Page 36 of A Baby for the Texas Cowboy
A fierceness filled her. She would love this child. She had to. She didn’t want to bring a child into a world steeped in chilly disapproval.
“Tinsley.” He let her go and squared his shoulders like he was going into some battle she didn’t have the strength to fight today. “I want you to know that even if we weren’t planning on bringing a child in the world the few times we were together, I’m happy about the baby.”
She blinked at him. It was the last thing she expected him to say.
“But that doesn’t make sense.” He was so young. At the top of a competitive and dangerous adrenaline rush of a career. A baby was an anchor in a world where he was riding free and fast.
“Maybe not to you, but it feels right. Weird. Scary. But right.” He took her left hand in his, looked at it for a moment as if it were special, and then he kissed the back of her hand and her ring finger.
She shivered.
Don’t let him propose again. Please. No.
“I lost a brother. Aurik. He drowned in a flash flood on our ranch, and I can barely remember him. Just from pictures of stories August told me. Axel never talks much about the past, or, well about much. But losing my brother so young and then my mom and later my dad has taught me that life is a gift and you gotta live it, hold on tight but enjoy the ride.”
She swallowed hard and felt her eyes tear up. He could be so sweet her heart hurt.
His sweet terrified her.
“I’m going to be a dad, and I’m going to do my best,” he said. “And I want to be a good partner to you as well, but if you don’t want that, if you find that you don’t want me or…or…if you don’t want…well, I’m going to be the dad, and I will raise our child with love from me and my family and I hope with you, but that’s your decision.”
He kissed her cheek. Kissed the picture and gave it back to her. “Keep it,” he said. “I’ll print out the one from my phone and show it to my family.” He walked out the door.
Tinsley stood still for a long moment. What just happened? Did Anders Wolf just give her one giant get out of jail free card and say he’d raise the child without her? Was he serious? Bluffing? She didn’t know him well enough.
But did she want that?
She had no idea what she thought or felt. She’d been living in the moment so long, the future was blank. The past was a no go.
Take it day by day, he’d said.
They had time, he’d said.
Tinsley stood there for a long time, and then she finally looked down at the black-and-white photo.
*
“Finally getting somework out of you,” August commented as Anders loaded various cases of wine into a Verflucht company truck early the next morning. He’d barely slept and had instead swum laps at midnight, hoping that would ease some of the tension that had screamed through him since Tinsley had dropped her baby bombshell.
It hadn’t.
It had killed him last night to leave her alone. He’d wanted to make her dinner. Make sure she ate. He knew he’d have to pick his battles, and he was currently engaged in one he wasn’t going to lose. Too critical.
“Truck or SUV?” He slid two more cases into the back of the truck bed.
“Context?” August asked leaning against a massive cask in the winery and sipping from his thermos of coffee.
“And you’re goading me about work,” he muttered. “You’re going to get soft if you let all your employees do all the physical labor. You’ll slouch into dad bod in no time.”
He was going to be a dad. The shock never seemed to ease.
“I’m hard where it counts.” His brother smirked.
Anders picked up two more cases of…who knew what? And he didn’t really care. He’d invested in his brother’s distillery business—mainly the whiskey well before it had launched, because he had the bucks and his investment advisor had suggested diversifying a little and maybe becoming involved in a project that might appeal for when he retired. Bull riders had notoriously short careers.
A distillery hadn’t been a career interest, but he knew August had built an empire out of beer and historic event spaces, so Anders had been confident that his start with Four Wolfs and the initial release of Wolf Cowboy Whiskey could be successful. And it would be in the family like the ranch. August had been short on capital and hadn’t wanted to go to a bank or outside investors, and he definitely hadn’t wanted to ask his older brother Axel to spot him the initial investment.
So now Anders had a sizable chunk invested in Four Wolfs and the launch of Cowboy Wolf Whiskey this past year. He’d also continued pouring cash back into the ranch that Axel managed for all of them. Eventually he planned to return and work the ranch and live here, but he wanted to have something of his own as well. For the past couple of years, he’d been thinking about breeding bucking bulls and combining a stock contracting opportunity with one of his best friends, Kane Wilder.
