The True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge (Gold Valley #14)(46)

She had put Lily in her little weighing apparatus earlier. What she did was place the baby in a shawl, which hung from a scale and provided an easy, cozy way to get a read on her weight. Lily seemed healthy. She was having a good number of wet and messy diapers, and she had a hearty appetite.

She seemed alert, but not too much. Really, she was an unremarkable newborn. Except, Mallory found her quite remarkable. She was already attached to the little thing, and claiming that she wouldn’t get attached... It was silly.

She could get attached to a particularly good cookie while she was eating it.

How much more was she going to get attached to this sweet little life?

“It’s okay. I’ll take good care of you until your mama can come back.”

She ran her fingertips over the baby’s fuzzy head. She was definitely ready for Colt to take a shift. But... He was probably tired.

He would probably want to get into the hot tub again.

And then she started thinking about him in the hot tub.

What wildly inconvenient streams of thought. Babies and naked men. It was a whole lot for her hormones.

And then she heard the sound of his truck, and her whole body did a weird little shivering thing.

One boot-clad foot exited the truck, kicking up dust around where he made contact with the ground. And the rest of the man followed. He looked dirty from the day’s work. His dark hat had flecks of some kind of clay on it, and his forearms were streaked with the day’s labor. He was carrying a grocery bag and another bag that looked like it contained foam cartons. Her stomach growled. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. This morning’s breakfast seemed a long way away. She stepped back from the door, so that she wouldn’t look overeager, and went into the living room, then paced back out into the entry. Just as the door opened.

“Oh,” she said, patting Lily’s back. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“How was... Work?”

He chuckled. “Great. How was... This.”

“She’s great,” Mallory said. “I mean, not that she can really do much right now. But I was able to get a lot of things accomplished in the house. It’s starting to feel very homey.”

“Well. Good.” And it was unspoken between them, whether she would spend the night down here or up at the cabin. She should go back to her house. She knew that. This odd situation of her setting up down here wasn’t really... Well, it was strange. Bottom line, it was a little bit strange.

He opened up the plastic bags, and inside were a few different things, but also, a carton of half-and-half.

“Oh my gosh,” she said. “You got me cream for my coffee.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You mentioned that it’s how you liked it.”

She was completely and totally stunned. “But you remembered. And you did something about it without me asking.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Is that weird?”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s... I mean... It was very thoughtful of you.”

“Mallory, you must have had a whole lot of people in your life that were bottom of the barrel.”

“Not a whole lot of people. Just one. For a long time.”

“Right. That tool you were with at the saloon the first night I saw you.”

“The very same.”

“I’m going to go get washed up. Feel free to start dinner... Without me.”

“Oh... I... I can wait I... I mean unless you want me to start eating without you. Because it’s not like we need to eat dinner together.”

“Come on,” Colt said. “This isn’t high school. Eat with me if you want—don’t if you don’t want.”

He turned and walked up the stairs, leaving her standing there. She did her best to remove Lily from the sling without waking her. She got her situated into the little sleeping cot that they had downstairs—they, dangerous way to think of things—and started to rummage around for plates. She didn’t touch the bag of food. She opened up the fridge and stared at the carton of half-and-half for a second. She felt... She didn’t know what. It had been a very nice gesture. But maybe she shouldn’t think it was so nice. Maybe it was not all that extraordinary, and the fact that it seemed like it might be was...

She heard footsteps behind her and turned around, her heart slamming against her breastbone.

It was cold. His hair was damp, and he was wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans. His feet were bare, and she didn’t know why, but that felt impossibly intimate.

It felt... Well, it was sexier than it had the right to be.

“Dig in,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

She closed the fridge, then went over to the food bags. “Is this the kind of thing you do... Okay, don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, taking the first container out of the bag. She opened it up and groaned. It was entirely full of grilled meat, onions and peppers. The next container had rice, and the following one refried beans. There were corn and flour tortillas wrapped in tinfoil in the next one.

“Hope you like fajitas.”

“I really do. Thank you so much.”

“You look exhausted.”

And she somehow didn’t even take it personally that he’d said that. Because it didn’t seem mean. It didn’t seem anything but an expression of... Concern.