RANCHER BEAR’S BABY(49)

She stood up and stretched. “Then maybe you can stay at Lucas’s house.”

I started to correct her, but she cut me off. “I know what you meant, but I’m unwilling to lose a partner in crime. Leila is too hormone-crazy right now. I need a sane counterpart.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, Elizabeth.”

She nodded. “It’ll work out. Mates are bound together by larger forces than our own silly fears and anxieties. Alex would move mountains to get to me. Just like Matt would move mountains for Leila. Just like Lucas will move mountains for you. No matter how big you build them.”

She moved towards the door. “Come downstairs soon. You don’t want to miss time with that cute little boy running around down there.”





CHAPTER 10: Lucas




I could barely stand it. Sammie spent the rest of the day avoiding me. No matter what I did, when I got close to her, she moved away. I was ready to throttle her, just to get her to look at me. She’d busied herself with Mason, coddling him until I’d wanted to scream. I was actually jealous of a four-year-old.

When she’d stood up later that night and said she was going to bed, I stood up to follow her, but Alex caught my arm. “We need to talk, bro.”

I growled at him and watched as Sammie quickly disappeared up the stairs with Mason hot on her heels. The boy was in love with her. He stared at her with so much adoration that everyone noticed. All day long, there’d been the comments about how attached he was to her.

Like I didn’t know. My own son had just left me without a second glance.

As if on cue, I heard Sammie’s soft voice correcting him. “Go and tell your Daddy that you’re going to bed with me. Give him a hug, too. He’s had a hard day.”

Mason ran back down the stairs and sprang his sweaty little body into my arms. He wrapped his sticky hands around my neck and pressed a kiss to my chin. “Night. I’m going with Sammie.”

I cleared my throat of the emotion that had lodged there. “Yeah, well, tell Sammie that you’re sticky from all the candy she fed you earlier. You could probably use a bath.”

He wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “I’m not telling her.”

I swatted his backside as he jumped down and ran away from me. “Tell her!”

I stood there, watching my world disappear up the stairs and shook my head. I couldn’t go to bed without talking to Sammie. She could only ignore me for so long.

Alex called me to the kitchen table, where he, Matt, and Michael were sitting. Only John was missing. “We’ve got to discuss something.”

I sat down, but looked towards the stairs. I wanted to be with my mate and my son. “Can we make this quick?”

Matt snorted. “You in a rush to get ignored some more?”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Well, if you said what I heard you said, you deserve it. What the hell’s wrong with you, man?”

I let my head fall to the table and hit it relatively hard. “I’m an idiot.”

Alex called a stop to the picking and brought up what was on his mind. “According to Dad’s will, Lucas is now the rightful heir to the ranch. Mason is four. You brought an offspring into this world before any of us.”

I was still staring at the stairs. “What?”

“The ranch is yours.”

I looked at the three of them and sighed. Before today, I had wanted it so much that I’d spent months frantically searching for Mallory. Now, as it was being thrust into my lap, all I could think about was that it would keep me away from my son and my mate. The plate-full of responsibilities that came with running a working ranch would command time and energy that I’d rather spend with my family.

“Well, what do you say?”

I shook my head. “I don’t want it.”

They all stared at me in shock.

“I need to develop a relationship with my son and I want to convince Sammie to be with me forever. I don’t want to spent eighty hours a week running this place.”

“More. I don’t know how Dad did it.” Alex shook his head. “It’s a lot of work for one man.”

Matt nodded. “Why don’t we come to some sort of agreement to run it together? It’s what we were doing before the will was read. Even back then when we were fighting each other like cats and dogs, it still worked better than with one of us trying to do everything.”

Michael cleared his throat. “It’s cool with me. John will agree. He’s been so focused elsewhere that I know he has little interest in running this place full time.”

I stood up. “Then it’s settled. We share as a family. Like we should. How about we hammer out the details later, boys?”