Colton's Cowboy Code

“Then you’re accepting my offer?”

“I said if.”

He slid the plate of bacon toward her. When charming failed, bacon often had a way of coming to the rescue. “Eat.”

Desire shone in her eyes, jogging another memory of the lust he remembered seeing on her face that night at the club, then later, at her apartment. He remembered the way her every emotion played on her face without artifice or pretense. At the time, he’d appreciated that quality of hers only because it had made her easier to seduce, then easier to bring pleasure to in bed. He supposed what he was doing this morning still counted as seduction, but now, he was wholly focused on her needs instead of his.

To his relief, her fingers closed around a crispy slice of bacon. “I wasn’t going to eat your food, given your enormous rancher’s appetite, but that smells too darn good to resist. One little piece...” She crunched into the bacon, her eyes closing with the bliss of it.

He watched her face, riveted anew by the ever-shifting nuances in her expression.

Yet he forced his wayward thoughts aside. There would be time enough to marvel over Hannah, but he was a man on a mission, and he would not be deterred for anything. “Our chef cures and smokes her own bacon, harvested from our ranch’s livestock. I wake to the smell of it frying in the kitchen every single morning. You could, too.”

Her eyes jolted open. “I’m not moving in with you.”

Time for the next step in his seduction. He liberally spread butter on his stack of flapjacks, then drizzled it with warm maple syrup. He sliced off a hearty wedge, then held his forkful across the table for her.

She backed her face up, eying the flapjack bite suspiciously.

“When was the last time you had pure maple syrup and real butter?” he crooned.

She reached a finger out to his plate and swiped at a drop of syrup, then brought it to her tongue.

Mercy. Just like that, Brett felt every one of the nineteen weeks of his self-inflicted abstinence.

“You, Brett Colton, are as slippery as a snake-oil salesman.”

He brandished the fork under her nose. “I prefer to think of myself as stubborn and single-minded. Not so different from you.”

The suspicion on her face melted away a little bit more. She guided his hand toward her and closed her lips around the fork in a way that gave Brett some ideas too filthy for his own good.

He cleared his throat, snapping his focus back to the task at hand. “When my parents remodeled the big house, they designed separate wings for each of their six children, but I’m the only one of the six who lives there full-time. Me and my father. My younger sister passes through sometimes, but you would have your own wing, your own bathroom with a big old tub, and plenty of privacy.”

For the first time, she seemed to be seriously considering his offer. Time to go for broke. He handed her another slice of bacon, which she accepted without a word.

“Where are you living now?” he said. “Can you look me in the eye and tell me it’s a good, long-term situation for you and the baby?”

She snapped a tiny bit of bacon off and popped it into her mouth. “It’s not like I’m living in some abandoned building. I’m staying with my best friend, Lori, and her boyfriend, Drew. It’s not ideal. Actually it’s far from ideal—I mean, I’m sleeping on the sofa—but with the money from this job, I’ll be able to afford my own place.”

“And until that first paycheck, you’ll live at the ranch.” He pressed his lips together. That had come out a smidge more demanding than he’d wanted it to.

Their gazes met and held. “Are you mandating that? Will the job offer depend on me accepting the temporary housing?”

Oh, how he wanted to say yes to that. “No. But you should agree to it, anyway. Your own bed, regular meals made by a top-rated personal chef, and your commute to work is down a set of stairs and along a short dirt road to the ranch office. The only traffic you might run into would be some overly excitable ranch dogs.”

She popped the rest of the bacon slice into her mouth, then washed it down with orange juice. “I know why you’re doing all this, and I still don’t fully believe you about the reason you’re hiring an accountant on the sly, but I really am grateful for all you’re offering—the job and the accommodations. In all honesty, this went a lot better than I thought it would.”

“The job interview?”

“No, telling you about the baby. I thought you’d either hate me or propose to me.”

Brett didn’t miss a beat. “I still might.”

“Which one, hate me?”

Leaning forward, he gave her a look full of commitment and honor. “Ask you to marry me. I haven’t taken that option off the table yet, either.” At the flush of pink to her skin, he added with a knowing smile, “For the record, I don’t think there’s a person on the planet who could hate you.”

“There’s a whole congregation of them over on Grand Avenue and Fourth Street.”

“That’s your church?”

“The Congregation of the Second Coming. My parents’ church, not mine. And it’s more like a cult than a church, truth be told. Even before they excommunicated me because of the pregnancy, I was done with that place. I’m still a Christian, but I doubt there’s room for that church’s closed-minded judgment in the kingdom of heaven.”

“Then you’re better off without them.”

She drew herself up tall. “Thank you. Yes, I am.”

“Take my offer, Hannah. Let me take care of you.” He clamped his teeth together, cursing himself for adding that last part. A strong, proud woman like her would chafe at such an old-fashioned notion.

She picked up her butter knife and made swirls in the bottom of her oatmeal bowl. Brett held his breath, watching her.

“I accept the job and the housing, even though ‘Pregnant with the Boss’s Baby’ sounds like a bad soap opera plot.” A conciliatory smile graced her lips.

Relief swept through his system with the force of last week’s flash flood. “I don’t know, I think it has a nice ring to it.” Even as he said that, the truth in her jest hit him with a fresh dose of clarity. He was going to be a father. His future was going to include diaper changes, first steps, scraped knees and sleepless nights. Everything in his life was about to change, and he and Hannah would forever be linked by the life they’d created together.

His attention raked over the mother of his child, who was worrying the edge of her napkin. “What’s bothering you now?”

“What about your family?” she said. “You took all this so well, but what if they hate me? Or worse, what if they think I got pregnant on purpose to get at your money?”

As much as he wished that her worry had no merit, she’d brought up an excellent point, because his family had no shortage of closed-minded judgmental attitudes, too. He’d been fighting for months to get them to see him in a new light, to prove to his brothers and father that he had turned over a new, more responsible leaf, so that they’d finally support the big plans he had for the family business. The last thing Brett needed was to add fuel to his brothers’ and father’s belief that he wasn’t fit to help run the Lucky C, and nothing said screwed-up, irresponsible rich boy better than getting a girl pregnant during a one-night stand.

But facing the consequences of his misspent years and terrible choices was his problem, not Hannah’s, so he squelched the grimace he felt coming on at the thought of breaking the news to his father and siblings. “Leave them to me.”

Chapter 3 (#ulink_4c078ff6-214a-53fb-b7d6-70777ec4ba4f)

Brett stood at the edge of Vulture Ridge, at the very place where he’d watched the cow get swept away in the flash flood, his gaze absorbing the land that he loved, despite Mother Nature’s occasional cruelty. Today the sky was clear, but they’d had afternoon thundershowers every day lately, and this afternoon’s forecast was no different. Even now, at a few minutes to noon, the clouds were stacking up on the horizon.

His eyeballs ached from a sleepless night of self-torment, with his conscience replaying every mistake he’d ever made. Every whiskey-soaked night, every morning of work he’d slept through—his past was littered with so much waste of money, time and opportunity that he could hardly believe that he kept being given more chances to get it right. That same life-changing bender of a weekend that had resulted in his car accident was now changing his life all over again. From this point forward and for the rest of his days, he would be beholden to a woman and, soon, a child. Somehow, he was going to become a man worthy of the charge—that he knew with absolute certainty.

Before dawn, he’d walked out of his house determined to stop looking back, ready to face his future with eyes wide-open. With a straight spine and determination coursing through his veins, he’d saddled Outlaw and had taken off to the backcountry, long before Jack and the ranch hands had arrived for their workdays.

He’d watched the sun rise over the prairie with an appreciation that reminded him of how he’d felt returning to the ranch after being released from the hospital after his accident—full of gratitude and hope. The longer he soaked in the views and scents of the backcountry, the land he adored, the more at peace he became with the new direction his life was going. Becoming a father was going to change a lot, but it wasn’t going to change everything. He would always have this land, this Colton legacy. And now he had someone to pass it to. The realization brought a smile to his lips.

The irony wasn’t lost on him that the very reason he couldn’t give up fighting for his rightful place in the Colton legacy was the very reason he was about to be back to square one with his family on that very topic. When his dad and brothers learned about Brett’s impending fatherhood resulting from a one-night stand, he was going to lose their trust all over again, along with whatever leverage he’d fought for over the past four months.

When the alarm on his phone chimed, alerting him that it was almost time for the family meeting that his older brother Ryan, a detective with the Tulsa PD, had called in order to share the latest developments in their mother’s assault case, Brett’s resolve faltered for a split second. Nerves settled in his gut like stones. Ryan wasn’t the only one with news to share.

A click of his tongue and a slight wiggle of a rein was all the direction Outlaw needed to turn away from the ridge and trot in the direction of the ranch buildings. Brett urged him faster, relishing the feel of unadulterated power in Outlaw’s muscles and stride. Brett knew that Outlaw loved this part, too, the wind in their faces and the open range at their feet as they shot across the plains, the sensations of speed and freedom potent enough for Brett to almost imagine it possible to outrun his past and his reputation.