Cowboy's Baby

Oh, yeah, one look at her and he’d gone from PO’d to thinking it might not be so bad to spend some time with her. As long as he kept everything light and friendly and aboveboard. What harm could it do to escort her here and there? he’d asked himself. And the answer he’d come up with was: no harm at all. A few days of enjoying her company and making Matt happy, then they’d go their separate ways.

For a while he’d thought he was pulling that off, too. He’d just been having fun, looking forward to meeting Kate at breakfast every morning and filling the rest of the day and evening with gambling or sight-seeing or shopping or taking in a show together.

Then little things had begun to strike him.

Like how sweet she could be. How nice. Like how much more fun he had when he was with her than when he wasn’t. Like the fact that she had the most terrific laugh that came out sounding like wind chimes and turned her from terrific looking to stunning and made a sparkle come into her eyes that could light up a whole room.

And then it was New Year’s Eve.

His and Matt’s birthdays.

And there he’d been, with his best friend and his best friend’s family, with Kate, having one of the best times he’d ever had. Which had included a record number of toasts with plenty of champagne—not his drink of choice but it had been poured like water that night. And the result of everything put together was that he’d gotten carried away.

Okay, so taking Matt’s sister to a wedding chapel and marrying her on the spur of the moment probably qualified as more than just getting carried away.

But that’s where the insanity part had kicked in again.

By then he’d been aware that he was attracted to Kate. But maybe not how much. And if she’d been another woman he would have just tried coaxing her into spending the night with him.

But she hadn’t been another woman. She was Kate. Sweet Kate. Matt’s little sister. And a virgin.

Brady still didn’t know how she’d arrived at twenty-nine years old with her virginity intact. Or why. But when she’d confided in him that she was a virgin, he’d known he couldn’t just make love to her because they’d both been so inclined. There had to be more to it than that. It had to be special. It had to be ceremonious.

And what had his liquor-soaked brain come up with?

Marriage. They should get married….

Brady stood under the pelting spray of the showerhead and let it beat down on his face as if it might wash away the stupidity in that reasoning from two months ago.

But it didn’t help. What else but stupid could you call marrying your best friend’s virgin sister and then taking her to bed?

Monumentally stupid.

Especially when that sister woke up the next morning feeling about it the way Kate had.

What a rude awakening that had been!

Before he’d so much as thought about what they’d done, she’d been out of bed, frantic and ordering him to rectify it.

Sure he agreed what they’d done had been dumb. But did she have to be so appalled? So outraged? So downright repulsed?

His pride hadn’t just taken another strike, it had taken a full body blow—and then a knee to the groin when she’d gone on to let him know she was so horrified by having married him and slept with him, that he had to promise never to tell her brothers.

Of course, telling her brothers was not high on his top-ten list of things to do, either. But again, it wasn’t an ego booster to know the extent to which Kate was disgusted by the whole situation.

That was about when he’d decided he wanted to kick himself for having fooled around with her in the first place. For having put his friendship with Matt in jeopardy. For not having seen ahead of time that Kate wasn’t anywhere near as attracted to him as he’d been to her.

And rebruised pride or no rebruised pride, Brady hadn’t been left with a doubt in his mind that the best thing for everyone was to do exactly what Kate had ordered him to do just before she’d run out of the room as if she couldn’t stand to spend another minute with him—dissolve the marriage.

Which was what he had contacted a lawyer for the very next day.

So now, as soon as she signed the papers and they filed them, it would finally be over and they could put it behind them. Once and for all.

Finished with his shower, Brady got out of the stall and wrapped a towel around his waist. Then he used another towel to clear the mirror to shave.

As he did, he couldn’t help wondering if, when he could put this fiasco behind him, he would also be able to get Kate McDermot off his mind.

Because that’s where she had been for the past two months. Stubbornly, continuously, vividly on his mind. No matter what he tried to do to dislodge her.

But would some simple paperwork accomplish that? Especially when seeing her again had done what it had done to him?

Even surrounded by her family and at a distance, he’d still felt her presence the very instant she’d walked into the living room. It had been as if the temperature had suddenly risen. As if everything were brighter. As if all the colors around him were more vivid.

And that was before he’d so much as glanced at her.

Then he’d looked up and seen her for the first time since New Year’s morning, and he’d been struck all over again by how beautiful she was in that quietly understated way of hers. With those sparkling green eyes and that wildly curly honey-brown hair shot through with streaks of gold, and those tender lips he remembered kissing until they’d grown puffy….

Damn if he hadn’t wanted to walk away from the rest of her family and go to her, take her in his arms, kiss her again the way he had that night….

Brady nicked himself with his razor, drawing blood.

“That’s what you get for thinking those kinds of things,” he told himself as he tore a corner from a tissue and pressed it to the wound.

And why the hell was he thinking about this now?

He’d already made one huge mistake with that woman and she’d let him know what she thought of him for it.

So what good did it do to be wallowing in this damn attraction to her?

No good, that’s what.

“So shake it off,” he ordered.

And that’s exactly what he was going to do.

Even though a part of him was itching to do something entirely different. To do a little courting. A little charming. A little wooing…

But that was the stupid, crazy part of him.

Because if there was one thing he’d learned in the past year—and learned the hard way—it was that no amount of tenacity or persistence, no amount of wooing or wining and dining or gift giving, could change a woman’s feelings once she’d decided she didn’t want him.

And Kate McDermot had made it more than clear the morning after their wedding that she didn’t want him. Or anything to do with him.

So he was here to visit Matt, to look at some property, to get the divorce papers signed, and that was it.

And if Kate McDermot could still rock his world just by walking into a room? Too bad.

He wasn’t giving in to the attraction. He wasn’t letting it put him in any position where he could be dealt another emotional body blow the way Claudia had done.