not theirs.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” she slung back. “You’re Ross Edmond, Rusty’s son. Heir to a fortune. No one would dare criticize or ostracize you. I can’t live for myself, Ross. I have other people I’m responsible for, indebted to. And yes, I care about my parents’ opinion. I’m not willing to lose them again.”
“Fuck,” he growled, thrusting a hand through his hair, tousling the ruthlessly styled strands. He paced away from her, halting in front of the far wall and staring at it for several long moments before whirling back around. “Charlotte, I feel like I’m clutching a handful of sand and it’s steadily slipping through my fingers, no matter how tightly I hold on to it.” He stretched his arm out, thrusting his fist forward, then peeling his fingers open, spreading them wide. “That’s the years I’ve missed. The milestones I’ve lost. I can’t get those back, and I’m trying so hard to grab on to the ones ahead of me. Every day that passes without me there is another day, another minute where something else could happen that I’ll miss.”
She blinked, taken aback by the vehemence, the passion in that plea. This man wanted his son. Wanted to be a part of his life. As a mother, as a woman with a heart, she couldn’t deny him. Couldn’t deny Ben, either. Because the truth was, although single mothers raised children all the time and did a damn fine job of it, there were things she couldn’t teach Ben about manhood. There were things only his father or a male role model could. And while she loved having her father and brother-in-law in his life, they couldn’t replace Ben’s father.
She owed it to her baby boy to give Ross a chance to be a real father.
But move in with him?
She couldn’t.
“I don’t want to take that away from you, Ross,” she murmured. “You should have every one of those moments, but...”
I can’t compromise one more standard for you.
At one time in her life, she’d dreamed of living with Ross as his wife. Even when she’d called him three years ago, she’d still naively clung to that hope of being a family. Now what he offered was practically a marriage of convenience—without the benefit of marriage. She was a single mother, and proud of it. But in the eyes of society, she would be the “baby mama” whom Ross screwed and knocked up. She refused to be the live-in woman who accepted his handout of a home but wasn’t good enough to be “blessed” with his last name.
She had a line and couldn’t cross it. Even though a part of her—that woman from three years ago who still clung to daydreams and impossible hope—yearned to not just cross it but leap over it.
“Don’t say no just yet,” Ross urged, erasing the distance between them with his sensual prowl. “Think about it for the couple of days I’m gone, and we can discuss it again.”
She hesitated, then shrugged. “Okay, fine. I’ll do that.” Not that a couple of days would change her mind.
“Thank you.”
He moved even closer, his arm lifting, that big hand hovering between them. Her breath snagged in her throat, and she stared at that so-damn-familiar hand with its short, buffed nails, long, elegant fingers and incongruously calloused palm. Ross might be a businessman and have possessed no interest in cattle ranching, but he’d loved horses. Sometimes it had seemed like he’d enjoyed their company more than people. That abraded palm appeared to testify that he still did. She also recalled how that skin used to feel against hers, that sensual contrast of rough and gentle, coarse and soft. A molten, sinuous warmth coiled around a jagged-edged lust, settling low in her belly. That was also how it had been between them.
Tender with teeth.
Just when she thought he would touch her, bring past and present colliding together, he lowered his arm back to his side. Then slid that hand into his pants pocket as if he didn’t trust it to behave if not landlocked.
“I’ll call you tomorrow morning, if that’s okay. Check in on Ben, at least say hi to him so he can start to become familiar with my voice.”
She nodded. “That’s fine.”
Silence settled between them, as fragile and volatile as an undetonated bomb.
This is about Ben. This is about Ben.
The mantra marched through her mind, and she clung to it. Even as his sandalwood-and-earth scent embraced her, teasing her with the temptation of his