Page 51 of The Cowboy's Secret Babies

He took the fingers she had at his mouth into his, and kissed them. Then he looked around and really took stock of the way the townspeople were looking at them. There were those who looked happy for them, but he was related to most of them.

Otherwise, there was a lot of that speculation.

He thought about what that Gwen had said to him. The word she’d used.Trapped.He thought nothing of it, but clearly, Rosie did.

Just because she hadn’t told him about the things she might have heard, that didn’t mean she hadn’t heard them.

He thought about what Wilder had said to him, as if even his own twin doubted him when he’d just watched Ryder get married. And he thought of what else his brother had said—that suggestion that Ryder was hiding his feelings.

The thing was that he’d never thought of it that way. He wasn’t hiding from anything. He simply preferred to work out the things that haunted him with a high-octane sport that required every single bit of his attention, which meant he couldn’t think about anything else.

When he’d been eighteen, that had meant he didn’t need to think about his home. About how much he missed it, when he’d been so fired up to get away. About the death of his mother, which he’d carried with him everywhere, and not because Belinda wasn’t wonderful. Both things could be true at once. He would miss his mother forever. He loved Belinda as another mother.

But it was easier to ride bulls than it was to talk about those things.

And he’d decided that he preferred anonymity to small-town fame. Because as the song said, everybody here had that fame. They didn’t need a tabloid. They had each other. They gossiped happily in the streets.

The streets were one thing. His Rosie’s wedding party, on the other hand, was something else.

Ryder decided that it was high time he set the record straight.

Chapter Eleven

Rosie found herselfholding her breath, not sure what Ryder was going to do next.

She had never seen an expression like this on his face before. He looked… taken aback, maybe. At first. But then he’d looked around the lodge as if he’d never seen it before. Or had never seen all the people crowded into the expansive lobby before, when she knew full well he knew every single one of them.

It had seemed as if he’d looked at every single one of them and as he had, he’d changed. He’d stood a little bit taller. A kind of resolve seemed to settle over him. It was the exact opposite of what she’d expected when she’d said what she’d said to him.

She hadn’t meant to say anything like that, and especially not after the sheer delight of Livingston. Rosie had been so nervous, thinking that they were just doing this to get it out of the way for the kids—or he was, anyway—and there she was with her overfull heart that might capsize her at any moment.

The whole drive to Livingston, she’d done her best to manage her expectations. She’d told herself, firmly, that she needed to view this as a fancy dress trip to the DMV, nothing more. And she’d thought she had it all under control… but no one had told Ryder how they were supposed to behave.

He’d acted like there was nothing more romantic in all the world than the two of them slipping away with only a pair of witnesses to say their vows. Like this was how they would always have chosen to do this, that there were no extenuating circumstances—both currently nursing extreme sugar highs, she could see at a glance—and they simply wanted to keep something for themselves.

Rosie had completely forgotten that she was keeping herself in check.

They had danced in that dark, perfect bar, spinning around and around until she wasn’t sure if she was dizzy from the movement or if it was still just him. Always and only him.

They had sat together on that bed in their suite, sharing snacks they’d liberated from the minibar and actually… talking. In some ways, she thought she was the most dazed from that. From touching so casually. From talking about nothing and everything, but none of the deep, important, life-altering things that had characterized the whole of their relationship up until now.

Really, Rosie had thought at one point, that had been what she’d imagined when she’d daydreamed aboutcould have beenswith Ryder. When she wasn’t too busy trying to make herself hate him.

Walking into the lodge had been like every romance novel she’d ever read. All the people she loved, gathered together, and the rest of this town she loved too. Jack must have worked his fingers to the bone. The lodge looked like it could start taking guests again. The lights made all the old wood and sweet, Old West details shine. The floorboards creaked and the grand old chandelier gleamed, and it was nothing short of a dream come true.

She had never felt so loved in all her life.

Rosie had felt she had no choice but to give him the same thing in return, and so she had, as best she could.

She’d expected him to drawl something kind and hot at once, the Ryder Carey specialty. She’d thought he would say the right things, but that she’d see relief all over his face. Instead, he’d looked at her like he didn’t understand a word she was saying.

And now there was a light in the dark gaze of his that she was sure was new. She’d never seen him look like this.

He kissed her fingers again, and it was such an odd, old-fashioned, courtly sort of gesture that it made butterflies flutter inside of her.

Maybe because their entire relationship was inside out. Maybe they’d been going back to the start the whole time, and this was it. Courtly actions, butterflies. Next, who knew? He might ask Jack for her hand.

“You stay right here,” Ryder told her.

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