camping on your property and you’re being targeted.” Rory wasn’t trying to scare her. His voice was steady steel.
“Okay. Now I know,” she retorted, chiding herself for being so quick to dismiss him.
Several more taps came.
“I’m sorry about what happened between us.” His voice was low and gravelly. It was the same voice that had been so good at seducing her.
And the same that had told her the two of you didn’t have a future, a little voice reminded.
“Fine. I’ll take this seriously. Consider me warned. Now, you can leave.” He deserved to know he was a father but not like this. A cramp nearly doubled her over. She made it to her bed and sat down, gripping the mattress, trying not to make a noise.
She’d sent for a doctor four times in her first trimester, thinking the cramps were a bad sign that something was going terribly wrong. Turned out they were normal and especially common in a first pregnancy.
Before she could stop it, the doorknob twisted.
“No, Rory! Go!”
“I just wanted to tell you face-to-face—” His jaw fell slack the minute his gaze landed on her stomach.
Defensively, she brought her hands around her large belly to cover it.
Rory stood there, frozen, as though unable to speak.
A few seconds ticked by before he seemed to gather his thoughts well enough to say something.
“Do you mind telling me when you intended to share the news that you’re pregnant?” he finally asked, and there was so much betrayal in his voice.
She was pretty sure he was decent at math but also certain he had no idea how far along she was or the timing of a pregnancy. And part of her realized he had every right to be angry.
“I’d say it’s none of your business but that’s not exactly true since you’re the father,” she said, watching intently for his response.
A look of complete shock darkened his features as his gaze practically bore through her. His jaw clenched and released a few times, and it looked like he was grinding his molars. His stare became a dare when he said, “Then marry me.”
“For what reason, Rory Scott?” There was a time when Cadence would’ve said yes in a heartbeat to a marriage proposal from Rory. But this one had the stench of obligation attached to it and from the sounds of it, anger. Just how well would that work out for her or the babies?
She’d seen firsthand the problems with that logic. Her father had married her mother because she’d been pregnant with Cadence’s older sister. Her mother had apparently been so miserable that she’d taken off when Cadence was still in diapers.
“You’re pregnant for one. It’s what a man does,” he stated, squaring his shoulders.
“We’re done with this conversation,” Cadence said, covering the hurt. His words were knife jabs to her chest. Because a part of her she didn’t want to acknowledge still had feelings for him. A whole lot of good that did. Of course, she cared about Rory. He was the father of her growing babies.
“No, we’re not anything, Cadence. You can’t run away from this.” His words had the effect of bullets from a machine gun, slamming into the target wildly and with inaccuracy.
“Why don’t you just leave again? Take off. You know you want to,” she shot back. The two of them were just as opposite as they had been when he’d broken off their fling and taken off five months ago. Nothing had changed. Neither one of them was different. Okay, that part wasn’t exactly true or fair. Cadence was different. She put her hands protectively around her belly. “It must feel awfully hot in here to you.”
“You’re trying to make it that way.” He had a lot of nerve blaming her.
“I’m sorry that you’re finding out this way. This is not what I had planned. None of this was on my agenda, actually. But the only thing a pregnancy does is make us parents, Rory.” She blew out a breath. This wasn’t the way she’d intended for him to find out and emotions were already running too high. Someone needed to have some common sense, and they both needed to cool it for a minute before her blood pressure careened out of control. “I need a drink.”
He shot her a look that dared her to have a glass of wine.
“Of water.” She stormed past him, needing to break the bad energy in the room. She stomped down the hallway, into the kitchen, and stopped in front of the fridge after grabbing a glass from the counter. She filled it while he made himself at home with the coffeepot. And then she whirled around on him. “What are you really doing here, Rory? I know you didn’t come to see me.”
“You’re in danger,” he said.
“That’s not answering my question,” she shot back. “You couldn’t have known that until you arrived.”
“Your brother called and offered me a job. I need the money,” he said.
Dalton and Dade walked into the kitchen, both stopped and stared at Cadence.
“I’m pregnant,” she said to her twin brothers, watching as their jaws fell slack.
“Hold on a second,” Dade said, looking like he was trying to absorb the news. It also seemed to dawn on him that this was the reason she’d objected to their calling in Rory for the job.
“You two?” Dade looked from Cadence to Rory and she was pretty sure she saw a look pass between her brother and Rory. Shock? Anger? Betrayal?
This was exactly the reason she’d wanted to keep their fling quiet. She hadn’t needed her brothers weighing in on her love life and they’d been close with Rory growing up. He’d wanted to tell them but she’d known better than to clue them in. Seeing the look of guilt on Rory’s face now had her questioning her judgment.
“I didn’t know anything about the pregnancy until ten minutes ago but I take full responsibility,” Rory said with a look of apology toward her brothers. He was trying to do the right thing by her and she could appreciate the act of honor. She was also realistic enough to know that a forced marriage wouldn’t make either one of them happy; she’d seen what could happen when two people had children who didn’t love each other. “I asked her to marry me but she turned me down.”
“Why would you do that?” Dalton asked Cadence.
“My personal life is off-limits to you and you.” She pointed her finger at each brother individually in case they didn’t get it that she was talking about both of them.
Dade started to argue but Dalton stopped him with a hand up.
“We have a bigger issue to deal with right now,” Dalton said.
Ella joined them with an awkward look at Cadence’s bump. What was that all about? She knew her sister wasn’t making a moral judgment. Dalton was right. There was another pressing problem to address.
“My family filled me in on what’s happening on the land with poachers. I get that someone’s on the land that we need to get rid of but I thought you didn’t want the job,” she said to Rory.
“Not you as in the family. I mean you as in,” he motioned toward her with his hands. “You personally.”
“What happened?” Dalton said as her brothers closed ranks around her. “And she’s right. You refused the job. So what are you doing here?” There was more than a hint of aggravation in his voice. Again, Cadence would deal with her family later. This was exactly the reason she didn’t want to be in Cattle Barge in the first place. Her siblings had always acted more like parents to her and she was a grown woman.
“I