Page 15 of Rocky Mountain Home

The sex had been fantastic, but you couldn’t judge the strength of a man’s character by the way he used his dick.

Not even with her vivid imagination had she expected the proposal, which meant she was currently running without a script. Which, okay, meant he got blunt.

She freed her fingers from his grasp and stepped away to put some physical distance between them. “I assume that was shock speaking. You don’t know a thing about me, and you want to get married?”

“I know you’re having my baby. Isn’t that enough?”

“Hardly. I don’t love you.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

Dare glared. “Everything. I’m not marrying a man I don’t love.”

“You’re having my baby.”

“That doesn’t mean I love you. It means we had sex. Good sex, but that’s not love.”

“Really great sex. And of course you’re going to marry me.”

“Slow your roll, asshole. I don’t know you. The list of things I know about you I could count on one hand, maybe two, without needing to go to my toes.”

“I know you make this noise when you come that gives me shivers.”

All the air sucked out of the room, and annoyingly, Dare felt her face heating. “You didn’t just say that, and I do not.”

Jesse flashed a grin that made her knees tremble. “It’s not a bad place to start, and you totally do.”

Dare pressed her fists to her temples and counted to ten. Okay, so he didn’t fit either of her main scenarios, which meant she had to come up with an alternative solution, fast, because no way in hell was she agreeing to get married as if there were a shotgun to both their heads.

Just a baby in my belly.

She took a deep breath then faced him. “What about we compromise for now? I mean, you’re right. It’s your baby too, so you get to be in their life if you want, but I don’t think we should consider something as drastic as getting married when we don’t even know each other.”

The poor man was getting a workout today, his handsome face tugging into a scowl. “You want to date?”

“Well, that would be one way to find out more about each other than just our first names.”

Jesse shook his head. “I agree we need to get to know each other better because, yeah, it will make raising our kid easier, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t just do it.”

It was horrible that the only thing that registered out of his entire statement was do it, and her thoughts had nothing to do with dating, or marriage, or even babies, and everything to do with sex.

Jesse had the moves, and she knew it. Intimately.

It was totally unfair he’d missed the entire too-sick-to-consider-herself-a-sexual-being months, and instead had arrived when all her hormones seemed to be percolating at higher than usual.

She might have had more resistance to his sex appeal when she’d been feeling green. Now all she could think about was how he’d made her tingle so hard she’d been seeing stars after her third—or was it fourth?—orgasm. A hard pulse hit between her legs…

…and great. She’d been daydreaming about sex while staring into space.

Or staring at him.

Dammit, she’d been staring at his package, and as she jerked her gaze up to meet his, there was a faintly mocking expression in his eyes.

She powered her way forward. “Excuse me, what did you just say? I’m not being a smartass. I really need you to repeat what you said two seconds ago.”

His smile escaped, and another shiver of desire slipped over her body. Slamming up stop signs on her aching libido hurt.

He held up a finger as if he had an idea. “Let’s meet in the middle. Let’s get engaged, because that commitment will be enough to stop most people from talking.” Jesse grimaced. “I know small towns, and small minds, and I hope nobody’s been giving you grief.”