Fifty Ways To Say I'm Pregnant

He might not be the right guy for her in the long run, but she wasn’t sixteen anymore. She was all grown up, old enough to make a woman’s decisions. Who said he had to deny himself her company, if she wanted to share it with him?

Because it’ll break your damn heart to see her go, fool, whispered another voice, a wiser one, in the back of his mind. It’ll break your damn heart—and just possibly hers, as well.

He found he was having a hell of a time trying to listen to that wiser voice. How could he do it? How could he say no when she stood right there, close enough to touch, gleaming black hair stirring in the wind, asking him so sweetly and sincerely to be allowed to see him now and then?

“Tell you what.”

She laughed. “You look so serious.”

This is serious, damn it, he thought. What’ll we get but heartbreak, if we start this thing between us all over again? He said, “Think it over.”

Those silky brows drew together. “But it’s not a big deal. It’s only—”

He shook his head to silence her. It was a big deal, whether she was willing to admit it or not. “Think it over. Be real sure you want to get something started with me again—even just for the summer.”

“But Beau, I already told you. I do want to see you again. Now, whether I’d call that ‘getting something started—”’

“Call it whatever you damn well please.” She flinched and he realized he’d spoken too harshly. He gentled his tone. “I just want you to give it some thought before we start up with anything.”

“But…” She looked enchantingly bewildered. “Do you want to spend more time with me?”

Do bears like honey? He confessed, “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that. I’d like it a lot.”

“Well, then…” A few strands of hair had got caught across her mouth. He kept his hands shoved hard in his pockets to keep from reaching out and smoothing those strands back over her soft cheek, behind the graceful curve of her ear. After a few seconds that seemed like a year, she brushed them away herself.

“Think about it,” he said, his heart pounding deep and hard, every beat seeming to call out her name. “Give it week. By next Friday, if you still think you want to go out with me, you give me a call.”

Those lashes swept down. “I know my own mind, Beau.”

“We’ll see.”

She looked straight at him then, violet eyes flashing with irritation. “I’m not asking for a lifetime. Just the summer. Just a chance to be together, now and then, for a little while…”

“And all I’m asking is that you give it some thought first.”

Her eyes went wide and she fell back a step. “Do you remember? You said almost the exact same words before you kissed me the first time?”

He did remember. They were in the tack room, off the barn at the Rising Sun. They’d been talking—about the wild stuff she’d done down in San Diego, about how he’d never been much farther than Cheyenne himself, except for that one trip to Arkansas with his mom all those years and years ago. He was leaning on a saddle horn. She slid right up close to him and lifted her mouth.

“Give it some thought,” he’d said. “Before you go offering up those sweet lips of yours…”

Yeah, he remembered. He remembered all of it—every magical, forbidden moment with her.