Page 32 of A Christmas Baby for the Cowboy
She didn’t say anything. She also didn’t ask him why again, so he took that as a victory.
He put his hands on her legs and he didn’t crack a smile.
Because this was Ramona, and the mask was off, and anyway, this was serious.
“You’ve always gotten this wrong,” he told her, his voice low, maybe, but intent. “I know you think I don’t feel anything. Or I do, but I don’t want to, which amounts to the same thing. But that’s not it. Of course I feel. I feel all the things that you do. I just never wanted you to think that this was going places I knew it wouldn’t go.” She didn’t react to that. And her legs were warm in those leggings beneath his palms, and touching her was still the best thing he could think of. He felt something beating in him, like some kind of drum, urging him on. “I was trying to protect you.”
It was a testament, maybe, to the intensity of the moment that she didn’t laugh at that. Scoff at it, more like. Because he could see a gleam of that sort of thing in her gaze.
He kept going, because there was no turning back now. “I love my family. I love the ranch. I love Montana. But I never wanted anything more than my family time here. I never wanted anything to tie me down at all. I figured the best way to go about that was to be brutally honest about that from the start. Not just with you. With everyone.”
For the first time in years, he thought about his high school girlfriend. He’d heard she’d met a nice guy and had moved to Denver, and he liked that for her.
Because he’d broken her heart, too.
“You certainly succeeded,” Ramona told him. And her voice was as calm as ever, but there was something a little more turbulent in all that blue in her eyes. “You have always been the very soul of brutal honesty.”
That wasn’t a compliment, he was well aware.
“Ramona.” He moved a little closer and tugged her around on her chair so she was facing him. So he was staring right into her face. Her astonishingly beautiful face that only got prettier closer in. “We were never supposed to meet when we did. I wasn’t even supposed to be here.”
He shook his head, but he didn’t stop. “I was planning to break it to my parents on Easter that I was done with the ranch for the moment. I had it all planned out. I was going to go on a road trip, first and foremost. Take a look at this country of ours myself, not through a screen. I was going to pick a place to settle and see how I liked it. But instead, my dad told us…”
Knox broke off. He blew out a breath. “How could I leave with my dad sick? I couldn’t. I couldn’t even consider it. And now there’s Hailey. My name on a birth certificate and a little baby girl who doesn’t seem to have anyone. And the whole while, between those two things, there’s been you.”
Ramona was tense beneath his hands. Her eyes were darker than usual.
But when she spoke again, her voice was as maddeningly smooth and even as ever.
“Yes,” she said, coolly, “life does happen while you’re busy pretending it hasn’t started yet. A thousand apologies for not making it easier on you. By… not moving here, I guess? Not going to find food on my first night? I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“If I was going to stay here, you must know that I would have locked you down already, Ramona,” he belted out. “I knew you were trouble that very first night. Haven’t I made that clear?”
She leaned a little closer, so that her gaze was practically inside of him, tearing him to shreds. “The only thing you’ve ever made clear is that every single thing I feel about you is my problem, not yours.”
“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “I think you know that’s bullshit.”
Ramona stared at him. She didn’t melt. She didn’t cry.
She stared at him, and he had the terrible, paralyzing thought he’d left it too late after all, and that was nobody’s fault but his—
But then, barely an inch from his face, she blinked, and he saw the gleam he recognized in all that blue. That softening he sure as hell didn’t deserve, but he’d take it.
Knox wasn’t sure he’d ever felt this kind of relief in his life.
When he finally leaned in and kissed her again, after the two longest months of his life without her, it felt like fire.
And better yet, like coming home.
Chapter Eight
Ramona couldn’t keep herself from answering the phone when Knox called, or letting him in when he showed up, so really—kissing him was a foregone conclusion.
And just like every time he kissed her, he turned her completely inside out.
It had always been like this. His mouth on hers was immediately carnal, almost unbearably intense.
It was everything.
