Eight
It had been a fairly normal day. He had only thought about Shelby and what she looked like naked five times. Before coffee. So it was going well. He had thought about her maybe ten times more in the hours since. She had wrecked him. He hadn’t been able to get excited about another woman since then. Hadn’t even really bothered. He’d considered it one night at the Thirsty Mule when he had gone down to have a drink with Jace, but had abandoned it pretty quickly.
But hell, there was no reason to obsess about her.
What he needed to do was get back on the road. He had been flirting with the idea of retirement from the rodeo, and had been picking up more responsibility on the family ranch. He liked it. Liked the idea of being here with his brothers more. He had decided to take this season off. And yeah, he figured that was probably one foot in retirement. But he was in his thirties. He might be avoiding that “and then” stage of things, but he was definitely there.
He looked across the landscape from his vantage point on the back of his horse, flat and rocky, scrub brush as far as the eye could see. This place was home. And he tried to imagine it being home in a more permanent sense. He hadn’t been settled ever. Even when he’d been a kid, they’d gone around the circuit along with their dad, staying in an RV when they could. They’d only ever had stability when Sophie had been ill. And even then, it hadn’t been a real stable sort of stability. Having a sister in and out of the hospital wasn’t stable. Having a sister die wasn’t stable.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he reached into it. He had a text from Jace.
Shelby is here to see you.
And suddenly, his blood went molten. Maybe she had been thinking about him too. Maybe she was here to... Maybe it was just as bad for her. Maybe one time wasn’t going to be enough.What the hell is wrong with you?
He didn’t know. And he wasn’t going to allow that question to land all that deep. Because he wanted what he wanted. He wanted her. And he was clear on that.
So he urged his horse into a flat-out run, the dust coming up high, rocks and clumps of mud all stirred up in his wake. And when he came up to the front of the barn, Jace was standing there, alongside Shelby, who did not look like she had come for afternoon delight. Or indeed, delight of any kind. Her expression was flat, something steely reflecting in her eyes. Her lips were turned down. It didn’t make her any less sexy, not to him. She was still a pocket-size package of absolutely everything he wanted in a woman. But she didn’t look like she was here for what he wanted.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“Yeah. Sure.”
Jace looked at him with cool speculation, and Kit curled his lip and lifted his hands, giving his brother an expression straight out of their childhood.
He could tell that Jace wasn’t going to let him off all that easy. But for now, he was going to have a talk with Shelby.
“The barn?” she asked.
“Sure. If you want.”
“We need to talk alone.”
“It may have escaped your notice, but a lot of people live here. Alone is kind of a tall order.”
“Then let’s... Go for a drive.”
“Okay.”
He walked over to where his truck was parked, just in front of the barn. “Care to get in?”
“Sure.”
His brother was handling his horse, and Kit started the engine of the truck, heading out toward the remote part of the ranch where he had just been. He drove over to the edge of a ravine, the view down below of mountains that looked like they might as well be made of moondust, red and yellow and black paintbrush strokes. It was beautiful. Still not as pretty as her. Even when she was... Well, she wasn’t glaring. She was just not looking at him.
“What’s going on? I’ve had a lot of strange interactions with you, but none of them have been silent.”
“I have something I have to tell you. And I don’t really know how to do that.”
And just like that, the view in front of him seemed to go sideways. Suddenly the mountains were to his right and the sky was to his left, and he didn’t even know where his stomach was. Somewhere. Because there was only one reason for a woman you’d slept with to say words like that to you.
“Fuck.”
“Oh, you guessed,” she said.
“I need to hear you say it.”
“I’m pregnant.”