A Diamond In The Rough: One Good Cowboy / Pursued by the Rich Rancher / Pregnant by the Cowboy CEO

“Of course it wasn’t all bad,” she said incredulously.

“Specifics.” He might as well use this time to get whatever edge he could.

“Why?” Suspicion laced her voice. “What purpose will it serve?”

“Call it a healing exercise.” And the hope of figuring out a way to have more with her tomorrow.

“Okay, uh...” Her hand fell back to the dog in her lap. “I appreciate the way you support my work. Like the time I’d already pulled extra hours on my shift, but the call came from a shelter in South Texas in need of extra veterinary help for neglected horses seized by animal control. You drove through the night so I could sleep before working.” Her mouth tipped in a smile, her eyes taking on a faraway look. “Then you didn’t sleep. You rolled up your sleeves and helped.”

He had to haul his gaze away from the beauty of her smile before he rear-ended the car in front of them. “We accomplished a lot of good together that day.”

“We did. And I know it was you who encouraged your grandmother to help sponsor this year’s big charity event to help save the wild mustangs.”

He shrugged, her praise making him itchy. “We needed a tax write-off.”

“You’re not fooling me.” She swatted his arm.

He searched for the right words. “My family has worked hard and been very lucky. We’re in a position to do good.”

“Not everyone makes the same choices as your family. I don’t even know that I’d fully thought about it in such concrete terms until now. Your grandmother instilled solid values in all of you.”

“Very diplomatic of you not to mention what my mom or Amie and Alex’s parents could have shared.” Diplomatic and astute.

“I’m sorry that your mother couldn’t be a true parent for you.”

“Don’t be.” The warmth of the day chilled for him. “She broke Gran’s heart. And Uncle Garnet wasn’t much better, but at least he tried to build a normal family life. He went to work every day even if he wasn’t particularly ambitious.” Or willing to stand up to his overly ambitious wife. “Gran always said she babied him and she wanted to be sure she didn’t make the same mistake with us.”

“Your aunt Bayleigh was ambitious enough for the both of them.” She shuddered dramatically.

“True enough.” There was no denying the obvious. “She pushed the twins for as far back as I can remember. Although I gotta confess, even their flawed family looked mighty damn enticing to me as a kid.”

“You wanted to live with them.”

She sounded surprised, which made him realize yet again how little of himself he’d shared with the woman who was supposed to have been the most important person in his life. If he wanted even a chance at being with her again, he had to give what he could this time.

“I did want to be their kid,” he admitted. “Gran even asked them once if they would be interested in guardianship of me, but their plate was full.”

She gasped. “That had to be so painful to hear.”

To this day, he was glad no one had seen him listening in. He couldn’t have taken the humiliation of someone stumbling on him crying. Looking back, he realized he must have only been in elementary school, but the tears had felt less than manly on a day when he already felt like a flawed kid no one wanted.

“It worked out for the best.” He found himself still minimizing the pain of that experience. “Gran was a great parental figure. And my mother, well, she was a helluva lot of fun during her sober stints.”

The words came out more bitterly than he’d intended. Thank God, they were pulling up to the security gate outside the Landis-Renshaw compound because he’d had about as much “sharing time” as he could take for one day. Much more of this and he would start pouring out stories about being a crack baby, who still cringed at the thought of all the developmental psychologists he’d visited before he’d even started first grade.

He was managing fine now, damn it, and the past could stay in the past.

The wrought-iron security gates loomed in front of them, cameras peeking out of the climbing ivy. He rolled down his window and passed over his identification to a guard posted in his little glass booth with monitors.

The guard nodded silently, passed the ID back, and the gates swung open. Now he just had to figure out how to say goodbye to another family pet and pretend it didn’t matter that the only family he’d known would soon fall apart when his grandmother died. She’d been his strength and his sanity. She’d literally saved his life as a baby. She was a strong woman, like Johanna.

As he watched Johanna cuddle the dog in her lap, he realized he hadn’t taken this dog placement trip seriously, which was wrong of him. He’d just followed Johanna’s lead in shuffling his grandmother’s pets to new families, not thinking overlong about the loss, just going through the motions. His grandmother, Johanna—the dogs—all deserved better than that from him.

For the first time he considered that perhaps his grandmother hadn’t been matchmaking after all. Maybe she had been trying to help him understand why Johanna was better off without him.

Eight (#u72d34d13-40c7-5cc5-97a4-021f60838f20)

Settled deep in the front seat of the SUV, Johanna wrapped her arms around the dachshund mix in her lap and wondered how she’d gotten drawn back into a whirlwind of emotions for Stone so quickly.

At least once they arrived, she had the next few hours with people around to give her time to regain her footing before they were in a hotel together or some other romantic setting on this trip designed to tamper with her very sanity. She had time to build boundaries to protect her heart until she could figure out where they were going as a couple. Was this just sex for the week or were they going to try for more again? If so, they still had the same disagreements looming as before.

She hugged the dog closer as she looked through the window to take everything in. Could this day be any more convoluted? She was seconds away from meeting a political powerhouse couple. The general was reputed to be on the short list for the next secretary of defense. Ginger was now an ambassador and former secretary of state. Her oldest son was a senator. Who wouldn’t be nervous?

Stone, apparently.

He steered the car smoothly, but his mind was obviously somewhere else. “I never did know how Sterling ended up in my grandmother’s pack.”

His comment surprised her.

“One of her employees was older and developed Alzheimer’s. The retirement home the woman’s family chose didn’t allow animals.”

“That’s really rough. How did I not know that story?” His forehead furrowed as he steered the SUV up the winding path through beach foliage to the main house. “I wish my grandmother would have trusted me more to see to the animals after she’s gone so she could have the comfort of them now when she needs them most.”

Johanna stayed silent. She agreed 100 percent but saying as much wouldn’t change anything. The situation truly was a tough one. “It’s sad Sterling should lose his owner twice.”

“Life is rarely about what’s fair,” he said darkly before sliding the car into Park alongside the house.

He grabbed his hat and was out of the car before she could think of an answer. What was going on inside his head? This man never ceased to confuse her.

While she secured Sterling’s leash, she studied the grounds to get her bearings before she stepped out of the car. The beach compound was grander than the rustic Hidden Gem Ranch and more expansive than the scaled-back Donavan spread. She’d seen photos from a Good Housekeeping feature when she’d searched the internet for more details on the Landis and Renshaw families, who had joined when the widowed Ginger Landis married the widower General Hank Renshaw. But no magazine article could have prepared her for the breathtaking view as Johanna stared through the windshield. The homes were situated on prime oceanfront property. The main house was a sprawling white three-story overlooking the Atlantic, where a couple walked along the low-crashing waves. A lengthy set of stairs stretched upward to the second-story wraparound porch that housed the double door entrance.

Latticework shielded most of the first floor, which appeared to be a large entertainment area, a perfect use of space for a home built on stilts to protect against tidal floods from hurricanes. The attached garage had more doors than an apartment complex.

A carriage house and the Atlantic shore were in front of them. And two cottages were tucked to the sides around an organically shaped pool. The chlorinated waters of the hot tub at the base churned a glistening swirl in the sunlight, adults and kids splashing.

It was a paradise designed for a big family to gather in privacy. The matriarch and patriarch of the family—Ginger and the general—appeared on the balcony porch looking like any other grandparents vacationing with their family. Relatives of all ages poured from the guest quarters. Three other dogs sprinted ahead. Not quite the careful, structured meet and greet that worked best, but clearly this home was about organized chaos.

She stepped out of the car, setting Sterling on the sandy ground while she held tight to the leash. The family tableaus played out in full volume now. She could hear a little girl squealing with laughter while her dad taught her to swim in the pool. A mom held a snoozing infant on her lap while she splash, splash, splashed a toe in the water. Voices mingled from a mother’s lullaby to a couple planning a date night since grandparents could babysit.

Johanna saw her own past in the times her parents had taken her swimming in a pond and saw the future she wanted for herself, but couldn’t see how Stone would fit into it. She was killing herself, seeing all these happy families while was stuck in a dead-end relationship with a man who would never open up.

All luxury aside, this kind of togetherness was what she’d hoped to build for herself one day. Those dreams hadn’t changed. Which meant she’d landed herself right back into the middle of a heartache all over again.

* * *

Stone sat at a poolside table with Ginger and Hank Renshaw, pouring over their adoption paperwork. If anyone had told him a week ago that he would be grilling them to be sure Sterling would be a happy fit for their family, Stone would have said that person was nuts.

Yet here he was, quizzing them and watching the way they handled his grandmother’s dog— Correction. Their dog now. Sterling was curled up in Ginger’s lap, looking like a little prince, completely unfazed by the mayhem of children cannonballing into the deep end while a volleyball game took place on the beach.