Page 16 of The Cowboy's Secret Babies

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that shouting at their mother wasn’t a smart way to go about gaining access to them. Ryder didn’t question that he wanted that access, because it was already deeper than that.

He was a different man than the one who’d driven up here to offer a likely awkward apology to a woman he’d expected would have been happily married and moved on by now—and he didn’t justwantto know his kids. Heneededto know them.

“That’s how it happened,” Rosie told him, when she came to a stop on a jagged sort of breath. She squared her shoulders again. “But I realized today, right outside in the driveway, that I’ve been kidding myself the whole time. The whole entire time, because if you knew with one look it was only a matter of time until everyone else did, too. It’s been months since your father ran into us and I was so sure he knew too, immediately, but nothing happened so—”

Everything inside Ryder went very, very quiet. And still. “What did you just say?”

Rosie looked alarmed. “Didn’t he tell you? I thought that’s why you were here.”

“He didn’t tell me anything.” Ryder had to fall back on the control that had kept him competing with minimal injuries all these years. “I came here to apologize. I was a dick that morning. You didn’t deserve it. I’ve been carrying that around with me and I wanted to say so.”

It was almost funny now, to think about how little his morning-after behavior mattered in the grand scheme of things. Now that there were two little lives in the mix. Though really, that was a pretty good reason not to come rushing to tell him, wasn’t it?

“Thank you,” Rosie replied. “You were a dick. But that hardly matters.”

Then they stood there a while longer, on opposite sides of the cheerful little space, staring at each other.

Ryder had been treated to a great many out of body experiences in his lifetime. Pain could do that to a man. So could terrible defeats, unexpected victories, and pretty much everything in between. He’d wanted a life ofmoreand he’d gotten it. More of everything meant… more ofeverything.

But this was something else.

He could remember with entirely too much detail how that night with Rosie had started. She’d found him at the meet and greet that night, pretty as a picture in a cowboy hat and a big grin.

Didn’t expect to see a hometown girl in a place like this, he’d said, grinning, like the Moody Center was a den of iniquity instead of a world class arena.

I came to see the bulls, she’d replied. With that slow smile of hers aimed right at him and the sweet little pop of challenge in her gaze.

Well, Ryder had drawled,I sure do hope I can drag your attention away. For seven seconds or so.

He’d done better than that. He’d won the damned thing.

And he’d won the girl, too. Then he’d tossed her away, and hard, but they weren’t here to discuss that. Yet what they were talking about was dangerous, because it had happened during all those glorious hours wrapped around each other in her pretty little apartment. Her roommates had been out of town.

She’d trusted him, because she knew him.

Ryder had sunk into her like he never meant to come up for air again.

There were two little boys running around because of that.

It wasn’t like Ryder didn’t know that sex led to babies. But knowing how something worked in theory and then living through it happening in practice wasn’t the same thing.

“My family probably wouldn’t have given you my cell phone number,” he told her, instead of wading through too many feelings he couldn’t quite name. “You would have had to tell them why you needed it, and who’s to say they even would have believed it. Because it was you, maybe they would have. Over the years, there’s been some weird stuff.”

She blinked. “Okay.”

“Not bragging here, Rosie. I’m telling you that it’s unlikely they would have given you my cell phone number, and even if they did, I wouldn’t have answered it. Two things can be true at once. I can recognize that you didn’t have a lot of options and also be furious that there are two little boys that don’t know that I’m their father.”

“I guess I can’t tell you not to be upset,” she said, but she said it belligerently, to his ear. “But don’t worry, Ryder. It’s exhausting to be a parent. Taking care of two babies at once is no picnic, either. I’m lucky I had so much help, but you better believe that there were a lot of sleepless nights. And more tears than I can count. Mine, not theirs.”

She didn’t say that like she wanted sympathy, so he didn’t offer it. “I know you’re not saying that like you don’t know that I couldn’t possibly have helped you with that, because I didn’t know it was happening.”

“While we’re throwing truths out on the table, why didn’t you know?” she asked. “You were the one with all the experience. Everybody knows that Ryder Carey loves his buckle bunnies.”

“I thought you were auditioning for the job.”

She laughed at that, genuinely enough that he decided he regretted saying it.

“Oh, I was. Nothing could have been more unlikely, but I was going to have one night of fun and then get back to reality. But I guess the joke’s on me, because it wasn’t much fun, was it?”

---