Having the Cowboy's Baby

Well, wasn’t that a gallant thought, so unlike him. He wasn’t a jerk when it came to women, but he’d never been a knight in shining armor either.

Gradually, the crowd filled in the space between him and Skyler as she accepted a piece of cake and was surrounded by her friends. After a couple of minutes, the music started up again and he made his way to the bar. He’d barely gotten his beer and turned around to see if he could spot Skyler in the throng when Verona stepped up next to him.

“You and Skyler seemed to be having a nice time,” she said.

“We were.”

“That’s good. She needs a night where she can loosen up a little.”

Logan didn’t respond beyond a grunt that indicated he’d heard her.

“You think you’ll be staying long?”

“Just till the rodeo’s done.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. Blue Falls is a nice place to settle down. You could ask Liam about that. He seems to like it.”

“I’m not much of the staying-in-one-place type, ma’am. Can’t make much money riding bulls if you don’t go where the bulls are.”

“I guess not.” Verona sounded as if he’d shot the air out of her very pretty balloon.

He glanced in her direction to find her scanning the crowd. He got the oddest feeling she’d stricken his name from a list and was already seeking out a new potential mate for Skyler. And damned if that didn’t make him angry.

Not for himself. What he’d told her was the truth. He was just annoyed on Skyler’s behalf. If she was the least bit like him, she didn’t like other people trying to carve out her life for her. Before he slipped and told a woman old enough to be his mother to mind her own business, he took another swig of his half-finished beer and set it on the counter behind him.

“If you’ll excuse me.” Before Verona could respond, he pushed his way into the crowd, intent on finding Skyler. The night was young, with plenty of time for more dancing and hopefully a few more kisses.

But by the time he made it to the middle of the dance floor, he noticed she was no longer near the stage. He searched the faces around him and finally spotted her heading out the front door as if the place was on fire.

Something told him he should let her go, that if he followed her, he would be getting in over his head. That thought was still repeating in his mind as his feet carried him toward the exit.

* * *

WHEN SKYLER STEPPED outside the music hall, she inhaled deeply and let it out slowly, what felt like the first true breath she’d taken since arriving. Between the crush of people, kissing Logan and then having every eye in the place turned toward her, she’d felt more and more of her breath stolen with each passing moment.

She still couldn’t believe she’d kissed Logan, someone she’d met only hours ago, right there in the middle of the dance floor. And it wasn’t just a peck either. It’d been a mind-melting, blow-her-shoes-off type of kiss. Whatever else she might say about Logan Bradshaw, the man could kiss. When his arms had pulled her close against his hard body, she’d wanted much more than kissing. Honestly, her body still hummed with that insane longing. For a crazy moment, she’d wished she was the type of carefree person who could indulge her yearnings without thinking it to death.

“Making a getaway before they spring another surprise on you?”

The sound of Logan’s voice sent a little extra jolt to that hum within her, kicking it up a notch.

She glanced toward where he stood leaning back against someone’s pickup truck. “That obvious, huh?”

He held up one hand with his thumb and forefinger nearly together. “A touch.”

“Did they send you out here to drag me back in?”

“Nope. I’m chasing you because I still intend to buy you that ice-cream cone.”

“I just had cake. The last thing I need is ice cream.”

“Don’t tell me you’re worried about your figure. Because from where I’m standing, you’re an entire ice-cream factory away from having to worry about it.”

Though it wouldn’t be visible out here in the half light of the parking lot, Skyler’s face heated at his compliment. Despite the fact that compliments probably rolled off his tongue easily because he had a lot of practice, there was a ring of truth behind his words. It might be a line, but it wasn’t a lie, at least not from his point of view. That made her stupidly happy.

Logan pushed away from the truck and walked slowly toward her. “Come on, you know you can’t resist the siren call of ice cream.”

Skyler laughed. “You’re used to getting whatever you want, aren’t you?”

Logan smiled, and it made her heart do a funny little flip.

“Good things come to those who go after them.” He leaned toward her and lowered his voice to a whisper. “And just so you know, right now that good thing isn’t the ice cream.”

“What is?”

His eyes took on a wicked gleam, the kind of wicked that tempted you to do things you’d never normally consider, not outside of your imagination, anyway. “I think you know.”

Her breath caught trying to escape her lungs. He was going to kiss her again, and oh how she wanted him to do exactly that. Only he didn’t. Instead, he slid his fingers through hers and started leading her down the sidewalk.

She searched frantically for something to say but came up empty. Was she being totally nuts, walking off into the night with a stranger without telling anyone where she was going? But it was as if a part of her that never revealed itself was in charge, telling her to enjoy the moment, the feel of his strong hand wrapped around hers, the high of having a good-looking man showing interest in her.

Sure, she went out from time to time, less than Elissa but more than India ever had, but this felt different. Electric and breathless and exciting. She had a good life, one she enjoyed, but this type of excitement never made an appearance in her safe, ordered life. She’d never known she yearned for it. Part of her still believed none of this could be real, that she had to be dreaming.

When they reached the Ice Cream Hut, Logan led her to the window. “Get whatever you want.”

Mari Brewer, the teenage daughter of Larena Brewer, the inn’s head chef, saw Skyler first. Then her eyes widened when she spotted Logan. It seemed to take a good bit of effort for her to shift her gaze back to Skyler.

“Hey, happy birthday. Sorry I couldn’t make it to the party.”

“Thanks, and don’t worry about it. I just made a quick getaway.”

“Don’t blame you.” The way Mari looked at Logan, it was obvious she would have chosen time alone with the hot guy over a building full of people, too.

“Blue Falls is growing on me.” Logan placed one hand along the lower part of Skyler’s back but propped the other forearm along the ledge outside the serving window. “Seems every woman I meet here is pretty.”

Mari smiled and laughed a little.

“Cut it out,” Skyler said, and nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. “We’re here for ice cream, not for you to hone your flirting skills.”

Instead of behaving, Logan leaned closer to the window and Mari. “Sorry, beautiful, but I think she wants me all for herself.”

Skyler rolled her eyes. “You are impossible. Mari, can I get a scoop of blueberry, please?”

“Sure.” Mari looked at Logan. “And for you?”

“Vanilla.”

When Mari turned to scoop the ice cream, Skyler faced Logan. “Vanilla, really? You don’t seem like a plain vanilla sort of guy.”

He shrugged. “Maybe I’m sweet enough without all the fancy flavors.”

Skyler snorted. “Sweet is not the word that comes to mind.”

“Then what word does?”

Skyler accepted her ice-cream cone. “You can just keep wondering about that one.”

A stream of words scrolled through her mind, but three stood out brighter and bolder and truer than all the rest. Sexy...as...sin.

But he knew that, so she wasn’t about to pad his ego by admitting her thoughts out loud. Instead, she left him waiting for his ice cream and headed toward one of the benches that sat next to the lake. The moon was rising, its reflection glittering on the surface of the water.

When Logan joined her, he sat close enough to put his arm around her. Part of her told her to shift away, but that was the part that was always so careful. Though she couldn’t explain it, tonight she wanted to pretend she was someone else, someone who wasn’t so wrapped up in the “right” way to do everything.

“This is nice,” he said after several moments went by.

She took a deep breath of the cooler night air. “Yes, it is.”

“More your speed than jumping out of airplanes?”

She smiled and glanced at him. “Understatement of the century.”

“Bet you never expected to enjoy it.”

She refocused on the water and really thought about it. Skydiving wasn’t something she would have done on her own, too many things that could go wrong, but was she glad she’d been forced into it?

“No. I still get nauseated when I think about actually doing it, but the view was incredible.”

He bumped his shoulder into hers. “See, not so bad living a little.”

“I live just fine, thank you.” She took another bite of her ice cream, hurrying to keep it from melting down the sides of the cone and all over her hand.

“That right? So what do you do on days when you’re not jumping out of planes?”

She wiped her mouth with a napkin. “I own the Wildflower Inn.” She pointed across the lake at the lights of the inn.

“That right? How many beds there?”

Skyler looked up at Logan just as he licked his ice cream. Good grief, that action made her sizzle all over. “Um...” What was she trying to remember? Oh, yeah, number of beds at the inn. She imagined Logan lying on one of those soft fluffy beds.

The lights on the Ice Cream Hut went out, cloaking Skyler and Logan in darkness. It was enough to jerk her out of her careening thoughts, ones so unlike her it was as if she’d suddenly discovered another personality inside herself.

“Thirty,” she finally remembered to say. “Well, thirty rooms. Some are singles, some doubles, a mixture.”

Logan chuckled. “I do make you nervous.”

“Yes.” Way to go, admit it again, give him even more ammunition. Make yourself look like more of a ninny.

Unable to sit still, she jumped to her feet and walked toward the garbage can to toss her trash.

“What, you don’t like cones?” Logan asked.

“No. I like to eat ice cream out of them but don’t like the cones themselves. I know, weird quirk.”

“We all have them.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s your quirk?”

He took the crunchy last bite of his cone, chewed slowly, making her nervous as he watched her without answering, then swallowed. “I like redheads.”

She laughed. “And blondes, and brunettes.”

He got to his feet and walked toward her. When he stood less than an arm’s length away, he reached around her to pitch his napkin. “But redheads who like blueberry ice cream most of all.”

Skyler laughed and realized that despite his corny lines and cocky self-assurance, she liked him. He was good for a laugh.

And for kissing.

As if he could read her thoughts, Logan pulled her to him and lowered his lips to hers. Beyond the blueberry flavor coating her tongue, she tasted the vanilla. Something about the mixing of flavors sent a burst of heat through her and had her hands finding their way up his chest. Even through the fabric, she could tell he had the kind of chest that made covering it with a shirt a crime.

She moaned into his mouth at the thought, and that seemed to toss fuel on the fire beginning to blaze between them. Logan pulled her even closer, so close that she felt his arousal. If she’d thought she was buzzing with desire before, that had been nothing compared to the zing that went through her now.

His hands ran up her ribs and brushed the underside of her breasts. She gasped, but another kiss captured her surprise.

The sound of a car starting barely registered, but when light suddenly illuminated them, Skyler startled enough to end the kiss and take a step back from Logan. Right as loud music filled the night air, Skyler realized the car belonged to Mari and she’d gotten a good show as she left work for the evening.

Skyler spun away, turning her back toward Mari’s car. Not that it mattered. Her face was likely flaming enough to light up the night more than Mari’s headlights.

As Mari took off, letting the darkness settle again, Logan walked up behind Skyler. Trying to gather up some common sense, she didn’t give him the opportunity to pull her to him again.

“I need to get back before India and Elissa call out the cavalry.”

He didn’t argue but rather took a step back and extended his hand toward the sidewalk, inviting her to proceed ahead of him. She took a shaky step then another. Her nerves continued to buzz even though Logan didn’t make any attempt to touch her. How crazy was it that she already missed the feel of his hand around hers, the warmth of his body pressed against hers?

Still, crazy or not, she couldn’t get the idea out of her head as they walked past businesses closed for the night. The closer they came to the music hall, the more she slowed her pace, knowing that when they reached the hall, that would be the end of being with Logan. And despite the fact they were little more than strangers and he was too cocky for his own good, she couldn’t deny he made her feel like no man ever had, daring and wonderfully nervous and...alive.

She might have lost her mind, but she didn’t want to lose that other Skyler quite yet. It was her birthday, after all, and it was time she gave herself a present. As they reached the narrow opening between Tumbleweed Books and Rand’s Western Wear where the city had built a tiny park, Skyler stopped walking.

“Something wrong?” Logan asked.

For a long moment, she said nothing, just stared at the sidewalk while an argument took place in her head. Her normal, sensible self said her day had been filled with enough excitement already and it was time to return to real life. But an increasingly loud voice told her that it felt good to really live, that it was still her birthday and she should enjoy it to the fullest.

“Skyler?” Logan sounded concerned this time, and that sealed the deal.

She grabbed the front of his shirt with both of her hands and dragged him into the darker confines of the little park. She pushed him up against the side of the bookstore and captured his lips with hers, filling her senses with him.

Logan wasted no time returning the kiss, spinning so that her back was against the wall. He pressed his body close, every bit as eager as she was. His hands slid under her shirt and skimmed along the sensitive skin of her sides and then up her spine.

Skyler somehow gathered enough brain cells together to realize they had to go somewhere or they were going to end up naked against the side of a building. That thought half scared her, half excited her even more than she already was.

“Do you want to come back to the inn with me?” She breathed the words against his mouth. They sounded as though they were coming from someone else, certainly not careful-to-a-fault Skyler Harrington. But she couldn’t deny she wanted this man and she wanted him now.

Logan’s mouth moved from her lips, up her jaw to her ear. He captured her earlobe with his teeth, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to make her arch against him. “My motel room’s closer.”

Something low in her belly, lower even than that, screamed yes. But Skyler hesitated, a sliver of the person she really was trying to assert itself.

Logan moved away enough that she could look up into his eyes. He lifted a hand and smoothed her hair behind her ear in a surprisingly tender gesture. He probably didn’t think anything of it, but that simple movement tipped the scales away from caution toward total abandon.

Skyler entwined her fingers through his and followed the part of herself she’d never known existed, the part that had gone through with jumping out of that plane, the part that would likely disappear with the morning light. But that was still hours away.

“Lead the way.”

Chapter Four

The music and laughter coming from the music hall faded as Skyler allowed Logan to lead her off of Main Street onto Seven Hills Avenue. Her heartbeat thundered louder and harder with every step they took away from the music hall, her friends, safety in numbers. Her step faltered as they came within view of the Country Vista Inn, a little strip of a motel frequented more by cowboys and road-maintenance crews than tourists. It wasn’t a dump, just not the Wildflower Inn. The Country Vista served its purpose, giving people a place to sleep.

Or something else.

Logan stopped and spun her into his arms. “Don’t think too much.”

“I don’t know. I—”

He halted her words by capturing her mouth with his and overwhelming her senses with pure, undiluted desire. She felt that kiss zing along all of her veins like a hit of some intoxicating drug she was powerless to resist. As Logan started walking backward without breaking the kiss, her feet followed. When he finally broke the kiss, her body buzzed with need as her thoughts swirled like a hurricane in her head.

When they reached the door to his room, her common sense made one final desperate attempt to stop her. But the moment Logan slid his key card through the reader and opened the door to his room, allowing her to see the king-size bed, she was lost.

Logan led her inside and locked the door behind her. In the next moment, he backed her against the door and kissed her again. This time his hands slid down her ribs to rest on her hips. When he pressed closer, Skyler gasped at his obvious arousal. Logan chuckled against her lips as his hands untucked her T-shirt. When the callused texture of his palm made contact with her skin, she recaptured his mouth.

She’d never wanted to have sex so much in her life. Logan could consume her right now, and she wouldn’t care. In fact, she’d welcome it.

The next thing she knew, Logan grasped the bottom of her shirt and quickly pulled it over her head. Before she could catch her breath, he lowered his wet, warm mouth to the swell of her breast above her bra. She grabbed the hat still on his head and tossed it onto a chair in the corner, then ran her hands through his hair, pulling him closer.

Logan unsnapped her bra, allowing him to nudge the fabric aside and capture her breast in his mouth.

“Oh, yes.”

She felt him smile against her, probably because it was obvious she’d never done anything like this before. But then he flicked the sensitive tip with his tongue, and her eyes closed as she pressed her head back against the door. As Logan shifted his talented mouth from one breast to the other, Skyler’s legs shook.

“You need to get off your feet,” Logan whispered in her ear. Then he scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the bed. He lay her crossways on the mattress, then followed her down.

She realized she’d lost her bra when Logan captured one of her breasts again, then wrapped his arms around her to lift her closer to his mouth. Her hands gripped the back of his shirt, pulling it up so that she could run her hands over his naked flesh.

Her body warmed even more as she ran her fingers across all that taut skin over well-defined muscles.

Logan lifted himself and smiled down at her. “Let me help you with that.” Without breaking eye contact, he unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it aside as if he didn’t care whether he ever saw it again.

Forget a crime. It would be a sin to cover up that chest. Every woman was turned on by different parts of a man, and for her it was definitely chests and arms. And Logan’s were perfect—tanned, toned, with the kind of muscle definition that came from hard work rather than pumping iron.

Logan’s mouth quirked up at one end. “Like the view?”

Skyler licked her lips. “Yes.”

Logan smiled wider as he lowered himself to her mouth, kissing her deeply as his hands went to the top of her jeans and slipped the button free. Her breath came faster as he lowered her zipper and slid his hand inside the top edge of her panties.

A five-alarm fire started in her middle and flashed out to the tips of her extremities in the blink of an eye. Unwilling to wait any longer for what her body craved, Skyler found the top of Logan’s jeans and mimicked what he’d done to hers. When she slid her hands inside to cup his naked hips, Logan growled against her lips.

He rolled away only long enough to pull off his boots and rid himself of the rest of his clothing. Then he made quick work of making her every bit as naked as he was.

Mercy, he was gorgeous, from head to toe. And gone was their relatively slow progress. She shocked herself by watching his every movement as he ripped open a foil package and sheathed himself. If possible, she grew even hotter and needier at the sight. She found it difficult to breathe, as if her lungs were as stunned by the view before her as she was.

Logan lowered himself to the bed and pulled her beneath him, nudging her legs apart with his knee. He kissed her again, his tongue dancing with hers and making her wonder how she’d ever made it through a day without being kissed like that.

“Are you okay?” he asked as he trailed kisses across her cheek toward her ear.

“I’m not sure. I feel like I’m going to burst into flames.”

Logan gripped her hips and pulled her up to press against his erection. “The feeling’s mutual.” He teased at her opening for just a moment before he plunged inside her, filling her as she’d never, ever been filled before.

A new wave of desire surged through her, prompting her to move against him, yearning for more. His hands splayed against her hips, he pulled her body to meet his as he drove into her again. Without thinking, Skyler wrapped her legs around him and captured Logan’s mouth, kissing, tugging, biting until she had to throw her head back in order to get enough air into her lungs. She gasped as Logan increased his pace, and she began meeting each of his thrusts with ones of her own.

Vibrations started deep within her, and she dug her hands into Logan’s hair. She didn’t need to say a word for him to know she wanted to increase the pace. With each stroke, she felt herself getting closer to the pinnacle. Her breath came faster as she bowed up against Logan’s straining body.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she said before she reached her peak.

Logan, who must have been hanging on to his own release with tight reins until she found hers, made one final stroke, then went rigid all over. He cried out as he found completion, then collapsed half on, half off her. He sucked in great gulps of air.

They didn’t speak. As the raging desire and physical bliss faded and Skyler was left with listening to the breathing of a near stranger next to her, she wondered if she truly had gone insane.

* * *

LOGAN FELT THE moment Skyler began to think too much, when she started slipping back to the woman she’d been before she’d made the decision to take a chance and live a little. Well, he couldn’t have that, because if he had his way, the night was far from over for them.

He wrapped his hand around the curve of her hip and rolled her to face him. “Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Thinking.”

“I can’t.” Her voice held a hint of panic at the edge.

“Well, I have a cure for that.” He pulled her closer, draping her leg over his hip as he captured her sweet mouth with his. She still tasted like her blueberry ice cream.

He sensed a moment of resistance in her before she caved and ran her soft fingertips up his chest. Her hand stopped moving when she reached the puckered skin on his left pec. She leaned away and ran her finger along the slash.

“What happened to you?”

“A bull I was riding didn’t particularly like me.”

Her mouth fell open on a little gasp. “A horn did this?”