The True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge (Gold Valley #14)(37)

“Oh, not for one second was I going to let you go to a store with a baby all by yourself.”

“Let me?” He turned around and faced her, still holding the baby. “Let me. Look, lady, I don’t even know you. We might have had a really good naked night together, but that doesn’t mean we know each other.”

Her face got all hot, in spite of her determination that she not let him fluster her. “Oh, I wasn’t going to suggest that we know each other, but, I will take control of the situation if I have to.”

“You don’t know this situation,” he said, angry now.

“Whatever. I’m going with you. And I’m installing the car seat.” She picked the car seat up, both pieces, and took it back outside, realizing the entire thing had been counterproductive, since she had just brought it in. She growled, and then stomped over to his pickup truck, opening it and finding that there was no backseat.

“Then we’ll take my car,” she said, heading over to her vehicle and opening up the back door. Then she heard him calling out from the front porch.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m getting ready to take her to the store.”

“Why in your car?” he asked.

“Because we’re not putting her in the front seat of your truck. If that was the only thing available, fine. But it is safer to put her in the backseat of the car in the appropriate position. So that’s what we’re going to do.” She groused the entire time, wrangling with the clip-in system, which was always a pain, no matter how easy they said it was, before emerging victorious.

“All right,” she said. “Give me the baby, and I’m going to get her put in the car seat and make sure that it’s fitted to her.”

He handed her the baby, but very reluctantly.

The little girl scrunched her face and scrunched her legs up like a little frog, and Mallory’s heart melted. She held her to her chest for a moment, closing her eyes.

Then she breathed out slowly. “Okay,” she said, talking to herself. She then set the baby down into the car seat, making sure that she was buckled in as tightly as she needed to be. And ensuring that her head and neck were in the proper position.

“Okay. I’m going to drive. You tell me where we’re going.”

And he got in the backseat. Folded that long, broad frame down into that tiny backseat, right next to the baby without even having to be asked.

In futility, she tried to imagine what would’ve happened if she had come home with a baby during her time with Jared. If someone had handed a baby to him.

These are extraordinary circumstances. If it was a random baby, Colt certainly wouldn’t be any better.

Even now he wasn’t... Paternal necessarily.

He was more like a giant, angry alpha wolf left in charge of a pup. Ready to take on the entire world to ensure the safety of the little one, but not necessarily tender.

But for some reason, her eyes filled with tears anyway.

“Okay,” he said. “It’s nearly an hour’s drive, but we’re going to head over to Tolowa. They have bigger stores, and they’re open later. Also, less likely to run into someone we know.”

“Yeah,” she said. “That is a funny little feature of small towns.”

“A shock to you?”

“I’m not from a small town.”

“I figured.”

“You know, I really didn’t think I would see you again.”

He chuckled. “I figured you were just passing through.” He cleared his throat. “Turn left. I know better than to screw around in town unless I’m very certain of who I’m screwing around with.”

“Screwing around,” she said. “What an interesting characterization of what occurred.”

“Was it something else?”

“I don’t know. But it wasn’t... It felt heavier than that. That’s all I have to say about it.”

“Fair.” The only sound in the car was the tires on the road. “Clearly we’re both going through some shit.”

“Clearly.” She nearly laughed. She saw a sign that said Tolowa was forty-five miles away and figured she could continue to follow those signs for a piece.

But that meant that she and Colt were stuck in the car together for all that time. Maybe now was the time for her to unspool all of her complicated feelings. The real reason that she was a midwife. That deep need to matter to someone. To be important. To be able to be the champion. And how that spilled over into her relationships. Into her life. And had given her pieces of the things she wanted, but never the actual real thing that she wanted. How she was a woman who had been in a relationship for fifteen years, and of course she wanted a baby, but...

She’d been pregnant once, and she hadn’t been the same after and why would she put them both through that again?

That was what he’d said.

Both times she’d brought it up.

She’d been unhappy, but she’d felt responsible. For so many things. For that horrendous loss and the unhappiness after, and he’d stayed with her, hadn’t he?

So even though she’d been unhappy with the decision to not have children, it had never actually made her leave, when it should have.

Why does she stay with him?

At that point she’d just been so bound up in him. In their life.