Page 35 of Tangled Up With You

“Christ, I don’t know,” I grunted. “If it was as easy as letting her punch me in the face to fix this, I’d gladly take another hit,but something tells me that won’t be nearly enough.” I tossed the bloody tissue into the trash basket beside the couch and lifted the beer bottle to my face, pressing the cold glass against my skin to help with the swelling. “What do you think I should do?”

He drank his beer, mulling my question over. “Well, I guess you can start by asking yourself what it isyouwant.”

A few months back, the answer to that question wouldn’t have been that easy. My head was too twisted see what I’d had right in front of me. I let the shit with Amber and Dusty and that fuckface Vance fuck with me for too damn long. Now that I’d managed to pull my head out of my ass, the answer was as simple as breathing.

“Her,” I said, the answer immediate and resolute. “I want her.” And the baby we’d made together without even realizing.

He shrugged casually, saying, “Then you fight for her, brother.”

“You make it sound so easy,” I grumbled around the mouth of my beer bottle.

“Oh, it’s not gonna be easy at all.” He chuckled, giving his head a shake. “It’ll be hard as hell. But if you’re serious about her, it’s what you have to do. You fight, and you don’t stop fighting. Not for a single second. You do everything it takes, pull out all the stops to prove she can trust you, to make her believe you’re in to the very end.”

I could do that. I could fight. If I was stubborn enough to hold on to a pissed-off bull dead set on stomping me to death night after night, I could be stubborn enough to see this through.

“You really think that’ll work?”

“I don’t have a fuckin’ clue whether or not it’ll work.” He let out a laugh. “That’s her call, man. But if it’s any consolation, I’ll be rooting for you. Silently, of course, and from a distance. Just in case itdoesn’twork and she decides to keep hating you.Publicly, I’ll be on her side. It’s safer that way. Can’t let Rae get wind that I don’t have her girl’s back, you understand.”

Fuckin’ hell.

Chapter Nineteen

Ivy

Isat in my office chair, staring out at the view beyond the windows, lost in thought as my fingers skimmed my stomach. I couldn’t seem to stop touching it, like my fingertips or the palm of my hand made the connection with the little thing growing inside me that much stronger. If I was like this now, where there was nothing at all to see, I could only imagine what I’d be like once I started showing.

On a deep breath, I looked away from the glass and down at my flat belly, wondering how it was even possible to love something with your whole heart that you couldn’t feel or see or touch. The only reason I knew it existed—aside from the morning sickness that was still sticking around, though much more manageable now—was because a doctor told me so. Yet I knew I couldn’t possibly love anything or anyone as much as I loved it.

And because of that love, I knew I had to make things right between me and this little chickpea’s father. There were a million different ways to have a family. It wasn’t required thatConnor and I be together in order to raise this baby in a happy, healthy home. There was no reason we couldn’t co-parent successfully, but that wouldn’t happen as long as we hated each other. At the very least, our chickpea deserved two parents who got along.

When he’d driven away last night, I’d spent hours pacing my house, chewing on my thumbnail and worrying my cuticles until I made a mess of them. My anxiety that something bad might happen grew and grew until I couldn’t take it anymore and ended up calling Rae in the middle of the night.

It wasn’t until I knew he was safe on the ranch and Zach was with him that I’d been able to relax. He’d looked so defeated, and I hated the thought of him being alone with those feelings. Knowing he had a friend in his corner put me at ease, but sleep had been impossible. I’d tossed and turned all night, picturing the sadness lurking in his eyes at what I said. I hadn’t meant to hurt him, I didn’t want him to think I intended to trap him, or that I expected he give up the life he’d worked for because one of the stupid condoms decided not to do its job. I didn’t want him to think he had to put a ring on my finger in order to make things right. But I made a mess out of the whole thing, and instead of putting his mind at ease, I’d insulted him.

I hated that he left thinking I had such a low opinion of him. Despite everything, I knew he was a good person, a good man. He did some shitty things, sure. But who hadn’t? I wasn’t really one to judge on that front. The truth was, I knew down to my soul I could trust Connor to be a good father to our child.

Rising from the chair, I walked over to the huge wall of glass and looked at the ranch below. The barn was too far away for me to see from here, and I wasn’t sure he was there, but that didn’t stop me from trying to see if I could somehow spot him from the safety of my perch.

“I have it on good authority that he’s down at the pen helping Zach with a couple new fillies that came in yesterday.”

I turned to look over my shoulder, spotting Rae standing in the doorway of my office, her arms crossed over her chest and her shoulder propped on the doorframe. She was dressed in her version of business attire: a pair of jeans that looked like they might have been an offshoot of her previous life in the city, a pair of boots, and a pretty floral top that was the perfect combination of casual and smart. Since she managed ranching operations and did that out of an office tucked into the barn, she was able to dress more casually than I was.

There wasn’t a dress code at the lodge, per se, but I didn’t want our guests to think this was some backwoods, hick operation, so today I was wearing a pair of wide-leg black slacks, a silky cream blouse, and black patent leather pumps with four-inch heels.

I shot a smile in her direction. I didn’t bother lying and telling her I wasn’t searching for Connor. We both knew the truth. “And that good authority would be you, right? Since you just came from that way?”

She pushed off the door frame and lifted her shoulder in a shrug. “Maybe. I figured the two of you might want to talk. Without an argument breaking out this time.”

She’d figured right. I’d spent the first half of the day trying to summon the courage to seek him out, and there was no point in delaying it any longer.

“Thanks, Rae.”

She turned, offering a smile over her shoulder. “You can thank me by talking to him. It’s not about you two anymore. You have someone else to consider.”

She disappeared down the hallway, leaving me alone to consider the wisdom of her words, and in less than a minute, I was following the same path she’d taken, heading out the back ofthe lodge to the shed where we kept the UTVs for staff members who needed to get from one place on the ranch to another without climbing onto a horse.

I didn’t know if the two of them were in cahoots, or what, but Zach was standing outside the barn when I pulled up and parked the UTV beside the line of ranch trucks the cowboys and ranch hands used.

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