The Rancher's Baby Read online

  “I had my secretary send you something.”

  “What did she send me?” Selena asked.

  “It was either a gold watch or a glass owl figurine,” he said.

  “What did she do, send you links to two different things, and then you said choose either one?”

  “Yes.”

  “That doesn’t count as a present, Knox. And it certainly doesn’t equal my very personal Christmas card.”

  “You didn’t have an assistant send the card?” he asked, sounding incredulous.

  “I did not. I addressed it myself, painstakingly by hand while I was eating a TV dinner.”

  “A TV dinner?” he asked, chuckling. “That doesn’t jibe with your healthy-lifestyle persona.”

  “It was a frozen dinner from Green Fair Pantry,” she said pointedly, mentioning the organic fair-trade grocery-store chain Knox owned. “If those aren’t healthy, then you have some explaining to do yourself.”

  She was starting to feel a little bit more human, but along with that feeling came a dawning realization of the enormity of everything that had just happened.

  “Will is alive,” she said, just to confirm.

  “It looks that way,” Knox said, tightening his hold on the steering wheel. She did her best not to watch the way the muscles in his forearms shifted, did her best to ignore just how large his hands looked, how large he looked in this car that was clearly too small for him. One that he would never have driven in his real life.

  Knox was much more of a pickup truck kind of man, no matter how much money he made. Little luxury vehicles were not his thing.

  “I guess I don’t get his bearskin rug, then,” she said absently.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you remember that appalling thing he used to have in his dorm room?”

  Knox shot her a look out of the corner of his eye. “Not really. Hey, are you okay?”

  “I am... I don’t know. I mean, I guess I’m better than I was when I thought he was ashes in a jar.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. Are you okay, Knox? I realize this is probably the first—”

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” he said, cutting her off. “We don’t need to. I’m fine.”

  She didn’t think he was. Her throat tightened, feeling scratchy. “Okay. Anyway, I’m fine, too. My relationship with Will... You know.”

  Except he didn’t. Nobody did. Everyone thought they did, but everyone was wrong. Unless, of course, Will had ever talked to anyone about the truth of their marriage, but somehow she doubted it.

  “How long had it been since you two had spoken?” Knox asked.

  “A long damn time. I don’t believe all the things Rich said to me before the divorce. Not anymore. He was toxic.”

  As little as she tried to think about her short, convenient marriage to Will and what had resulted after, she tried to think about Will’s friend Rich Lowell even less. Though she had heard through that reliable Royal grapevine that he and Will had remained friends. It made her wonder why Rich wasn’t here.

  Rich had been part of their group of friends, though he had always been somewhat on the periphery, and he had been...strange, as far as Selena was concerned. He had liked Will, so much that it had been concerning. And when Will had married Selena, Rich’s interest had wandered onto her.

  He had never done anything terribly inappropriate, but the increased attention from him had made her uneasy.

  But then... Well, he had been in their apartment one night when she’d gotten home from class. He’d produced evidence that Will was after her trust fund—the trust fund that had led to their marriage in the first place. And she needed that money. She needed it so she would never be at her father’s mercy again. The trust fund had been everything to her, and Will had said he was marrying her just to help her. She’d trusted him.

  Rich had been full of some weird, intense energy Selena hadn’t been able to place at the time. Now that she had some distance and a more adult understanding, she felt like maybe Rich had been attracted to her. But more than a simple attraction...he’d been obsessed with Will. It almost seemed, in hindsight, as if he’d been attracted to her because he thought Will had her.

  And what Rich had said that night... Well, it had just been a lot easier to believe than Will’s claim that he wanted to help her because they were friends. Trust had never been easy for her. Will was kind, and that was something she’d wanted. Not because she was attracted to him, but because she had genuinely wanted him to be a real friend. After a life of being thoroughly mistreated by her father, hoping for true friendship was scary.

  Selena had spent most of her childhood bracing herself for the punch. Whether emotional or physical. It was much easier to believe she was being tricked than to believe Will was everything he appeared to be.

  She and Will had fought. And then they had barely limped to the finish line of the marriage. They’d waited until the money was in her account, and then they’d divorced.

  And their friendship had never been the same.

  She had never apologized to him. Grief and regret stabbed her before she remembered—Will wasn’t actually dead.

  That means you can apologize to him. It means you can fix your friendship.

  She needed to. The woman she was now would never have jumped to a conclusion like that, at least not without trying to get to the bottom of it.

  But back then, Selena had been half-feral. Honed into a sharp, mean creature from years of being in survival mode.

  The way Knox had stuck by her all these years, the kind of friendship he had demonstrated... It had been a huge part of her learning to trust. Learning to believe men could actually be good.

  Her ability to trust hadn’t changed her stance on love and marriage. And she fought against any encroaching thoughts that conflicted with that stance.

  It didn’t really matter that Knox sometimes made her think differently about love and marriage. He had married someone else. And she had married someone else. She had married someone else first, in point of fact. It was just that...

  It didn’t matter.

  “I know this dredges up a lot of ancient history,” Knox said, turning the car off the highway and onto the narrow two-lane road that would take them out to her new cabin. Now that she had the freedom to work remotely most of the time—her skin-care company was so successful she’d hired other people to do the parts that consumed too much time—she had decided to get outside city limits.

  Had decided it was time for her to actually make herself a home, instead of living in a holding pattern. Existing solely to build her empire, to increase her net worth.

  Nothing had ever felt like home until this place. Everything after college had just been temporary. Before that, it had been a war zone.

  This cabin was her refuge. And it was hers.

  Nestled in the woods, surrounded by sweetgrass and trees, and a river running next to her front porch.

  Of course, it wasn’t quite as grand as Knox’s spread in Jackson Hole, but then, very few places were.

  Besides, grandness wasn’t the point. This cabin wasn’t for show. Wasn’t to impress anyone else. It was just to make her happy. And few things in her life had existed for that reason up to this point.

  Having achieved some happiness made her long for other things, though. Things she was mostly inured against—like wanting someone to share her life with.

  She gritted her teeth, looking resolutely away from Knox as that thought invaded her brain.

  “Which is now a little bit annoying,” she pointed out. “He’s not even dead, and I had to go through all that grief, plus, you know...”

  “Thinking about your marriage?”

  She snapped her mouth shut, debating how to respond. It was true enough. She had been thinking a lot about her marriage. Not that it had been an actual, physical
marriage. More like roommates with official paperwork. “Yes,” she said finally.

  “Divorce is hell,” he said, his voice turning to gravel. “Believe me. I know.”

  Guilt twisted her stomach. He thought they shared this common bond. The loss of a marriage. In reality, their situations weren’t even close to being the same.

  “Will and I were only married for a year,” she commented. “It’s not really the same as you and Cassandra. The two of you were together for twelve years and...”

  “I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Blessedly, distraction came in the form of the left turn that took them off the paved road and onto the gravel road that took them to her cabin.

  “Why don’t you get this paved?” he asked.

  “I like it,” she said.

  “Why?”

  That was a complicated question, with a complicated answer. But he was her friend and she was glad to be off the topic of marriages, so she figured she would take a stab at it. “Because it’s nothing like the driveway that we had when I was growing up. Which was smooth and paved and circular, and led up to the most ridiculous brick monstrosity.”

  “So this is like inverse nostalgia?”

  “Yes.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “I understand that better than you might think.”

  He pulled up to the front of the cabin and she stayed resolutely in her seat until he rounded to her side and opened the door for her. Then she blinked, looking up into the sun, at the way his broad shoulders blotted it out. “What about my car?” she asked.

  “I’m going to have someone bring it. Don’t worry.”

  “I could go get it,” she said.

  “I have a feeling it’s best if you lie low for a little bit.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Well,” he said. “Your ex-husband just came back from the dead, and both of you cause quite a bit of media interest. You were named as beneficiary of his estate along with four other women, and that’s a lot of money.”

  “But Will isn’t dead, and I don’t care about his money. I have my own.”

  “Very few people are going to believe that, Selena,” Knox said, his tone grave. “Most people don’t acknowledge the concept of having enough money. They only understand wanting more.”

  “What are you saying? That I’m...in danger?”

  “I don’t know. But we don’t know what’s going on with Will, and you were brought into this. You’re a target, for all we know. Someone is in an urn, and you have a letter that brought you here.”

  “You’re jumping to conclusions, Knox.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “but I swear to God, Selena, I’d rather have you safe than end up in an urn. That I couldn’t deal with.”

  She looked at the deep intensity in his expression. “I’ll be safe.”

  “You need to lie low for a while.”

  “What does that mean? What am I supposed to do?”

  Knox shrugged, the casual gesture at odds with the steely determination in his gray eyes. “I figured I would keep you company.”

  Three

  Selena looked less than thrilled by the prospect of sticking close to home while the situation with Will got sorted out.

  Knox didn’t particularly care whether or not Selena was thrilled. He wanted her safe. As far as he was concerned, this was some shady shit, and until it was resolved, he didn’t want any of it getting near her.

  All of it was weird. The five women who had been presented with nearly identical letters telling them that they had inherited Will’s estate, and then Will not actually being dead. The fact that someone else had been living Will’s life.

  Maybe none of it would touch Selena. But there was nothing half so pressing in Knox’s life as his best friend’s safety.

  His business did not require him to micromanage it. That was the perk of making billions, as far as he was concerned. You didn’t have to be in an office all the damned time if it didn’t suit you.

  Plus, it was all...pointless.

  He shook off the hollow feeling of his chest caving in on itself and turned his focus back to Selena.

  “I don’t need you to stay here with me,” she said, all but scampering across the lawn and to her porch.

  “I need to stay here with you,” he returned. He was more than happy to make it about him. Because he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist. She was worried about him. She didn’t need to be. But she was. And if he played into that, then she would give him whatever he wanted.

  “But it’s a waste of your time,” she pointed out, digging in her purse for her keys, pulling them out and jamming one of them in the lock.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But I swear to God, Selena, if I have to go to a funeral with a big picture of you up at the front of the room...”

  “No one has threatened me,” she said, turning the key and pushing the door open.

  “And I’d rather not wait and see if someone does.”

  “You’re being hypervigilant,” she returned.

  “Yes,” he said. “I am.” He gritted his teeth. “Some things you can’t control, Selena. Some bad stuff you can’t stop. But I’m not going to decide everything is fine here and risk losing you just because I went home earlier than I should have.”

  She looked up at him, the stubborn light in her eyes fading. “Okay. If you need to do this, that’s fine.”

  Selena walked into the front entrance of the cabin and threw her purse down on an entryway table. Typical Selena. There was a hook right above the table, but she didn’t hang the purse up. No. That extra step would be considered a waste of time in her estimation. Never mind that her disorganization often meant she spent extra time looking for things.

  He looked around the spacious, bright room. It was clean. Surprisingly so.

  “This place is... It’s nice. Spotless.”

  “I have a housekeeper,” she said, turning to face him, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and offering up a lopsided smile.

  For a moment, just a moment, his eyes dipped down to examine those breasts. His gut tightened and he resolutely turned his focus back to her eyes. Selena was a woman. He had known that for a long time. But she wasn’t a woman whose breasts concerned him. She never had been.

  When they had met in college he had thought she was beautiful, sure. A man would have to be blind not to see that. But she had also been brittle. Skittish and damaged. And it had taken work on his part to forge a friendship with her.

  Once he had become her friend, he had never wanted to do anything to compromise that bond. And if he had been a little jealous of Will Sanders somehow convincing her that marriage was worth the risk, Knox had never indulged that jealousy.

  Then Will had hurt her, devastated her, divorced her. And after that, Selena had made her feelings about relationships pretty clear. Anyway, at that point, he had been serious about Cassandra, and then they had gotten married.

  His friendship with Selena outlasted both of their marriages, and had proved that the decision he’d made back in college, to not examine her breasts, had been a solid one.

  One he was going to hold to.

  “Well, thank God for the housekeeper,” he said, his tone dry. “Living all the way out here by yourself, if you didn’t have someone taking care of you you’d be liable to die beneath a pile of your own clothes.”

  She huffed. “You don’t know me, Knox.”

  “Oh, honey,” he said, “I do.”

  A long, slow moment stretched between them and her olive skin was suddenly suffused with color. It probably wasn’t nice of him to tease her about her propensity toward messiness. “Well,” she said, her tone stiff. “I do have a guest room. And I suppose it would be unkind of me to send you packing back to Wyoming on your first night here in Royal.”

 
“Downright mean,” he said, schooling his expression into one of pure innocence. As much as he could manage.

  It occurred to him then that the two of them hadn’t really spent much time together in the past couple of years. And they hadn’t spent time alone together in the past decade. He had been married to another woman, and even though his friendship with Selena had been platonic, and Cassandra had never expressed any jealousy toward her, it would have been stretching things a bit for him to spend the night at her place with no one else around.

  “Well,” she said, tossing her glossy black hair over her shoulder. “I am a little mean.”

  “Are you?”

  She smiled broadly, the expression somewhere between a grin and a snarl. “It has been said.”

  “By who?” he asked, feeling instantly protective of her. She had always brought that out in him. Even though now it felt like a joke, that he could feel protective of anyone. He hadn’t managed to protect the most important people in his life.

  “I wasn’t thinking of a particular incident,” she responded, wandering toward the kitchen, kicking her shoes off as she went, leaving them right where she stepped out of them, like fuchsia afterthoughts.

  “Did Will say you were mean?”

  She turned to face him, cocking one dark brow. “Will didn’t have strong feelings for me one way or the other, Knox. Certainly not in the time since the divorce.” She began to bustle around the kitchen, and he leaned against the island, placing his hand on the high-gloss marble countertop, watching as she worked with efficiency, getting mugs and heating water. She was making tea, and she wasn’t even asking him if he wanted any. She would simply present him with some. And he wouldn’t drink it, because he didn’t like tea.

  A pretty familiar routine for the two of them.

  “He put you pretty firmly off of marriage,” Knox pointed out, “so I would say he’s also not completely blameless.”

  “You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead. Or the undead, in Will’s case.”

  He drummed his fingers on the counter. “You know, that does present an interesting question.”