Page 8 of A Baby to Make Her His Bride

Jasper pulled his own weight. He solved his own problems. People came tohimfor solutions. He didn’t rely on others. It galled him that his sister had had to come to his rescue and he couldn’t help wondering what it might have cost her.

“They married for Peyton’s sake,” Vienna assured him. “It was bumpy at first, but I’ve never seen Hunter as relaxed as he is around Amelia and Peyton. I don’t know what kind of father I thought he would be. Ours was...”

He stopped again, turning to see her cheeks were hollow, her mouth pensive.

“What?” he prompted.

She shrugged it off. “Hunter has always been very supportive and concerned about my welfare, but he’s different with them. He’s very open and loving, more so than I’ve ever seen him. It’s cute.” Her expression softened, then brightened. “Oh!”

She brushed past him to where the trees opened onto the beach.

“I was starting to think the climb back up wouldn’t be worth wherever it was you were taking me, but this is beautiful!”

She shaded her eyes as she scanned the cove formed by an arm of treed land extending outward to the south. Ahead, a small island with exactly three trees stood in the water. It was just far enough away that it remained unreachable on foot even when the tide was out. The sky was an intense blue, the sun glittering off the green water, illuminating the foam of the incoming waves. The sand was granite-gray and littered with kelp, utterly empty of human occupation.

The wind dragged at her hair and pressed her clothes to her front. He would have pegged her for a white sand, all-inclusive beach type, not so much raw nature, but she was entranced.

A sense of accord settled over him. He was a loner and had become very proprietary about this small stretch of paradise, but if he had to share it, he was glad it was with someone who appreciated it.

She glanced at him and caught him staring at her. Her carefree joy faltered into uncertainty.

He looked away, rebuking himself.Not her. For many reasons.

“There’s a hotel around that outcrop. I walk this direction.” He began negotiating the thick fence of gnarled driftwood thrown up on the beach by eons of wind and waves.

Tension filled the silence between them as they walked across the untouched sand.

Vienna told herself it was the breeze playing in her hair, snapping it against her face, that made her feel so sensitized. She was an artist, naturally affected by tangy, earthy aromas. That was why she wanted to take off her shoes, so she could feel the shifting temperatures in the sand. That was why her eye wanted to watch the sunshine paint itself over the planes of his body and the angles of his face.

It had nothing to do with that moment when they had come onto the beach, when she had suddenly felt noticed.Seen.

Most people only saw a curated version of her. She engineered it that way. She hid behind layers of perfect manners and pretty clothes, flawless makeup and carefully styled hair, protecting her thoughts and feelings with whatever image she thought they wanted to see. She was the Wave-Com Heiress or Neal Briggs’s Wife. Hunter Waverly’s sister or Peyton’s Auntie Vienna. She hated that she had to put up all these fronts. It was exhausting, but the nakedness of being herself was worse.

The wildness of the empty beach had called her out of her shell, though. For those vibrating seconds, she’d simply existed as part of the world. She was alive and unstoppable and beautifulbecauseof the marks that flotsam and time had left upon her.

Then she realized Jasper had been studying her in her unguarded moment.

How would he use it against her? How would he hurt and diminish her?

“I’ll save that for another day,” she said when they reached a creek that cut a wide swath across the sand. They couldn’t cross it without getting soaked to their knees, so they started back.

She surreptitiously looked at him as he walked in long, powerful strides beside her. His gaze moved constantly, ignoring the beauty of a champagne-like splash of a wave on a rock, or the majestic soaring of an eagle on an updraft. His watchfulness was unsettling, his rigidity adding to her tension.

“How long have you been here?”

“A month.”

Before that, he’d been missing for a year. If Amelia hadn’t learned she was pregnant, she would have gone to Chile to find him. She had rightfully smelled something fishy in the fact that Jasper’s employers had claimed he was dead, but refused to pay out his life insurance.

“You’re protecting your family by staying under the radar,” she realized.

His gaze raked her. “That’s one reason, yes.”

“AmIin danger?” She touched her chest.

“Not if no one knows we’re here,” he drawled.

“Only my lawyer, I swear.” She held up her hand as if taking an oath. “Hunter doesn’t even know what I’m doing, obviously. Otherwise, he would have told me this was not the place to ride things out.”

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