The Bachelor's Baby(38)

After getting the groceries into the cupboards and fridge—the man really needed a woman to cook him something decent—she slipped upstairs to scope the layout and saw such potential her blood sang. The previous owners had been victims of hard years, ill health, and a lack of willingness to advance with the times, but they’d had age-old romanticism. They’d placed the homestead in the perfect spot on the property so a vista rolled away from the master bedroom windows and sunlight poured in through gabled windows in the smaller bedrooms.

The entire house was desperate for updating, of course. The wallpaper was peeling, the blinds on the windows so faded and brittle they looked like they’d disintegrate into powder at the least touch. The stairs creaked atrociously as she came down and the kitchen door stuck so badly she wound up going out through the office door and circling around to properly see the back yard, but, “Oh,” she breathed.

A broken picket fence bordered a small orchard of apple, plum and pear. Overgrown raspberry canes were looped down to the ground and pinned by the melting snow. Weeds and grass poked up around everything, but she saw abundance and felt like she’d swallowed the sun. There was where she’d put the cold frame and there was where the compost would go and over there was where their son or daughter could swing while she planted the garden.

She started to well up and had to blink several times because this could be her home and would, no matter what, be their child’s home. Getting a place in town, renting, wouldn’t be the same as this. This was where her baby would know he or she belonged.

This was where she, Meg, wanted to dig in and put down roots and be home.

The window in the kitchen door rattled and wood protested with a harsh scrape as Linc pulled it inward. He stepped onto the dilapidated veranda, then tested one of the uprights as he passed it. It seemed solid enough, but the steps were soft, bowing under his cautious steps. He bounced on the last one and said, “Don’t use these until I get them replaced.”

“’kay.” She surreptitiously brushed at her cheeks, embarrassed to be caught crying again.

“Are you all right?” He came through the snow toward her, stopping where she’d come up against the gate, but hadn’t wanted to force it inward against the heavy snow.

“I’m just thinking that the baby will always think of this as home. And how ironic it is that I spent all that time in Chicago, looking for my family, and my closest bloodtie will wind up living next door to where I grew up.” Tears wet her lashes.

His concerned expression softened to empathy. He dragged the gate inward, plowing the snow and waving her to come toward him.

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” he asked, one hand reaching for hers.

She clung hard to his bare hand, tense, feeling like she stood on the highest perch, staring into a pool of still, depthless water below. Leaping was inevitable, she just had to take a deep breath and jump.

“I’m really scared,” she told him. “But maybe if we just lived together for the first while, to be sure…?”

“Engaged,” he said, more like it was his terms for acceptance rather than a suggestion.

“Sure, I guess, just… What are you doing?”

He was drawing her closer, stepping so his big boot knocked snow into her shoe but it didn’t matter because his crooked finger went under her chin, urging her to look up into his eyes.

“Sealing the deal,” he replied. The words heated and dampened her mouth before the brush of first contact made her lips tingle and singe. He soothed the sensation with a firmer press, an insistent cover and fit and then a quest. A search for her response.

She gave it up to him, wrapping her arms around him, chest aching with pressure from inside and out. Nothing had changed and everything had. Where her first kisses with him months ago had pulled forth a stronger physical response than she’d ever experienced, this one was equally sensual but amplified by emotion. Sweetness and yearning and a deep need to meld with him in every way saturated her entire being as they kissed and kissed and kissed.

A single honk of a horn made them jerk apart.

“Guess they’re finished,” Linc said wryly. He stole a last, brief taste and stepped back, running a quick hand down to make an adjustment to himself. “The effect you have on me, Meg…” he muttered. “I have to go out there with a check,” he added with a disgruntled scowl, swearing and shaking his head in disgust as he hitched himself onto the veranda and pushed through the swollen door into the house.

She walked around outside, smiling secretively, enjoying the sun and meeting him a minute later as he waved off the delivery truck. Afterward, she asked him to show her the barn, which he did and they tramped past the corral where there was no helicopter. He told her he’d taken it to a hangar in Bozeman for storage.