Montana Cowboy Daddy (Wyatt Brothers of Montana #3) - Jane Porter Page 0,11

turned warm and Billy lifted his face to the spray. He wasn’t going to apologize for liking women. He’d never apologize for that. He was single, thirty, and in the prime of his career. What was wrong with enjoying himself? Why shouldn’t he have a pretty girl to kill time with?

He wasn’t going to apologize for not loving any of them, either. It wasn’t that he went out of his way to not fall in love. He just didn’t. And he didn’t know why. To be honest, he was rather on the fence about the whole falling-in-love thing anyway. If it wasn’t for Joe and Sam, he’d doubt that romantic love existed at all. Joe had a serious girlfriend back in high school, a girl from Marietta named Charity, and he’d been head over heels for her, and now he had Sophie and he loved her, too.

Sam and Ivy had a completely different love—the kind that just wouldn’t go away—even when they were apart for years. Now that they were back together, they were inseparable, traveling on the circuit together, training horses together, working with young riders together. It was as if they couldn’t function without the other and Billy had never once felt that way about anyone. He and Tommy had even talked about it, and Tommy said that although he wasn’t ready to settle down, he looked forward one day to having a family.

Not Billy.

Family meant commitments and responsibilities he didn’t want. Not now, not ever.

He turned the water off, stepped from the shower, water sluicing down his body and reached for a towel, taking his time drying off, enjoying the brisk rubdown.

So what if Beck was his?

What if the baby in the next room was his son?

Billy lifted the towel, dried his hair and then covered his face with the towel, and drew a deep breath, trying to process it all.

My God, if he was Beck’s dad, everything had just changed. Forever.

It was a strange thing to think about, being a father, possibly having a son, aware he was nowhere near ready to be a decent father. He was strong, fit, able to do things physically most men could never do, but take care of another human being? Never mind a helpless little thing that could barely hold his head up on his own? Billy shuddered. Now that was danger.

Being the third son meant you were the third in line for everything—clothes, food, opportunities. But it also meant that you had fewer responsibilities. Joe had always shouldered the most work and most of their mother’s grief when Dad died. Sam had taken on what Joe needed help with. That left Billy and Tommy free to screw around and do what they wanted to do, which generally meant have a good time. And they did have a good time. They loved life. They loved their freedom and their career and their success. Good Lord, they’d been successful, earning more money than either of them knew what to do with—well, not true. Tommy knew. Tommy was the one with the head for numbers. He was the Wyatt everyone talked to when needing investment advice. Tommy understood the stock market, he understood economics. If he’d gone to college, he’d probably be working on Wall Street now. He was that smart, that good at math, that good at equations, predictions, statistics.

Billy didn’t have a talent like Tommy’s, or a passion for ranching like Sam and Joe. The only thing he was really good at was riding, roping, competing. He was a damn good cowboy, a risk taker, a winner. But take him off the road, take away his horse, and he had nothing to offer. Nothing but charm and sex. That was his talent. He knew how to make a woman feel good in bed. He’d known that since he was sixteen.

But being good in bed was exactly what had gotten him into this situation now.

*

Erika slowly circled the bedroom, Beck tucked under her chin, held closely against her chest.

She’d wrapped the extra quilt from her bed around both of them, trying to keep warm. Beck was having a hard time tonight, far more fretful than he’d been in weeks. He’d woken up just after midnight crying, and he’d spent the last two hours alternating between whimpers and cries, and so she kept picking him up and trying to calm him, not wanting Beck’s cries to wake up everyone else. It was an old house and she imagined sound traveled far