The pretty house, the pretty flowers and the pretty life represented the exact opposite of what the Coltrane ranch had to offer. He narrowed his eyes as he pulled the truck to a stop. That was in the past. If they wanted, the Coltranes could plant flowers with the best of them.
He swung out of the truck and headed for the front door, stiffening his spine in preparation for battle with Martina's family. He punched the bell and glared at the door as he waited.
The housekeeper answered the door, casting a suspicious look at him. "Good afternoon, Mr. Logan."
"I need to see Martina," he told the woman.
"She's in the library. I'll have to ask if she's receiving visitors," the housekeeper said with a sniff.
Noah made a face at the woman's back and didn't wait for an invitation. "I'll announce myself," he said, brushing past her.
"If she shoots you with one of her daddy's rifles, don't say I didn't warn you. She ain't in a pretty mood."
He paused at the wry tone in the housekeeper's voice and offered his own wry grin as he tipped his hat. "Thank you very much, Miss … "
"Addie," she said with a look of pleased surprise at his politeness. "The library's at the end of the hall. Good luck."
He took in the comfort and beauty of Martina's childhood home and felt his gut tighten. A woman could feel at home here, whereas at the Coltrane ranch … He stopped just outside the last open doorway.
Martina stood, shredding the stuffings of a pillow. Small wads of the stuff clumped around her feet. She made a whimpering sound that clutched at his heart. "I wish you were here," she said. "A million times I've wished it, but never more than now."
She must have sensed his presence because she looked up and saw him in the doorway. She shredded another piece of stuffing. "Go away."
"Like hell I will," he said, walking into the room. "What do you think you're doing taking off and not telling anyone where you're going? You're pregnant. You can't do that."
"Addie would have helped me handle any emergency. She still will." Martina frowned. "I can't believe she let you in," she said, shooting him a look of disdain.
"If this is about Wendy … " he began.
"Ah, yes." She smiled sweetly. Too sweetly. "Wendy, Wendy, Wendy. She sounded like she very much enjoyed the dinner you two shared a few months ago-"
"Nothing happened," he interjected.
"-while I was spending every morning hugging the porcelain bowl," she continued as if he hadn't spoken, "and you were apparently sowing your seed all over Texas."
Noah narrowed his eyes and moved closer, crowding her. "You just hold on to that knife you call a tongue. The only thing I was sowing with Wendy was the possibility that her travel agency might promote my fencing camps and roundup weekends. You may have forgotten the fact that I just learned I was fathering a child a month ago, but I haven't. You haven't given a tinker's damn what I've been doing by myself, let alone with another woman, for the last seven months, so why do you care now?"
He held her laser-sharp blue gaze. "You walked out on me with no warning. If you expect me to live like a monk just because you made love with me, then left me like yesterday's garbage, then … " He took a deep breath. "Then you'd be right."
She blinked, her eyes shiny with tears. "Oh, I can't believe you lived like a monk."
"Believe it." His heart swelled with such confusing emotions that he looked away to gather his wits. His gaze landed on a portrait of a woman who looked exactly like Martina. "Is it you? Is that-"
"My mother," she said, sniffing. "I'm told I look a lot like her."
Blinking, he stared at the picture and shook his head. "The resemblance is incredible." When he realized she had been talking to the portrait when he'd first seen her, his chest grew tight.
Martina hugged the shredded pillow to her chest. "That's what everyone says. That's why he couldn't stand to look at me," she said, nodding toward the portrait beside her mother's.
Martina's father. He had been a hard man, Noah concluded from the picture and what he'd heard of the man's reputation. Losing his wife hadn't softened him.
Noah gazed at Martina and saw the look of an orphan in her blue eyes. He put an arm around her shoulders. "Why'd you come here?"
"I needed to go somewhere that I belonged," she said.
Noah gritted his teeth at the surprising stab of pain her words caused. "Haven't you learned you belong with me?"
She drew in a deep breath and sighed. "I'm not sure about that."
Impatience tore at him. "What's not to be sure? I'm the father of your child. I will be good to you and the baby. You can count on that."
She stepped away from him. "I want more than that."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, I spent my whole childhood trying to get my father to love me. I don't want to spend my whole adult life trying to get a husband to love me."
Noah felt caught between a rock and a hard place. "You mean a lot to me," he said, but the words sounded insubstantial to his own ears. He tried again. "I want you more than any woman. You know I care about you."
"But you don't love me."
He shoved his hands in his pockets. "I've always thought love was unpredictable at best, not something a man with any sense bets much of his gold on. Other things like family and commitment are more important." He could tell he wasn't getting through to her. Frustration raked across him. "There are some things too important to let emotions mess up. You are one of them."
Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion and indecision. Although Noah firmly believed in allowing each individual his or her freedom to choose, at this moment, he wished he could choose for Martina.
"You don't believe in love?"
"I didn't say that," he asserted. "I just don't bank on it. Here's an example. What if I had decided I'd fallen in love with you when we met in Chicago? After you left me, what was I supposed to think?"
Quiet for a long thoughtful moment, she seemed to have stepped outside herself. "Did it hurt you when I left?"
Noah immediately felt a barrier go up inside him. He looked away and struggled to answer her question honestly. "Yeah," he finally said. "It did. And it hurt even more to find out you were pregnant and hadn't gotten around to telling me."
"How much did it hurt?" Martina asked, shredding the stuffing of the pillow again.
He remembered the pain that had dulled only when he'd lost himself in his work. At night, however, he'd been unable to escape it. "I couldn't sleep," he reluctantly revealed.
She bit her lip. "This is a mess," she said in a broken voice.
"Yeah, you've mutilated that pillow."
Martina glanced down at the pillow and made a sound somewhere between a sob and a chuckle. "I wasn't talking about the pillow. I was talking about us and our situation. I don't see how it can work."
The hopelessness in her eyes cut like one of his swords. "Let me take care of it. I'm known for my innovative solutions."
"This is going to take a miracle."
"I've never let that stop me before. What are you afraid of, Martina?"
"That I'll never know what it feels like to have a husband who loves me. That I'll disappoint my brothers if I stay with you. That the Logan curse will cause a lot of heartbreak."
"You don't really believe in that curse, do you?"
"It's hard not to believe when I heard about it all the time from my father. There's a lot at stake here, Noah."
"I know, Martina. You can count on me."
Doubt shimmered in her eyes. He longed for her unswerving confidence, but understood he had yet to earn it. He had time, he told himself. Not as much as he'd like, but he had time.
She walked toward the baby grand in the center of the room. "My mother played this piano. She taught my brothers, but I never learned."
"You're still carrying on her tradition," he told her.
"How?" she asked skeptically. "I can't even play 'Chopsticks'."
"You play a different kind of keys," he said. "Computer keys."
A slow smile lifted her lips and subsequently his heart at the same time. "I never thought of it that way."
He crossed to her and pulled her into his arms. "Come home with me. You want to hear chapter two of The Hobbit."
She looked torn. "I can't stay with you much longer," she said. "My brother Brock and his family will return from New York, and I don't like concealing my whereabouts from him or Tyler. I owe them that much."