family. I’m choosing to expand my family. To make myself one. That’s why I want... That’s why I want to actually know the guy that’s going to be the father of the baby. Because I want...connections. I want roots.” Saying that, she realized for the first time that it was true. “In my experience roots have often been poison. But I want to grow down deep into my own soil and make something that belongs to me. Isn’t that okay?”
“Just don’t... Don’t go building up fantasies that you’re going to somehow find yourself a husband and everything this way.”
It was like he had reached into her chest and grabbed hold of her heart. Twisted it. Everything in her recoiled from the idea, but there was fear that immediately jumped into the back of her mind. Fear that he might be right. That there was another layer to the fantasy that she wasn’t allowing herself to acknowledge.
“I don’t want that,” she said. “I want... I want to raise my child here. I mean, not here the whole time necessarily. But this place... I’m glad that you asked me to stay. Because I can’t think of anything better than giving my child this whole family. Maybe you think I’m selfish. Maybe I am. But I do want to share you with my baby. I want to give my child the happiest parts of my own life.”
His dark gaze caught hers and held, and she found it difficult to breathe. She didn’t know why. Maybe it was the way that he saw her. He didn’t just look at her, he stared. Down deep. And she was afraid that he saw things there that not even she knew existed.
“If that’s what you want, then I’m going to help you.”
“You don’t approve,” she said.
“I know.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“Because I’m your friend,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if I disapprove. I’m going to help you get what you want.”
There was something heavy and unspoken at the end of that sentence, but she couldn’t quite figure it out.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Now, do you want to come back inside and have dessert?”
“Of course I do,” she said.
And she felt a little bit like things were better. Like they might be close to being fixed. Because they had fractured slightly around that table, and it had hurt her.
He would support her, and whatever she did. She could have a new thing, and the old thing all at once.
And she found that enormously cheering.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE NEXT DAY Ryder was in a foul mood. He had taken that foul mood out on Sammy last night, and even though she had been the cause of it, he felt guilty about it even now. It made him even angrier. Which was why he was chopping wood with enough force to split a concrete pylon.
“Settle down there,” Logan said, wandering up slowly, his laconic movements only serving to amp up Ryder’s irritation. His friend was so damned laid-back. The kind of guy that people called for a good time, and an easy time.
Something Ryder would never be.
Except that he was a cowboy and about the furthest thing from a hippie as possible, Logan probably had more in common with Sammy than Ryder had with either of them.
“We don’t all have the luxury of wandering around life waiting for things to be handed to us. Some of us have to put in a little elbow grease.”
“Oh, yeah,” Logan said. “I’m from a real charmed background. In fact, I think it might be the same one you’re from.”
“Still,” Ryder growled.
“Yeah. I mean, when my mom died she did leave me a ranch, though, so...”
“Can I help you?”
“I just wanted to talk to you about what happened last night.”
“Why did I have a feeling that you would?”
“Does she know you’re in love with her?”
Ryder stopped; the muscles in his shoulders suddenly went tense. And he noticed he was grinding his teeth. He stopped. “What?”
“Sammy. Does she know that you’re in love with her?”
“I am not in love with her,” Ryder said.
“Sure.”
His friend looked at him, far too deep. Far too sharp. It made him remember that Logan was the only one who’d ever seen him break.
Six months after his parents’ death he’d lost it. Gotten drunk out in the barn and broken down. With Logan there as the only witness. A drunk one, but a witness all the same.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” he’d said. “I was supposed to be a thousand miles from here.