Claiming The Rancher's Heir (Gold Valley Vineyards #2) - Maisey Yates Page 0,26

him to be unreasonable, and make actual threats, came from a place she didn’t understand.

She could see that, and still, she had run away from him rather than sticking out the conversation to see where it might go. And wasn’t that basically what he was saying? That he assumed she would be a coward when push came to shove? That she would keep their child from him because it was easier or less challenging, because she didn’t want to deal with him?

And maybe... Just maybe it had been easier for her to assume he wouldn’t want anything to do with the baby. Maybe that’s why she’d been able to come here and tell him about the pregnancy.

Before that, she had spent two days in agony.

She hadn’t been lying to him when she’d said she cried. She cried enough to make a flood. It just wasn’t good timing. At least, that was what she told herself in the beginning.

Wrong time.

Wrong man.

And then she thought... Maybe he was the right man. Because he wouldn’t want anything from her. Because he was not a paternal type, and there was no way he was secretly yearning for a wife and family.

She had never considered herself particularly maternal, either, but when she looked at the situation objectively, she could see that, well, this was an opportunity.

Because she had everything she needed to raise a child, including the assumed support of her family. She had job security. Money. A place to live. A great many things that people took for granted. From that standpoint, she was in a spectacularly great place to raise a child. And the more she thought about it, the more she had wanted to grab hold of this major life change and see where it took her. The more she thought about it, the more she had felt...a sense of excitement, rather than one of despair.

But her revelation had been selfish. Utterly and completely.

It had never included him.

She didn’t know how to include him in that.

And then he demanded that she did.

Honestly, he’d demanded it in the most extreme way she could have imagined. Even if she had let herself truly think about a scenario in which he wanted the baby, wanted to be in the baby’s life, she had not imagined that he would...demand marriage and issue threats.

But that’s what he’d done. And it became clear that she really didn’t know all that much about him, and that lack of knowledge actually mattered.

Having sex didn’t mean they knew each other.

Oh, they knew things about each other. Creed knew things about her that no one else did. She had done things with him she hadn’t done with any other man.

Including that moment of absolute loss of control. The lack of protection.

But that didn’t mean they knew each other.

And so she was now looking for the person she should have gone to in the first place.

Emerson was at the house she shared with Holden, working from home today, which was something Wren could never have imagined Emerson doing before. Given that Emerson had been wholly and completely tied to the family home.

But not only had she moved away from the estate, she seemed to prize the separate life she and Holden had built.

Wren would be fascinated by it if she didn’t find it so annoying.

She parked her car and got out, walking to the door. It took a couple of minutes, but her sister opened it, wearing a large, elaborate-looking robe, her hair piled on her head, her fingernails manicured to perfection, a giant wedding ring that she’d gotten from Holden glittering on her finger.

“Well,” Wren said. “Good afternoon to you, too.”

“I was taking pictures,” she said.

She swung the door open wider, and Wren saw that the couch and coffee table were set just so, a glass of rosé in her sister’s glass, and a book sitting next to it.

“Are you reading?”

“I was taking pictures,” Emerson said dryly. “It’s a great afternoon to indulge in a little Maxfield luxury and hashtag self-care, don’t you think?”

“I think that I’m glad you run the internet properties and not me. Since I don’t understand any of this.”

“Luckily, you don’t have to. Because I’m a savant.”

“An influencer savant.” But Wren smiled, because she really did find her sister to be a wondrous magical creature.

Emerson should be annoying. She wasn’t.

“Where’s Holden today?”

“He’s gone to visit his sister. She’s getting settled in her new house after getting out of the rehab facility. We are hopeful that she’s going to