Boot Scootin' Secret Baby

A fountain of red and blue sparks shot upward, illuminating the view from the ground up.

No Cub Goodacre.

She exhaled and in doing so realized she’d held her breath so long and so hard, her chest actually ached to release it. How could she have let her mind play tricks on her like that?

Fear of failure, clear and simple, she decided. She had had her first taste of success today, known that this time she wasn’t going to crash and burn like she had in her last attempt to stand on her own. Then what should leap up and try to scare her into behaving like the old Alyssa? Only the image of her greatest failure as a daughter, a wife, and an independent woman—Cub Goodacre.

The very idea was laughable, really. Cub, here. On her parents’ ranch after three years without so much as a “Fare thee well or go to hell.”

She forced a chuckle through her dry throat, shook her head and turned to go inside.

Pshhheeeuw! Boom. Bang. Bang. A blaze of colors bloomed like enormous flaming parachutes opening against the star-strewn sky, bathing the scene below in a red and yellow glow.

Pppt...Pppt...Pppt...

“Hello, Alyssa.”

Pow!

“Cub!”

Alyssa shut her eyes, half hoping the mirage would fade.

Red shone against her lids with another burst above her. Even so, she could still see the image of a man in faded jeans so perfectly snug they could have grown over his lean thighs and tight calves instead of being bought from a rack. She saw in tantalizing detail the denim shirt, tailored to fit against the rock-hard torso tapering upward to shoulders so broad they made a woman lose herself in sweet dreams of safety and security—and lovemaking as wild as any bull ride.

She could even see the scar that trailed along his jaw to just under his chin. An old rodeo injury had given him that little souvenir, the damage leaving his voice perpetually husky, so that even when he asked someone to pass the sugar, it sounded like an indecent proposal.

She laid her palm across the open V above her breasts. Her skin felt damp. Her head swirled. No mere mirage could make her feel this way.

Slowly, she opened her eyes. He loomed real and dangerously sexy before her. Cub Goodacre was here in the flesh.

Glistening golden and tinged with red light, he stood on her doorstep. He pulled his hat from his head and pushed his long, blunt fingers through his closely cropped black hair. “Looks like a perfect night for a few fireworks, wouldn’t you say?”

After three years, he’d hardly changed at all. His body still looked as hard and exquisite as any marble statue, his face rough-hewn as any jagged piece of South Dakota Badlands. The glittering sparks reflected in the depths of his ice-blue eyes, made them seem bottomless and cold—yet lit by some distant incandescent fire.

She didn’t need to look long into those eyes to know that he was angry. Good, she thought, she was angry, too. She had three years of anger and disappointment and pain in her. If he expected to let her have it for what she’d done to him, well, he’d get as good as he gave—and then some.

This wasn’t the old Alyssa he was dealing with now. This was Alyssa the strong independent thinker. Alyssa the savvy, charming businesswoman. Alyssa the mother.

Her stomach lurched. Jaycie. She whipped her head around to make sure the baby remained in Yip Cartwright’s capable grasp before she turned to Cub again. The best defense is a good offense, she told herself, going on attack.

“You have some nerve showing up here, Goodacre.” She planted her hands on her hips, hoping her moist palms would not stain her linen outfit and give her nervousness away. “I’d ask you what you wanted but that might give you the impression I give a damn.”

He had no answer for that. Clearly, he hadn’t reckoned on meeting up with anything but the docile, doting girl she had once been. He studied her from beneath the sharp angles of his dark eyebrows.

Taking advantage of his hesitation, she decided to make a hasty retreat. Yes, she would have to see him sometime, and she would have to find a way to tell him about their child, but not here, not now. She lunged for the door but as her hand closed over the big brass door handle, Cub closed in on her.

The heat of his body pressed down over her. Her racing heart stilled as a shudder crept up her spine. The fervor of the crowd and the rumblings of the fireworks faded in her ears; her entire world narrowed to just this moment, just this man.

“Whoa there, Alyssa Cartwright.”

She tensed at the name, his veiled accusation of her betrayal in proclaiming their marriage a fraud. His callused palm closed over the soft skin of her hand, stopping her from opening the door.

“I didn’t come out here to be treated to a view of your backside.” Cub’s chest rose and fell. The scent of her hair, her skin, her nearness filled his lungs and his very being. He held it trapped inside him as he fought to keep his cool exterior. He clenched his jaw and lowered his voice to a rasping, bedroom growl. “Not that I don’t thoroughly enjoy the view.”

It was no lie. The sight of Alyssa again startled his senses in ways he hadn’t thought possible. Her hair, her eyes, her willowy body aged into womanhood with a fullness and rounding like ripe fruit about to burst from its skin, all tempted him. He had no way to prepare himself for the reality of seeing her again, of being so close neither of them could move or even breathe without the other feeling it.

He had no way of preparing himself for the woman he now saw, full of grit and a grace under pressure he hadn’t suspected lurked beneath the blushing sweetness of her innocence. A woman who, it seemed, had no other response to him but scorn.

Something primal in him wanted to make her pay for that—not to hurt her, but to put things on equal footing between them.

“Listen, Goodacre.” She tossed back her hair, keeping her face forward. “One scream from me and you’re off this ranch on the next skyrocket.”

“Ain’t scared of that,” he murmured into the thick warmth of her hair. “I’ve ridden hotter things. Ridden ’em hard and fast, till I reckoned we’d both of us burn up from the heat and fury.”

He heard her pulling in a long, soft gasp and he smiled.

“Remember, Alyssa?”

Her spine went rigid. She turned her profile to him, her voice as dry as sparks when a knife scrapes flint, her words sharpened by her strangled emotion. “I remember, Cub. I also remember thinking I’d nearly drown in my own tears when I realized that for all its fire, that passion had only been a convenient lie.”

He should have seen that one coming, but he hadn’t. He knew she’d used his going back on the circuit to get herself an annulment—marriage under false pretenses, she said. But until this moment, he hadn’t understood that she thought that meant nothing they’d shared had been true or valid. The realization stuck low in his gut and sent searing pain through his entire body. A lie—that’s how she summed up what, for him, had been the pivotal experience of his life.

“I...I can’t have this discussion with you now,” she said.

The pleading in her tone, joined with the stark devastation he felt at learning how the woman who held his heart saw him, made him step back.

A liar. He’d been called worse but it had never sliced into his soul as Alyssa’s accusation did.

The lever of the door handle clicked quietly.

Somewhere behind them a band blared to accompany the frenzied finale to the fireworks show.

She pushed the door open. “Call the house tomorrow and maybe we can set up a time to talk.”

“No.”

“What?” For the first time, she turned to face him.

He forced his gaze to lock with hers. Don’t back down now, he told himself. He’d come here for a reason, to purge her from his system or at least ensure she wouldn’t be there to jinx his all-important next ride. Despite the pain just standing here caused him, he wasn’t about to go with that mission left unaccomplished. “We both know a busted-up bull rider like me ain’t good enough to be husband nor lover to a woman like you. No reason to pretend otherwise.”

Something flickered in the liquid pools of her hazel eyes. Her gaze denied his words but her lips did not.

He nodded and glanced down at his hat in his hand. “But I won’t be dismissed by you Alyssa. Not this time.”

“I never dismissed you.”

“No, you just had me annulled.”