Baby My Baby (A Ranching Family) by Victoria Pade Page B

hung up, thinking as he did that if there was one thing he was sure of, it was that Beth Heller didn’t think she needed him. For anything.
    Except maybe making this baby. She hadn’t been able to do that alone. And there was one other thing he was sure of, though he wouldn’t have admitted it even to his grandfather. He was still more attracted to her than to any woman he’d ever met.
    He leaned his head back and stared up at the ceiling, thinking about the night before.
    He couldn’t believe he’d actually kissed her.
    After the day they’d had together, with her letting him know his very presence irked her, he’d kissed her, of all things.
    And worse than that, he’d wanted to do a whole lot more than kiss her.
    Old habits die hard, he told himself. That was all it was.
    Sex had always been good. Toward the end of their marriage, it was the only time he ever felt close to her. The only time it seemed that he could reach her, understand her and what she wanted and needed and would accept from him. The only time he wasn’t so damn frustrated by her.
    In fact, making love to her had often been a way to overcome those other, less than pleasant feelings she’d raised in him. So last night, at the height of her confusing and frustrating him and making him feel helpless and useless and all the things he hated, he’d just naturally turned to what he’d always done before.
    “Right. As if you weren’t so hot for her you could have sizzled those steaks on your skin,” he said out loud.
    All right, it hadn’t just been a response to other things. He’d wanted her.
    She’d turned to face him and raised those big blue eyes to him, parted her lips in what had looked like an invitation, and at that moment—just as when they were married—nothing else had mattered.
    And when he’d kissed her, she’d kissed him back. One hundred percent.
    For a few moments, anyway. Before she’d ended it and acted as if she couldn’t even stand to look at him.
    The woman drove him crazy. She really did. He didn’t know what the hell she wanted.
    But he knew what he’d wanted.
    He’d wanted to take her upstairs to the nearest bed and make love to her until neither of them could walk.
    Ash swung his feet to the floor and jammed his hands through his hair in self-disgust at the fact that just thinking about kissing her flooded him with a fresh wave of desire.
    But he knew he had to control it. She didn’t want him. She didn’t want anything to do with him. That was obvious. Hell, she hadn’t even been able to pick out baby furniture with him.
    It was just too bad her total contempt of him didn’t cool things off inside of him.
    Because it was pure hell to be burning up with wanting a woman who couldn’t even tolerate him.
    * * *
    Beth was a little surprised not to find Ash there when she went downstairs around noon that day. She’d been down much earlier, having gotten up at the crack of dawn, fixed herself a light breakfast and then gone back to her room to work on Kansas’s wedding dress. Of course he hadn’t been around then. But she’d thought that on her second trip she’d probably find him waiting, the way he had been the day before.
    Not that she wanted him to be.
    But she’d thought his claim that he was sticking around would last more than one day before he answered some summons from somewhere.
    Or maybe he’d been as shaken as she was by that kiss and it had convinced him that their being together was not a good idea. Maybe it had driven him back to the reservation all on its own.
    And if she knew just a pang of disappointment at the thought that his time here had been so short-lived?
    She beat it down like a spark in a hayloft.
    If he had left Elk Creek, it was for the best, she told herself as she headed for the kitchen. It was just what she’d wanted. What she’d hoped for. Now she could concentrate on the baby and carving out a new life for herself back in her old hometown without giving Asher Blackwolf