Page 27 of The Cowboy's Secret Babies

Wilder only laughed at that, and as he did, Rosie let her shoulders creep back down from her ears. Because clearly, neither one of them was offended. In fact, if she looked closely, she was pretty sure that Ryder was even smiling.

“Got to get more cake,” she muttered out loud, but when she turned around and rushed back into the kitchen, Ryder came with her.

“Are you good?” he asked her.

She didn’t look over at him, not directly, but she was all too aware of him. He seemed to fill up the kitchen, as if his shoulders were so broad they were brushing against the walls. Even though she knew she was making that up in her head.

She knew it, so she turned around to face him, and that was worse.

Today he was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, and a fancy belt buckle that she didn’t have to examine closely to know represented one of his many rodeo wins. Jack’s words about his true face, and his lack of civilization, seemed to haunt her. It was like she was waiting for him to… shift. Become a wolf, right between the door to the living room and the kitchen table. Right here where he’d watched the kids eat meals and had started to see their less charming sides too, but still showed up every day.

He’s a wolf, something in her repeated, a little too warmly.And here you are, all dressed in red.

The fairy tales wrote themselves.

And that was a line of thinking that could only lead to badness.

He was studying her, and as he did, his head tilted a little to one side.

Suddenly, everything between them changed.

Or maybe the truth was, they reverted back to their original factory settings.

Because this was the Ryder she’d met in Texas. This intoxicating drink of a man, packaged so exquisitely in jeans and a shirt just tight enough to remind her what it felt like to press her face against the hard wall of his chest.

This was the man she’d spent that whole, wondrous, life-altering night with. A night that she thought was tattooed into her skin and would be a part of her forever, and that was before she’d known she was pregnant.

But she was pretty sure that this wasn’t Ryder showing her his true face. He hadn’t been hiding it. This was her finally letting go of the blinders she’d been wearing since he’d showed up in the yard.

Because all she had been thinking about were the boys. What this would mean for them. How this would look like to everyone else. How she would tell her family. What she would do when his knew, too.

All of those things still swirled around her, even though the questions had largely been answered already, but now it was as if she could finally see the truth about herself again.

And the truth was this.

This taut, searing intensity that sparked between them, as if no time at all had passed between that night and now.

As if nothing could possibly matter as much as the sizzle of it. The crackle that worked its way down her limbs, blazed into her blood, and pooled with a white-hot intensity deep in her belly.

This was the truth. She had gone to that bull-riding expedition that night knowing that he would be there. Hoping that she would see him, because who wouldn’t have a silly little crush on one of the Carey twins? She’d never met anyone who didn’t.

And when she’d actually found herself standing in front of him, there had been this.

This glimmering, impossible thread between them that only pulled tighter and tighter all the time.

If it hadn’t been for the boys, she would have noticed it sooner. Now that she did, she felt like she was wrapped up tight in the web of this. Like if she wasn’t careful, she’d start shining so bright they’d be able to see her in space.

She could hear everyone else out in the living room. She could hear her boys shouting, and the mother in her was already calculating exactly how long they had left before the inevitable sugar crash.

But in the kitchen, where it was only the two of them, it was even louder. And neither one of them was saying a word.

“Keep looking at me like that,” Ryder suggested in a low voice that connected, immediately and intensely, to all that bright heat. “And I think we both know exactly what’s going to happen next.”

Chapter Six

He’d expected thatstubborn chin of hers to come into play. He’d expected that she would frown at him in that way she did, that he’d noticed by now worked on the boys, too.

What he didn’t expect was for her clear blue eyes to go… a little bit foggy. And then, as he stood there watching her intently, that same gaze dropped to his mouth.

---