The Rancher Takes a Bride

She shook her head. “No, don’t go there.”

“You kept her from me,” he said in a quieter voice.

“You have to understand. I was eighteen and alone and making stupid decisions. And now I’m a mom who has to make sure her daughter isn’t going to be hurt. I have to make sure the man I bring into her life isn’t going to walk out on her.”

“I do not walk out.”

“I know. And I was going to tell you. I just didn’t know how.”

“You could have told me years ago. A letter, even a short note, would have been nice.”

“You left.” Another person in her life who had left. Not that she’d expected him to stay. He’d been a day, a smile, a moment. She’d been a kid who’d made bad choices in her search for love.

“You know for sure...” he started to ask, but his words trailed off.

“I know without a doubt. There are no other possibilities.”

He studied her for a few seconds. She met his gaze head-on because she had to be strong. “Why did you change your mind and decide to bring her to Martin’s Crossing?”

Of course he would want to know that. She would tell him why, but not today. She couldn’t tell him everything, not in one crazy, overly emotional day. “I knew she needed you.”

The simple answer was the truth. It was enough for now.

* * *

She wasn’t telling him everything but for Duke, it was enough for one day. He had a daughter. For the past year Lilly had bounced in and out of his diner. She’d swept his floors. She’d talked to him about the kind of horse she wanted. She’d looked up at him with those blue eyes that were so much like his, he should have seen himself in her. He should have seen it. He should have recognized Oregon.

He rubbed the top of his head and stared at the woman he’d let down, mother of the girl he’d let down. He’d become his mother. Man, he wanted to pound something. He needed to get on his bike and take a long ride through Texas. But unlike Sylvia Martin, his mother, he would come back. But he wouldn’t walk away from this hospital, from Lilly or Oregon.

He looked at her. Her dark hair framed a face that was delicate and shifted from cute to pretty with a smile. She shrugged slim shoulders. “Maybe you should have remembered but you said it yourself, there are a lot of holes in your memory.”

Yeah, a lot of holes. Blackouts. Days lost. He reached into his pocket and felt that coin he carried, a reminder of how long he’d been sober. Two years and counting.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he made eye contact with the woman sitting across from him.

“I’m sorry, too. I know she needs you.”

There were so many ways he could react to that. He could be angry, but what would that get him? She had wanted to protect her daughter. He couldn’t blame her for that.

“So I guess I passed the test,” he finally said.

“Of course you do.” She stood, her eyes darting away from him to the door. “We should go. I don’t want her to be alone too long.”

“No, of course not.” She would never be alone again. He would see to that. “Does she know?”

“That you’re her dad? No.”

“We have to tell her.”

They walked out into the hall and headed back to the emergency room. “Yes, I know.”

“What does she know?”

“That I was young and made a mistake. But that she isn’t a mistake.”

“Man, Oregon, I should have been there. I should have been in her life.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen.” Her voice faltered.

“You weren’t in this alone. And you aren’t alone now. We need to get married.” The words slipped out quickly, without giving them a lot of thought.

She stopped. He took a few more steps and then turned to face her. She was barely five feet tall. Her dark hair was long and soft. Her gray eyes had flecks of green in this light. Had he just proposed to her?

“No.” And with that simple answer, she kept walking.

He froze under the bright fluorescent lights, voices of people heading in their direction. Ahead of him Oregon kept walking. He was so tall that he only had to take a few steps and he was next to her.

“Why not?”

“Because this isn’t love. It was attraction once. Now we’re two strangers, and that isn’t enough for a marriage.”

“Our daughter deserves—”

She cut him off with an angry glare. “Don’t tell me what she deserves. She deserves a home and people who love her. People who stay.”

“Right, but we have to think about our daughter.”

“Mine,” she cried out, her eyes widening in fear. “She’s my daughter.”

“I’m not going to take her from you.” He said it as calmly as he could, in the voice he used to soothe startled horses.

“No, but you could take her heart. She already loves you.”

“Oregon, this isn’t a competition.”

They kept walking back to the ward with green walls, and rooms with glass doors, curtains for privacy and hushed voices. Oregon stopped, leaning against the wall a few short feet from the nurses’ station.

“Duke, she needs you. That’s why we’re here. Right now I’m emotional and not thinking straight. My main concern is for her, that she’s safe and she’s going to be okay. Marriage to you, though, is not in my plans.”

“We won’t discuss it today. You’re right. She needs us with her now.”

He could understand her reluctance to marry. He hadn’t seen too much about marriage that he admired. But his brother Jake, the last guy he thought would fall, seemed to be taken with the idea. Jake and Breezy had fallen in love with each other, with the twin nieces they all shared, and the rest had been history. In their current newlywed phase of soft looks, sweet smiles and easy embraces, it was impossible to be around them for long.

Duke avoided them as much as possible. He didn’t need to see their version of happily-ever-after.

He’d rather stay at his old house, working on the wiring that needed updating, the plumbing that sometimes groaned with the effort of pushing water to the faucets.

A house for a family, Jake had teased when Duke started the remodel. And now he had a family. True, Oregon didn’t want any part of making them one. But Duke would be a dad to Lilly. He wouldn’t let her argue him out of that.