Montana Cowboy Daddy (Wyatt Brothers of Montana #3) - Jane Porter Page 0,48
I didn’t.”
“I thought you were here for Beck.”
“That goes without saying. But I can care about you, too. Just because I want the best for you doesn’t mean I want to be your next buckle bunny.”
He grinned at her reference to the groupies and girls that hung around the rodeos, craving attention from the professional cowboys. “So glad we cleared that up. I might have gotten confused.”
*
Erika slept restlessly, dreaming of Billy, not sweet dreams, either, but provocative dreams of him and her, dreams where he was kissing her and driving her crazy.
She woke up feeling a little besotted.
She hated it. She hated spending so much time thinking about Billy… his body, his face, his hands, his mouth. It didn’t matter how he kissed, because she wasn’t going to kiss him. It didn’t matter if he looked hot. She wasn’t going to touch him. It didn’t matter if he’d woken her libido that had been dormant for years. She wasn’t going to get laid.
She had to focus on why she was here, and then how she was going to shift gears, when it was time to shift gears.
And maybe that was the hardest part of all, thinking about leaving.
She didn’t want to picture that day, or how it would feel to go, leaving Beck and Billy behind. Nothing inside of her found joy, or peace, in the prospect, and so she pushed it from her mind and left her bed to get her day started.
Just like yesterday, she helped Billy with his bandages and sling. Just like yesterday, she made him eggs—slightly less brown on the bottom, but this time the top layer looked weirdly wet—but he just covered it all in his Tapatio sauce and ate every bite.
Midmorning, she gave Beck another bottle and then after he fell asleep in her arms, she laid him in his travel crib and darkened the blinds and quietly shut the bedroom door. Not even five minutes later the doorbell rang, and she went to the front door and found two enormous boxes on the doorstep. She shouted a thank you to the back of the departing driver, but the driver shouted back that he had more, quite a bit more. It actually took the driver four trips in all to deliver everything to the porch, and once he was gone, Erika stared at the mountain of cardboard boxes in dismay. How on earth was all of that to get into the house… and once there, where would it go?
Billy appeared then, cell phone in hand. “Did you call me?”
“No, I was thanking the driver.” She nodded to the boxes. “Looks like it’s Christmas.”
“Oh good. Beck’s things,” he said, before lifting the phone back to his ear and saying to whomever was on the other line that he needed to go.
Once the phone was back in the front pocket of Billy’s sweatpants, Erika asked him what he’d been buying. A complete nursery?
“Pretty much,” Billy said. “This is his home. He should have his own room here, with toys and all the usual baby things.”
“When did you order this?”
“Yesterday.”
“And it’s here today?”
“Anything can be rushed.”
“That would cost a fortune.”
He didn’t seem concerned. “I have money. Why not spend it on my son?”
“True,” she agreed.
“Besides, the furniture, there should be a swing for him. A standing saucer. And hopefully a bar with dangle toys so he can lie beneath them and reach for things.”
How did he know about all these things? When had he done the research? “What didn’t you buy?”
“There were a few things I left in the shopping cart. No need to overwhelm the little guy yet.”
Her lips twitched. “You’re becoming quite the expert.”
“I can’t just watch TV all day.”
“No, you can’t. Pretty soon you’ll be schooling me.”
“I do some have thoughts, actually, but this might not be the time.” He closed the front door, blocking the view of the huge boxes. “We can talk about it later tonight—”
“Talk about what?”
“I just wondered if it was time to start him on some solid foods. He’s only five months, but he can hold his head up just fine, and he wants to eat. When I take a bite, he leans forward and opens his mouth.”
“I’d read somewhere that six months is better.”
“Either way, we’ll start with cereal, and then in a month or two introduce fruits, vegetables, yogurt. Cereal will fill him up better than just milk. He’ll probably take better naps, too, with a full belly.”