Page 10 of A Baby for the Texas Cowboy (The Texas Wolf Brothers #3)

“That’s her call and August’s and mine. Not yours.”

“Stop trying to pick a fight with me,” Anders said, his tone reasonable while Tinsley felt increasingly frustrated.

He walked into the barn, looking around, and not at her.

“August tricked out the apartment and what was salvaged after the accident was moved here. We also have furniture from the house and some things August bought for the house when he remodeled and expanded it last year.” He turned back and smiled at her. “It’s practically a store.”

“Stop playing nice. You’re trying to take over, and it’s not going to work,” she told him.

“I’m only trying to help.”

“Why?”

“Why not?” He grinned in an aw-shucks kind of way that cranked up her irritation.

“It’s my life, and I need to figure things out my own way.”

Anders briefly closed his eyes, pinched his nose.

Did he really feel the need to control things that badly that he thought she was way out of line? How had she not seen this side of him? After her childhood and engagement to John, her radar should be fine-tuned.

Anders dropped his hand, opened his eyes, and took a deep breath. His T-shirt stretched across his shoulders and honed chest enough that she could see muscles rise and fall. She felt heat bloom low. Why was asserting herself and arguing with Anders turning her on?

“Fine.” He held his hands out, palms spread. “Pick what you want and I’ll get some of the hands to help me get it over to the apartment while you work with Catalina and August to learn more about the vineyard.”

“You don’t have to set up my apartment,” she said automatically.

“Yeah, because I’m the jackass who’d drive away while the mother of my child drags furniture up a steep flight of stairs.”

He did make her sound like an uptight shrew.

“Or maybe you think I’d head over to the Last Stand saloon, have a beer or two with my buddies while you haul your furniture into town, balancing it on your head while you race that sexy speed demon bike on gravel ranch roads.”

Now he was just trying to make her seem ridiculous. Maybe make her laugh. She’d seen him defuse quite a few tense situations between bull riders, cowboys and fans. Did he really think she was being purposely difficult? She felt like she was trying to survive in this new world.

“You just keep trying to take control.”

He closed the distance between them. Reached out to touch her but then put his hand down.

Tinsley, who’d been waiting for his touch—her body already warm and tingling and needing—leaned toward him, her eyes drifting shut as if to give her sense of touch free rein.

She inhaled deeply catching his warm, masculine scent and longing swept through her.

“I just want to help, Tinsley. I need to help. I’m not trying to control you.”

She opened her eyes, embarrassed and disappointed that he hadn’t touched her, although he was close enough so she felt the heat his body gave off. She craved his warmth and touch, and she hated that need.

He leaned closer. Was he going to kiss her? He shifted his head slightly so that his mouth brushed against her ear. “But I do want to control you in bed.”

“Want or need?” She forced teasing into her tone, even though her body started to go liquid at his closeness, and she froze, afraid to move and give away her desire. Heat bloomed and she could feel herself going damp—and he hadn’t even touched her. And he was pissing her off.

“I want it. A lot.” His voice was deep and smoky and Tinsley was hyper aware of all the furniture, the inviting surfaces—it wasn’t like Anders had always waited for a bed. No, not him and definitely not her.

She took two steps back.

“That’s what got us into trouble in the first place.”

His smile shut down as fast as the teasing light in his eyes, and for an insane moment, she wanted it back.

“Tinsley, we are having a baby.”

“Stop saying that word. Stop making me think about it every second.” God, she sounded so stupid. Like an ostrich and every other dumb denialist analogy an overeducated poet could dream up.

“We are having a baby who will be our child, and our child is not going to ever feel like he or she was a problem.”

He sounded angry, and she felt like he’d slapped her. He was right. So right. How did he do that? Jump from easygoing love ’em and leave ’em smiling cowboy to accepting fatherhood as naturally as he would a new shirt?

She felt on the edge of a cliff with sharp edges and churning cold water below. Panic sliced through her.

“I never even wanted a kid,” she practically yelled. “Ever.”

Anders took a step back into a brightly painted bookcase and it wobbled. He stared at her, breath puffing in and out. The case started to tip, and it was clear she’d shocked him into immobility. Tinsley caught the case, righted it.

“You don’t want our baby?”

Fear, regret and something she couldn’t name compressed her chest. The headache that had niggled all morning bloomed into blinding pain.

“No.”

He’d wanted to get things straight between them. This was a long ribbon of highway line divider. Her might not like it or her, but at least she was being honest.

“W-w-what are you saying?” Anders whispered. “You’re not… You weren’t thinking of…” His tone made her turn to face him. He sagged against the side of the barn. “You never…”

She would have thought a man like him would have looked hopeful, not shattered. What man wanted to be saddled having a kid with a woman he’d planned to have a fling with and then roll on to the next one? But no, Anders looked pale, even a little sick.

“I don’t understand you at all,” she admitted.

“What’s to understand?” Instead of sounding angry and issuing out orders, he sounded bewildered, and somehow his confusion calmed her enough that she admitted more—just got it out on the messy table of their lives.

“I was so…so anxious and angry and in denial when I started to suspect I was…you know. It just didn’t seem possible or fair.

” She nipped her lower lip then stopped.

She pressed her palms down on her leathers like that would do anything to make them less clammy.

“I was such a coward, waiting a few days to buy the test. I kept waiting, hoping. And then when I finally took the test I screamed and hurled the positive stick across the motel room into the wall.”

“You did?” Anders’ voice was a whispered thread.

“Yeah.” She scowled. “I didn’t want a kid.

I never wanted a kid. I loved my job with Four Wolfs and representing Cowboy Wolf Whiskey.

I loved my bike. I loved being able to go where I wanted to go and when I wanted to.

I loved traveling, seeing new places, meeting new people.

Dancing in honky-tonks, shooting pool, listening to concerts, drinking whiskey with friends, hiking.

I loved having so many different jobs. The challenge.

The creativity. Reinventing myself each time. My whole life I…”

Her voice had gathered steam as she remembered how free she’d felt, how happy, but then she went too far into the past and she stopped before she jumped off that cliff.

“And now it’s all gone,” she said. “The life I built is all gone.”