Lady Be Good (Wynette, Texas #2)(102)

“You might as well tell me,” he said. “You know I’ll worm it out of you sooner or later.”

“Oh, all right. Dex is—he—well, he wants a kid of his own and everything, but he’s still . . . he’s still willing to take a chance on me.” Her voice began to soften. “And if things don’t work out—which I already warned him they wouldn’t—he said we could adopt.”

“I see.” Kenny wasn’t done needling her. “That’s why you’re marrying him, then? Because you’ll finally get to be a mother?”

Emma watched Torie struggle between her pride and the truth. “Can you blame me? You know how much I want a baby. And he’s—I mean, for all his faults, any fool can see that he’ll be a good father. Except when it comes to sports, but I figure between you and me, we can make up for his shortcomings in that department. And then there’s . . . there’s just something about him.” She gave an uncomfortable shrug, clearly wanting to put an end to the conversation. “Something sweet and . . . Oh, I don’t know.”

“Your sister’s fallen in love with me,” Dex said, in case Kenny had missed the point.

Torie looked up at her brother and scrunched her face in embarrassment. “He’s just so damn good. And understanding. And he’s funny. Not funny like you and me, but funny in his own strange way. And he likes my emus. I don’t know how it happened—God knows I’m embarrassed about it—but I guess there’s no figuring the human heart.”

Kenny looked thoughtful. “Tell you what, Dex. Why don’t just the two of us work on your game by ourselves. Torie’s a terrible golf coach. She cusses too much.”

Emma knew Dex had been prepared to fight Kenny to the bitter end, but it was obvious by his slow smile that he was glad he didn’t have to.

“I’d appreciate that.”

As the front door closed behind the two lovebirds, Emma turned to Kenny. He hadn’t shaved, and his hair stood up in short tufts on one side where it was beginning to dry. Even so, he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, and she had to struggle to conceal the weakness that came over her.

“That was very nice,” she said briskly. “You could have made it much more difficult for Torie, but you didn’t.”

“What did you expect me to do? Lock her in the attic?” He regarded her searchingly. “Changed your mind about moving to a hotel, did you?”

“I simply decided to keep our private business private.”

“Good. I’ll help you carry your stuff into my room.” He turned to the stairs.

“No, thank you,” she told his back. “I’m staying where I am while we sort this out.”

He stopped on the second step, looked down at her, and sneered a spoiled brat sneer. “Like hell.”

It didn’t surprise her that he was being difficult about this, since he was difficult about everything that had to do with her. “It’s for the best. I don’t have any illusion that you’ll understand, but I’ve discovered that I don’t seem to possess the proper temperament for uncommitted sex.”

“We’re married.”

She fiddled with her wedding band. “Yes, well, that’s only a bit of paper. We’re not married in our hearts, are we?”

He descended one step and studied her. “I see where this is going. You want to tie me up, don’t you, in some needy little slobbering package you can take out and play with when it suits you, then tuck away when it doesn’t.”

Looking into those bleak, hard features, it was hard to believe this was the same lazy fool she’d met two weeks earlier. She spoke quietly, “You’ve just described your own motivations, not mine.”

“Yeah, right,” he scoffed.

“Oh, Kenny . . .” She sighed, threw up a hand, then let it fall to her side. “I can’t do this all by myself. You have to help a little.”

“I’m not the one locking the bedroom door.”

“But sex is all you want from me. Don’t you see how that hurts?”

“Even if that were true—which it’s not—I don’t see what would be so terrible about it. Since we didn’t go about this marriage in the regular way, we have to build on our strengths.”

“That kind of havey-cavey thinking might work with your old girlfriends, but not with me. Our sexual activities allow us to pretend everything is fine, but we both know it’s not.”

“Now, see, that’s where you’re wrong. Everything is fine if you just stop and let it be fine. You spend so much time worrying about what’s wrong with us that you never stop to consider what’s right.”

“Sex.”

“Is sex all you can think about? How about the fact that we enjoy each other’s company, that we like history, and Texas, and riding horses. We enjoy good wine, we both see right through Torie, Petie likes you, and you seem to be able to tolerate my father and Shelby. Neither of us is a snob, and we don’t have much patience with hypocrites. I happen to think there’s a lot that’s right between us.”

She’d always focused on their differences instead of their similarities, and she was so taken aback that she didn’t realize he’d been edging closer until he touched her elbow with his fingertips. Just like that, her insides turned to pudding.