Claiming The Rancher's Heir (Gold Valley Vineyards #2) - Maisey Yates Page 0,36

him. And he gave her a knowing look.

“Thank you. So do you.”

He knew she wasn’t lying. She did think he looked good.

The heat between them was real.

It was all way too real.

Her mother looked between them. “I do wish we could’ve had a real wedding.”

“You know why we have to do it quickly,” Wren said.

“Nobody cares anymore if a woman is pregnant at her wedding, or if they have a baby in attendance,” her mother replied.

“I care,” Wren said.

“I was impatient,” he said. “I just couldn’t wait.”

“Indeed,” her older sister, Emerson, said, looking him in the eye with coolness.

“You don’t approve of me?” he asked.

“I’m deeply suspicious of you. But then, I would be deeply suspicious of anyone marrying my sister.”

“I hear tell that your husband is a pretty suspicious character, too.”

“And Wren did her sworn sisterly duty by being skeptical of him.”

Well, that was fair enough.

It was the youngest sister, Cricket, who gave him the kind of open, assessing look that made him feel actual guilt.

“You had better be good to her. Our father was terrible, and Wren deserves to be happy.”

“I’ll be good to her,” he said.

He would be. Her happiness mattered. He told himself it mattered only because of their baby.

But somehow, he suspected it was more.

“Good,” Cricket said. “Because if you aren’t, I’ll hunt you down and I’ll kill you.”

She said it cheerfully enough that he suspected she wasn’t being hyperbolic.

They all filed into the courtroom, and he and Wren took their position up near the judge’s bench. They exchanged brief pleasantries with the woman before getting down to business.

It was surprisingly quick. Pledging his life to another person. When the ceremony was stripped away, a wedding was just a business deal where you held hands.

Wren’s voice trembled on the part about staying together until death separated them.

His own didn’t. But maybe that was because he didn’t feel like he was lying. He felt as committed as he could be to this. To her.

Maybe it was that simple for him because he didn’t have other dreams of love, marriage or anything of the kind. He imagined that Wren, on some level, dreamed of romance. Most women did, he assumed.

He wondered what his sister would say if he leveled this theory at her. She would probably bite him. Honey didn’t like to be what anyone expected.

And she would also be annoyed at him for having a wedding and not inviting her. Probably, she would be irritated at him for not telling her that he was going to be a father.

But Honey was a problem that would have to wait.

“You may kiss the bride,” the judge said.

And this... Well, this was the part Creed had been waiting for.

He wrapped his arms around Wren and pulled her against him. The look in her eyes was one of shock, as if she hadn’t realized they would be expected to do this. As if she hadn’t realized that whether a wedding was permanent or not, in a courthouse or not, if you were trying to pass it off as something real to your family, you were going to have to kiss.

And so they did.

It was everything he remembered. Her mouth so soft and sweet. She was a revelation, Wren Maxfield.

And he tried to remember what it had been like when he wanted to punish her with his passion.

That wasn’t what he wanted now. No.

Now what he wanted was something else altogether.

A strange need had twisted and turned inside him, upside down and inside out, until he couldn’t recognize it or himself. He might not know exactly what was happening in him, but he knew desire. And desire flared between them whenever they touched. No question about it.

When they parted, her family was staring at them, openmouthed.

He shrugged. “There’s a reason we had to get married so quickly.”

That earned him a slug on the shoulder. Wren looked disheveled, and furious. And he wondered if he had set a record for husband who got punched soonest after the vows were spoken.

When it was over, they went to his truck, and sat there. Silence ballooned between them.

“I thought you weren’t going to involve your family?” he asked.

“I... I didn’t know what to tell them. I didn’t want to tell them I was getting married to you just because of a legal thing. It felt stupid. And then it snowballed.”

“Wren...”

“So, can I come to your house? Just for a while?”

She was making his whole seduction plan a hell of a lot easier than he had