“That’s the very definition of controlling,” she argued.

  At that moment, his mother threw the front door open, and Jake caught a glimpse of Brian with his arms around Caitlin. Shit, something had happened.

  “I think they got engaged,” Julia said from next to him, picking up on the situation before he could make sense of it. “You better go congratulate your brother.”

  “Come with me,” he said, reaching for her hand. She kept it at her side for a second before putting it in his.

  “We’re going to iron this out later. I mean that.” She had a fixed smile on her face as they crossed the room, but her words were serious.

  Two hours later, Jake was sure that he’d never fake-smiled so much in his life. He was genuinely happy for Brian and Caitlin, but trying to keep up a front that he and Julia hadn’t just had a fight made his cheeks hurt. When the party seemed like it was winding down, he ducked outside and headed for the barn. He needed some time to himself to sort out what they’d both said.

  He stepped into Queenie’s stall. The mare was close to foaling, and Jake had been keeping a close watch on her. He grabbed a brush and began stroking it down her sides.

  “Thought you might need this.” Brian handed a beer over the stall door.

  “Thanks.” Jake opened it, took a drink, and then put it on a ledge in the stall.

  “What’s wrong with you? You’re tense.”

  “Nothing.” He returned to his work. “Just wanted to get out of the house.” He wasn’t going to unload on his brother when Brian had just gotten engaged. “Shouldn’t you be with your fiancée?”

  “Cut the crap, Jake, and talk to me.”

  “Caitlin’s probably looking for you,” Jake said, knowing it was a last-ditch effort. His brother wasn’t going away.

  “Last I saw her, she was sitting on the couch, looking at baby clothes and talking with her friends. She’s fine for the moment. Besides, I’ll be with her the rest of my life.” Brian had a blissful, sappy expression on his face for a second before leveling his gaze on Jake. “Spill, and don’t try to tell me it’s some ranch drainage issue because I know it’s bigger than that. My guess is that it has something to do with a certain veterinarian that you’ve been spending a lot of time with.”

  His brother wasn’t subtle. Jake sighed, grabbed the beer, and left the stall. “Fine, you’re right—it’s Julia. We…she’s…you’ve got to keep this to yourself.” When Brian nodded, Jake went on. “Julia’s pregnant with my kid.”

  “Whoa,” Brian said, physically staggering back a step. “Wasn’t expecting that. You’re going to be a dad. Hell, we’ll be dads together. The kids’ll be damn close to the same age—next best thing to twins.” Brian was leaping ahead to the future with a big smile on his face. “They’ll grow up together like we did. That’s awesome. Congratulations. You should have said something at the party.”

  Jake shook his head. “Julia’s worried about a miscarriage. She’d got some kind of condition that makes pregnancy difficult—she didn’t think she’d be able to get pregnant at all. We heard the heartbeat, and the doc says everything’s fine, but I’ve got to respect what Julia wants.”

  “I get that. So what’s the real problem?” Brian asked.

  “I think we could be happy, raise our kid together, be a family, but the pregnancy is making her so defensive about every little thing. I’m starting to worry that we don’t have a future.”

  “And you want that?” Brian’s tone was cautious.

  “Yeah, I do, but I hate fighting with her. We can’t even agree about the stud fee contract for Twister or how to breed my mares. They’re my mares, and I’m going to pay her, so it’s my choice, right?”

  “It is her stallion,” Brian pointed out.

  “Now you sound like her,” Jake said, but he needed to confide in his brother so kept talking. “How am I going to care for us as a family if she fights me over every little thing? The other day I suggested that she come live here if things worked out between us, but she didn’t even want to discuss it. Are we going to end up sharing the kid—half the week with her, half with me? What the hell kind of a life is that for any of us? If she’d just let me manage things, I could sort it all out, and we could just be happy.”

  Brian tipped back his beer and took a long drink before speaking. “You know, not too long ago when I almost lost Caitlin, you said some things that I needed to hear. And I’m grateful for that. It made me get my head out of my ass.”

  “You drank half my hidden stash of whiskey that day,” Jake said. They’d shared the bottle after Jake had handed out some advice that led to Brian and Caitlin’s reconciliation.

  “I got you a new one,” Brian said. “What you said was more important than the booze, and I’m going to return the favor right now. Getting a woman pregnant doesn’t suddenly make her easy to win over. If anything, it makes it harder to earn her respect and trust, because you have to prove yourself as a future husband and father. At the end of the day, you might have to listen and compromise.”

  “I can do that, but not when it comes to the ranch. I was raised to run this ranch in a certain way. It’s my responsibility, and I owe it to Dad and Luke to do it right.” His brother had to understand how strongly he felt about that.

  “Seems to me there are two different things going on here. Ask yourself this. Do you want to be right about how to breed horses or do you want to love her and be loved by her?”

  Jake turned his head and looked down the long line of horse stalls. Most were empty since the horses were outside, but a few heads peeked out at him. The ranch was important to him, but so was Julia. Did he love her?

  Love came with all sorts of complications. Somewhere inside him, he wanted to be the guy who would give it all up for love, but he knew he wasn’t capable of that. That wasn’t who he was. That wasn’t what he’d been raised to value. Yes, his dad had loved his mother deeply, but all of his lectures had been about how the ranch came first, how the ranch was a legacy they all had to work to preserve. That had to be extra true for Jake, not just because he was the only one left to keep the ranch’s legacy going, but also because he and Julia didn’t have the same kind of love that his parents had shared. He liked being with her and thought about her at all hours of the day and night. He enjoyed making love to her. Okay, he was sort of obsessed with that, but he thought about her more pragmatically when he imagined a future for them together, because of their circumstances.

  He wasn’t in love with her. Of that he was sure.

  “I don’t love her, at least not yet,” Jake said. Maybe someday that would come, but it would be a calm, mature love founded on a shared life and children. “And I’m right about the horses.”

  Brian finished off his beer, and Jake sensed that his brother had something important to say. He was going to get an earful, so he braced himself.

  “Good luck with that then, and congrats on the baby. I better head inside to say goodbye to the guests.” With that, Brian turned and walked out of the barn, leaving Jake to wonder what he’d missed.

  14

  “Can I come in?” Jake asked from the other side of Julia’s screened door the following evening.

  She’d left the baby shower while he was still in the barn and wasn’t surprised when he hadn’t tried to contact her. Throughout the day, she’d thought about their disagreement. Mixing a business deal with a young relationship had its risks.

  “That depends,” she said, walking closer to the door. “Are we going to talk or are you going to tell me how things are going to be?” She could hear the frustration in her voice, knew it came from his attitude and his need to control. She refused to allow that, and if he couldn’t understand that…

  “Talk.”

  “It’s unlatched.” She retreated to the couch, where she’d been using her laptop to look at baby furniture. Fay and Wellington immediately went to seek attention from Jake. Izzy eyed him suspiciously, however, and moved to sit on top of Julia’s shoulder, the cat’s favorite perch.

  “Strange animal,” Jake commented, putting out a hand to stroke the cat’s fur after he’d petted the dogs.

  “She likes to be close to me.”

  “That’s not so strange.” Jake took a seat next to her. “I like that, too.”

  “Is that why you hid in the barn yesterday?” She didn’t feel like beating around the bush. They had things to settle between them.

  “I needed to think,” he said.

  “And did you reach a decision?”

  “Yeah, I don’t like fighting with you.”

  She smiled at that. “We need a resolution, then.”

  “I still want to breed the natural way, so I’ll pay you extra for that and to have exclusive rights to Twister during the coming breeding season. Seem fair?” He pulled a check from his pocket and handed it to her. “Here’s half of the stud fee as a down payment.”

  It irritated her that he’d made the decision, set the fee, and assumed she’d accept his terms without consulting her. However, one glance at the amount had her thinking about the equipment she could buy for her clinic, so she swallowed down her complaints. It was a generous offer, even if they hadn’t engaged in normal negotiations.

  “I’ll draw up a contract with those terms,” she said, keeping her tone businesslike. She put the check between the pages of a book that sat on her coffee table. Her movement made Izzy jump down and dash away.

  “Good. Can we be done with business now?” he asked, leaning closer. “I missed you last night.”

  She’d missed him, too. Despite her frequent irritation with him, she liked having him in her home and her bed. “Are you staying?”

  “I’d like to,” he said, “if I’m invited.” He was giving her the choice this time. If she said no, would he leave? Probably not. She was almost tempted to see, but she wanted him with her.

  “How about an early bedtime?” The sun had barely set, but she wanted the physical connection with him right away. They were in perfect harmony in bed. That was the easy part of their relationship, and makeup sex with him sounded like a great way to spend the rest of the evening.

  “What will the neighbors say?” he teased as he stood up and reached for her. Once she was standing, he fused their bodies together. “I really did miss you.”

  “I believe that. No, on second thought, I don’t.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “You’ll have to prove it to me.”

  “My pleasure.” He lifted her off her feet and carried her to the bedroom, where he spent the next hour making up for the night they’d missed. She was thoroughly sated but not tired when they lay together afterwards.

  “Stay here,” she said as she got out of bed and pulled a nightgown over her head. “Be right back.” She went to the fridge, grabbed a beer for him and a bottle of water for herself. A client that day had given her homemade chocolate chip cookies. She took those, the drinks, and her laptop back to bed with her, where he helped her settle back in.

  After eating a cookie, she opened her laptop to show him what she’d been looking at before he arrived. She planned to put some items on her baby registry and spread other purchases out over several months, so she didn’t break the bank. The check he’d written her…No, that was for her business. She could look and add items to her wish list. That way she felt as though she were accomplishing something and staying organized.

  “I’m trying to decide on furniture for the baby. What do you think?” She scrolled through different styles of cribs and finishes. She had a favorite, but she was waiting to see what Jake liked. She wanted them to both be happy with the end result.

  “I’m a fan of the golden oak finish. I think it works for a girl or a boy.”

  “Perfect,” she said, adding two units of the golden oak crib to her list. “That was my first choice. I’ll try to purchase them in the next month.”

  “Them?” He looked more closely at her screen. “Why’d you put two in?”

  “I think it would be nice if the baby had the same crib here as he or she does at your house.” From everything she’d read, consistency was important for babies and children.

  “Why would we need a nursery at each house?”

  She took a deep breath. Here they went again. “Because we live in separate houses, and it might still be that way when the baby’s born. There’s nothing wrong with being prepared. Why does that bother you?”

  “It feels like you don’t have faith in our relationship working out.”

  “I never said that.” She might have felt it, though, during the past day. “But we’re not in a hurry. The decision about us and whether we’ll move in together doesn’t have to be made before the baby’s born. We can keep dating and see where it takes us. Who knows? We could still be dating when the baby is a teenager. There’s no rush.”

  “Kids need stability. There’s a reason people get married before they have kids.” Whoa. Married. Had he just said that? She wanted to tell him to back up, but he kept talking. “I don’t want him or her bouncing back and forth between houses. What kind of life is that for a kid?”

  “Married?” She got out of bed, needing some space between them. She’d imagined them becoming partners, lovers, and parents, but she’d skirted around the concept of marriage.

  “If not married, at least living together,” he said. “Why put off deciding when you know what the best option is?”

  “Do we know that?” she asked, unconvinced. Their disagreement at the baby shower had proven to her once again that they had some things to work through as a couple.

  “I do. You don’t?”

  She took a deep breath, trying to organize her thoughts and speak calmly. She didn’t want to upset him—but she wasn’t going to just give in, either. “Jake, I care about you. A lot. More than…more than I’ve ever cared for any man, but even you have to admit, we’re not exactly a model couple. We fight more than my parents ever did, and it’s only going to get tougher after the baby’s born. What if we can’t get along? A divorce would be a lot harder on our kid than us amicably living in separate houses. I’m sorry, but I can’t commit to moving in together, or marriage, until I’m sure.”

  He gave her a long look, and she could see that she’d hurt him, which hadn’t been her intention. “If that’s how you feel.” He got out of bed and reached for his jeans. “I’ve got an early morning.”

  She sighed. “Which you have every morning. Don’t go. Stay and we’ll talk.” She didn’t know if she could put this right because there was no easy solution, but she hated to see him leave, too, especially like this, with everything unbalanced between them.

  He shook his head and continued dressing. When he was done, he came back to stand by the side of the bed. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Get some sleep.” He kissed her forehead and left.

  Dammit. A moment later she heard his truck driving away. She hadn’t meant that to happen, but she was worried about their future. What she said was true. Her parents hadn’t fought because her mother had given up the life she wanted, so her husband could chase his dream. Growing up, Julia had sworn she’d never do what her mom had, but then she’d nearly fallen into the same trap. She pinched her lips together. During her months on the rodeo circuit as a barrel racing nineteen-year-old, she’d fallen in love with Rodney and forgotten every one of her rules. Whatever Rodney did, she went along with. She’d learned to bury her objections and convinced herself that he knew best. Until…until he’d tried to sell her horse out from underneath her. She’d found her backbone then and sent him packing.

  Ever since, she’d been fiercely protective of her independence, which Jake constantly threatened. Julia put the laptop on the bedside table and flipped off the light. She resisted checking her phone, knowing that Jake wouldn’t send a message. She’d wounded him and his male pride, so why did she feel so battered?

  As if sensing her turmoil, Izzy jumped up on the bed and settled against Julia’s side. After long minutes of staring at the ceiling, she fell asleep to the sound of the cat’s purr.

  In the morning, Magellan stood over her and let out a mighty yowl, waking her from a night of restless sleep.

  “Time for breakfast?” she asked, gently pushing the black cat to the side. “Give me a minute.” Her eyes fell on Jake’s half-drunk beer, and an unexpected wave of loneliness went over her. She’d wanted him to stay, wanted his body next to hers, and his arms around her.

  If she could just get him to…she stopped herself. There was no magic solution that was going to bring about relationship bliss for them. That just wasn’t realistic, which last night’s conversation had made abundantly clear.

  She forced herself out of bed and completed her usual morning chores. The routine helped, but she needed something to keep her busy and productive. She eyed the small bedroom next to hers. She’d already decided it would be the perfect nursery, but it would need a lot of work. Her parents had used it for storage, and she hadn’t cleared it out completely since taking over the ranch.

  “I’ve got a few hours,” she said to herself. Her first appointment that day wasn’t until noon. “Let’s just take a look and see what needs to get done.”

  A rocking chair that had belonged to her grandmother could stay, Julia decided, surveying the room. That might come in handy. But the old steamer trunk and dresser had to go. They’d be heavy items. Normally, pushing and tugging weren’t a problem for her, but with the pregnancy, she was being cautious.

  Jake would do it. That thought was in her head before she could stop it. He’d been around so much since she’d sprained her ankle that she’d started to expect him to do things, which, of course, he did. He took on other projects, too. Home repairs that she’d ignored. A loose shutter, clogged downspouts, a bad board on the porch, the towel bar she’d never gotten around to hanging.

  It had been nice, but she shouldn’t have let herself get used to it. Just like she shouldn’t have called him the night that she had a craving for Chinese takeout from the place that wouldn’t deliver all the way out to her house. Despite his schedule of early mornings, he’d cheerfully made the hour roundtrip drive so she could have orange chicken and egg rolls.