Cordy watched, speechless and aching, as he closed his bedroom door behind him with a soft snick.
The jerk hadn’t given her an orgasm. He hadn’t even given her the damn toothpaste.
eleven
Chance glaredat his alarm clock as it beeped at him. Didn’t the damn thing know he’d been up most of the night?
Outside was dark, not even the gray light of false dawn peeping through the windows. Chance had to get moving if he was going to make it to the feed truck by the time Quint did. A rancher could never get “just five more minutes,” no matter how tired he was.
He reached out and slapped the alarm off, then scrubbed a hand over his face. Christ, but he was tired. His own fault, though—he’d gone and kissed Cordy, touched her sweet, sweet pussy, then spent the whole night up thinking about it. And not about how it was a bad idea and he shouldn’t repeat it. More like obsessing over how much further he’d wanted to take it.
She’s about to have a kid. Another man’s kid. She’s got no place to stay. She’s only sticking around until the baby is born.
You’d be a shit father and husband.
It was true. She was better off with her vibrator than him.
Okay, maybe the vibrator line had been a bit much. She must be pissed, and he couldn’t blame her. But she’d said he wasso good at this,and it had hit him exactly why and what he’d done to get that good, and he’d had to stop.
There were reasons why he was the way he was, which meant he couldn’t touch Cordelia Grace Johnson.
Didn’t mean he still didn’t want to, though. His need for her was like someone had shoved a red-hot branding iron deep in his belly and kept pressing. And to hear she had wanted him all this time too… How the hell was he supposed to stay strong in the face ofthatconfession?
That got Chance up and out of bed. He wanted to be gone before Cordy woke to spare them any awkwardness. If he could get in a full day’s work, he could clear his head enough to face her.
Chance had to be careful with her, couldn’t get her tangled up in his life. She was a good woman trying to be a perfect mother. She had real shit at stake here, and he couldn’t fuck that up for her.
When he walked into the living room, her dog was laid out in front of the fireplace, all four legs in the air, tongue hanging out. The thing looked like a dead possum.
For a heart-stopping moment, Chance thought the dog might actually be deceased.
He walked up to Iggy. The dog didn’t move. Chance poked his flank with a toe.
Iggy flicked one forepaw and snorted as delicately as a dog could, but didn’t open a single eye.
“Good Lord,” Chance whispered. “You really are that lazy.”
Iggy had nothing to say to defend himself.
In the kitchen, Chance started a pot of decaf coffee and made his usual breakfast of eggs, bacon, and toast. The eggs were from his dad’s chickens, the bacon from a 4-H kid’s fair pig, and the toast was from the Donut Palace. He liked the sourdough they made there.
He added double what he usually did. The extra would go on a covered plate for Cordy so she could have a warm breakfast. She could pop it into the microwave whenever she woke up.
That made the cramp in his stomach ease up. He hated leaving her alone all day, but he also didn’t want to face her. And he damn well didn’t want her to go hungry. She needed that food.
She hadn’t even been here twenty-four hours and she’d already turned everything inside him upside down.
The dog was still asleep when Chance left. Not even the smell of bacon had woken Iggy up. Chance shook his head. What kind of dog didn’t wake up for bacon?
“Unnatural,” Chance muttered to himself. “That’s not a normal dog.”
Iggy didn’t answer as Chance walked out the door.
The morning seemed to go on forever, not only because working on irrigation was one of Chance’s least favorite chores. He kept wondering what Cordy might be up to and forgetting what he was supposed to be doing. Quint called him out on it a couple of times.
By mid-morning, they were finally getting somewhere. “Give me that wrench,” Chance asked his brother, hand out for it. “This bolt is stuck hard. God, I don’t want to have to…”
The back of his neck prickled. The sixth sense he had about Cordy lit up.
