Carrying the Rancher's Heir / Secret Son, Convenient Wife: Carrying the Rancher's Heir / Secret Son, Convenient Wife

Tagg stared at the older man. Then blinked, speechless.

“That’s right. She’s upstairs right now, sick as a dog. Puking up her guts. Can’t keep anything down. I recognized the signs straightaway. Her mama reacted the same when she was with child.”

This was the last thing Tagg expected to hear. He let Sullivan’s words sink in. Callie was pregnant with his child? A dozen emotions rolled through his system. He wasn’t sure which one would take hold. Denial, anger and disbelief were at the forefront and battled for dominance as he went over the facts. She couldn’t have gotten pregnant in Las Vegas. Even he knew it was too soon for a woman to go through morning sickness after a couple of days. Which meant Callie got pregnant in Reno. Six, seven weeks ago.

Sullivan folded his hands together and set them on the desk as he leaned forward. A knowing smile creased his face. “You seem surprised. She didn’t tell you, did she?”

He shook his head an inch. The older man gloated. Tagg summoned his willpower to stand still and not put a fist in his face. He braced his hands on the edge of the desk and leaned forward, his mouth tight as he finally managed to speak. “How long has she known?”

The man shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Yeah, it matters,” he gritted out.

“A month. Maybe more.”

“And why should I believe you?”

“Callie likes to have a glass of wine with dinner. She stopped drinking weeks ago. Asking for lemonade, claiming the wine’s been upsetting her stomach lately.”

“Maybe it’s true.” Tagg voiced his thoughts aloud.

“It’s bull. And you know it. Fact is, she ran off to Reno to see her cousin because I’d riled her. She was damn irritated at me for interfering with her love life with some low-life carpenter and what does she go and do? She takes you in her bed! A Worth. She did it out of spite. To get back at me. To show me that I couldn’t dictate her life anymore. She knows how I feel about you Worths.”

Tagg plagued his memory for accuracy. What had Callie said to him about that night? Then it came back to him with near haunting clarity. “When I saw you sitting on that bar stool, you looked how I felt. Lonely, disappointed, wishing things in your life were different.”

It all made sense now. Callie had thrown herself at him that night for a reason—to get back at her father. He’d meddled in her love life and she wanted retribution. She’d come on to Tagg like her life depended on it.

Any red-blooded male would have given in to temptation, especially when she’d looked at him with pure sin in her eyes and she’d fit her body into his like they were two halves of a whole. She’d seduced him, plain and simple.