
She looked at him for a long, cool moment, then announced defiantly, “Zach comes out to check on me two or three times a day, which is just another reason why I’m perfectly safe on my own here.”
“I’d say he came to check on me this time.”
“Right. He’s protective. More proof that I’m in no danger at all, as I’ve constantly tried to make you realize. You simply do not have to stay in this cabin with me. If you want to be here when the baby’s born, you could take a room in the motel in town and—”
“I’m not leaving, Lacey—and your cousin strikes me as a conservative man, the kind of man who would feel a lot better if you were married to the father of your child.”
She put her hands on her hips. “You are truly relentless. Now we should get married so as not to offend Zach’s conservative sensibilities?”
“I’m only pointing out that—”
“Logan. You said you would drop it.”
Lacey gave him her best unwavering stare. She was wondering, as she had more than once in the past nine months, how she could love such an obnoxious man.
He stared right back, which forced her to demand, “Are you dropping it, Logan?”
He made a growling sound. “All right, all right. I’m dropping it.”
“Good.”
His handsome face had settled into a scowl. She watched him rearrange it to something more gentle. “We’ve got another hour and a half before we have to make our appearance at your cousin’s house. Why don’t you go on back behind that curtain and lie down again?”
She blew a tangled curl out of her eye. “No, thanks. I’m wide awake now.” She marched to the sleeping nook, ducked inside and came out with her lace-up hiking boots.
His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What are you doing?”
She sat in the rocker and pulled on one of the boots. It wasn’t easy, working around the bulge of her stomach, but she’d had a lot of practice in the past few weeks. Huffing and puffing, she tied the boot, pulled on the other one, tied it up, too.
“Lacey.”
She stood, turned to the bureau, picked up the brush lying on top and went to work on her hair. Their eyes met in the mirror. “I’m going out behind the cabin a ways. There’s a creek that runs by back there. Very picturesque. I’ve been doing a few sketches. Willows and cottonwoods, a few cows and their calves…” He was scowling again. She pretended not to notice. “I’ll be back in an hour or so, in plenty of time for dinner with Zach and Tess and the family.”
“Are you sure that you should—?”
She turned and pointed the brush at him. “Don’t, all right? Just…don’t. Nothing’s going to happen to me down by the creek. It’s barely a hundred yards from the back door, for heaven’s sake.”
“What if some big bull comes at you?”
“It’s not an issue.”
“This is a cattle ranch, isn’t it? If I’m not mistaken, bulls live on cattle ranches.”
She struggled to contain her building exasperation. “There’s a barbed-wire fence that runs between this particular spot on the creek and those cattle I mentioned. If there are any bulls nearby, they would most likely be on the other side of that fence.”
“But—”
“Read my lips. I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll come with—”
“Logan. Stop. If you insist on staying here, in a twenty-by-twenty-foot space with me, we’re going to have to give each other a little breathing room. I am going alone.”
He shut his mouth, made another growling sound and then dropped to the side of the daybed. “Great. Fine. Do what you want to do. You never in your life did anything else.” He braced his elbows on his spread knees and shook his head at his stocking feet.
Tenderness washed through her. She set down the brush. “You’re the one who needs more rest. Come on. Stretch out and sleep for an hour. You’ll have the cabin all to yourself. Forget all your cares and I’ll wake you up when I get back.”
He didn’t say anything, just went on staring at his socks.