Baby My Baby (A Ranching Family) by Victoria Pade Read Free Book Online

me.”
    “Screaming at you is the least of what I’d like to do,” he shouted. “You think I don’t know that you want me to just disappear? That you’d like to believe you don’t need me and you sure as hell don’t want me? But this is one thing you’re not doing on your own, damn it. This is my baby as much as it’s yours.”
    “I never said it wasn’t. I’m the one who repeatedly ran up against the brick wall of your schedule trying to let you know it is your baby, remember?”
    “And that’s as far as you figured to let it go? Tell me and then write me off while you do everything yourself—Superwoman?”
    “What exactly is it that you think you can do? Carry this baby for the next four months? Give birth to it?”
    That stopped him cold. For a time he merely stood there, his dark eyes boring into her, and Beth suffered a terrible warring between recognizing the pure magnificence of him and wanting him out of her life before that recognition could have too much effect on her.
    “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he admitted. “What I do know is that for the first time this isn’t just your business or responsibility, or just my business or responsibility. It’s ours. And we’re going to work it out together.”
    “There’s nothing to work out. I’m going to have the baby, and after it’s born if you want visitation—”
    “You are not going to do that to me,” he said, once more through clenched teeth, stabbing one long index finger her way. “You are not going to exclude me from this.”
    “What do you propose, then?” she rephrased her earlier question, feeling her own temper rise at the increasing possibility that he wouldn’t just go away and leave her alone, that he wouldn’t be satisfied with what she had in mind to keep her distance from him.
    “All I know is that I’m going to be a part of this. From this minute on, any way I can. We made this baby together, we’re going to have it together, and one way or another, we’re going to at least collaborate to raise it together.”
    “Collaborate,” she repeated. “Let me guess, you’re going to have Miss Lightfeather fax me instructions on breast feeding.”
    His eyes narrowed at her and though it didn’t seem possible, they grew even darker. “For now I’m not leaving Elk Creek. I’ll take today to do what I need to to free up some time and then I’m dogging your every step until you and I have hashed through this and I’m satisfied with what my place in this baby’s life will be.”
    Beth’s initial reaction was to argue. She didn’t want him within a hundred miles of her, let alone dogging her every step. It was too easy for old feelings to be rekindled, for her to lose sight of why they’d divorced, and fall under the spell of the attraction that had put them together to begin with.
    But then she realized she was being foolish.
    He wouldn’t stick around long, no matter what he said. For the entire time she’d known him, something had been coming up to take him away. She had only to wait him out. Before she knew it, there would be a meeting he couldn’t reschedule or a problem he couldn’t ignore, and he’d be gone.
    “Suit yourself,” she said with complete confidence.
    He continued to study her, as if he were suspicious of her agreement. But after a moment he merely said, “I’ll be back. And don’t even think about running out like you did last night, because I’ll find you if it takes every dime I have.”
    “It won’t be me who leaves,” she said caustically and somewhat under her breath.
    If he heard it, he chose not to address it. Instead, after another moment of piercing her with his heated glare, he turned and walked out the way he’d come in.
    Beth hated that her gaze followed along, slipping down the expanse of his shoulders to the sharp narrowing of his waist, feasting on the sight of a derriere to die for. But follow along it did.
    Only when he went through the front door and