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

on the other side of the state.
    But he’d find a way, he vowed to himself. He would definitely find a way.
    “Not through anger and confrontations like yesterday’s, you won’t,” he told himself.
    He knew he needed to forget that he’d already lost five months of this pregnancy. He needed to forget that Beth was doing her usual best to make him incidental. He needed to stop thinking that maybe if she had paid enough attention to what was happening in her own body and realized before the divorce was final that they were going to have a child, they might not have gone through with it in the first place....
    But regrets about the divorce were useless. Hadn’t he been telling himself that since the day it was final?
    He’d be, more or less, a single father. And he’d just have to make every precious moment with his child count.
    And yet, there was something very lonely about that idea. So lonely it was like a fist in his gut.
    The picture his mind should have been conjuring up was of Beth and him standing together over the crib. Or of both of them watching the baby splashing in the tub. Or of their taking turns rocking it or walking the floors with it through the night...
    “Well, that’s not how it is. Or how it’s going to be, so get over it,” he ordered himself, trying to shake off the anger and those regrets he’d been fighting.
    It wasn’t easy, though. Nobody could get to him the way Beth could.
    Good and bad.
    And it didn’t help that some of the good was still there.
    Even in the midst of his rage at her yesterday, he’d still been drawn to her.
    He’d watched her walk into the living room ahead of him and his hand had itched to reach out and touch her.
    He’d remained standing behind the couch, hoping that distance and the barrier would keep things in perspective for him, when his damn brain had suddenly kicked in with images of what she looked like after they’d made love—all soft and warm and heavy lidded; of what she tasted like when he kissed her naked shoulder and found her slightly salty from the mingling of his sweat and hers from the heat of the moments just before; of what it felt like to be inside of her, to have her hold on tight to him, wrap her legs around him, cry out his name...
    How the hell could he be so mad at her and hungry for her at the same time?
    But he had been.
    He was.
    Wanting her didn’t change anything, though, and he knew he had to keep himself focused on the future, not on the past.
    The baby was all he needed to think about. And carving out his place with it.
    He had no business at all thinking about his wife.
    His ex-wife.
    And that distinction was something he’d better not forget.
    * * *
    Beth had a lot planned for that day, but she was having a hard time getting herself going. She’d made it as far as into her bathrobe and downstairs to fix herself a cup of tea, but that was it. Here it was, late in the morning, and she was back in bed, still sitting propped on her pillows, staring into space.
    Well, not exactly into space.
    She was staring at that orange crate Ash had left the day before. She’d carted it upstairs after he’d gone and set it on the floor in the corner.
    She might have just put the whole crate in the trash except that she knew the things she’d forgotten at the dry cleaners were some of her best. The trouble was, to get to them, she had to go through those items that really belonged to Ash.
    Why hadn’t he just kept them? Or thrown them out, if he hadn’t wanted them back? Surely leaving them behind had made it clear she didn’t want them.
    Except that she sort of did.
    It was just the memories that went with them that she didn’t want.
    But neither the crate nor the memories were going away, and she’d been sitting there much too long willing them to. She knew she was being silly. And silliness was another of those things that Shag would never have allowed in this house.
    “Just pull out the stuff that’s yours and then put the