LITMIR.BIZ

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know what I’d do without you.”

      “I love you, too,” she replied, giving him a squeeze and moving away. She sat on the sofa. “Dad, Gabe’s offer has possibilities.”

      Quinn shook his head. “I can’t imagine—a Ryder marrying a Brant.” Quinn rested an elbow on the mantel and stared into space. “You just think you’ll always have your health and then one day you don’t.”

      “Please don’t worry. I promise that I won’t do anything I don’t really want to,” she said, leaning back and wondering if she was trying to convince herself.

      Ashley discussed it until he announced that he was going to bed. After he was gone, she paced the room. Her father was frail and the burden of the ranch was stress in his life that he didn’t need. The ranch was losing money daily—something that hadn’t ever happened in her lifetime.

      Was what Gabriel Brant proposed absolutely unthinkable? It would be a paper arrangement. She ran her hand across her head. She couldn’t trust a Brant. Old hurts plagued her as she remembered how she had trusted Lars, a man she had thought she had known and loved. He had broken her trust and she had learned a bitter lesson.

      An hour later, Ashley went to bed, but she tossed and turned and didn’t sleep well. She kept seeing Gabriel Brant, legs crossed, leaning back against his pickup. And she kept remembering how, when she had met his dark eyes, her pulse had raced.

      Finally she fell asleep but overslept the next morning. When she went to the kitchen, her father had already gone. Ashley fixed her breakfast and got out paint samples to pick colors for the nursery.

      Fifteen minutes later, she realized her mind wasn’t on colors. She was thinking about Gabriel Brant’s proposition. He had a child. A son. She wondered about the little boy who had lost his mother when he was so young. Yet the marriage would be a business arrangement and nothing more. Gabe wouldn’t make any demands on her. No emotions would be involved. Lawyers could protect her. She threw up her hands. How could such an arrangement work?

      The phone rang and she crossed the room to pick it up.

      “Ashley?” came a deep, masculine voice. “This is Gabe Brant. I’d like to see you again.”

      Two

      “I’d like to see you right away. I’ll drive to your place. How’s an hour from now?” Gabe asked.

      Ashley closed her eyes and ran her fingers across her brow.

      “Good. I’ll be there,” he announced before she’d had time to answer. He hung up, and she was left with a dial tone.

      “You don’t believe in saying goodbye, do you?” She hadn’t said much more than hello. She slammed down the receiver, glanced at her watch and went to her room to change her clothes. Then she became annoyed with herself for changing just because Gabriel Brant was coming.

      Yesterday she’d had an intense, prickly awareness of him. She ran her fingers through her hair, and studied herself in the mirror. She was in a T-shirt, a denim jumper and sneakers. So be it. She combed her hair into a ponytail and went downstairs. Forty minutes later, she left the house and climbed into one of the ranch pickups and headed toward the road.

      Alongside the county road in the shade of a tall cottonwood, she parked by the mailbox, retrieved their mail and climbed onto a fender to sit and wait for him.

      Right on time she saw his red pickup coming up the highway. Sliding off the fender, she watched as he slowed. To her surprise, she could see a small boy in the back seat. Gabe parked and climbed out. He wore a T-shirt and jeans. His thick, slightly wavy brown hair was neatly trimmed. Her pulse jumped at the sight of him. Brant or not, the man was good-looking. Her gaze slid past him and she watched the little boy and jump out of the truck to take his dad’s hand. The child stopped in his tracks and studied her with large, dark-brown eyes that were as thickly lashed as his father’s.

      “Ashley, meet my son Julian.”

      Julian held out his small hand, and Ashley was instantly won over. The child was adorable, and she took his hand lightly. “I’m glad to meet you. How old are you, Julian?”

      “Four,” he answered promptly, holding up four fingers.

      “You’re a very big boy,” she said, and he grinned.

      “I wanted you two to meet,” Gabe said quietly. “Kiddo,” Gabe continued, picking Julian up. “You’ve got your cars in the back of the truck. Will you play with them a few minutes while I talk to Miss Ryder?”

      Julian nodded.

      Ashley waited while Gabe set his son in the back of the pickup and Julian seemed to lose interest in the adults and began to play with his toys. Gabe walked back to talk to her.

      As he neared, his brown eyes held her. What caused all this electricity when she was within four feet of him? It surely wasn’t from the schoolgirl crush she’d once had.

      He stopped only a few feet away and hooked his hands into his pockets.

      “You cheated,” she said, too aware that her voice was breathless.

      “How’s that?” he asked while his brows arched with curiosity.

      “Bringing your son. He’s adorable.”

      Something sparked in Gabe’s eyes, and he inhaled deeply. “You don’t know that. You only said hello. He could be a little terror.”

      “Little children aren’t terrors,” she replied promptly.

      “When have you been around any?”

      “My younger cousins. I volunteered to teach Sunday school and to coach soccer when I was in Chicago. I like kids.”

      “You’re making me like my proposition even more,” he said, moving closer and reaching out to touch her arm lightly. “If you’re seven months along, do you know what you’re having?”

      “Yes. A girl.”

      “Ahh. That’s nice. Boy or girl—it’s great. Except I know a little more about boys. But I can learn,” he said, smiling at her, and she shook her head.

      “You’re irrepressible,” she said.

      “I’m surprised that you wanted to meet here, where any neighbor who passes will see a Brant talking to a Ryder and start all kinds of rumors.”

      Electrified by his touch, she stepped back slightly.

      His brow arched, and he gave her a look that made her whole body tingle. “It bothers you to stand close to me?”

      “I’m not accustomed to being around Brants,” she said, knowing it was a ridiculous answer, but she didn’t want to admit how much he disturbed her.

      He reached out again to stroke her arm lightly with his finger. “This is an interesting surprise, Ashley,” he said softly, his voice growing husky. “We have some kind of chemistry between us.”

      His dark eyes were full of curiosity, and she flushed. “It doesn’t outweigh all our family history of feuding,” she replied.

      A faint smile curved one corner of his mouth and his long-lashed, bedroom eyes snapped with interest. “I disagree. I think it snuffs out any idea of feuding with you. No, when I get around you, feuding is not what I want to do,” he drawled in a sexy tone that made her pulse jump another notch.

      She leaned closer to him. “You know what I think? I think you’re trying to sweet-talk me into this marriage you’re proposing. You may forget about the Brant-Ryder history, but I can’t.”

      “Now I find that a real challenge—to see if I can make you forget about the feud,” he said softly.

      She knew he was flirting, and, while it was exciting, at the same time she was suspicious of his motives. There was too much at stake, and in five generations, no Ryder had ever trusted a Brant.

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