A Rancher's Love (8 page)

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A Rancher’s Love ~ Capri Montgomery His body rested on hers as they both used the counter for support. Thank goodness everybody was already gone home because if anybody had walked in now they would see him with his pants around his ankles, her with her pants around her thighs and his penis still nestled inside her tight, warm channel.

“Wow,” she whispered. “You’re good at that.”

He chuckled. “Glad to know I can still do it.”

She laughed. “Oh please. The ladies must be beating down your door.”

“I haven’t been with a woman since Daisy died, Zoe.”

“Really?” Her soft voice caressed his ears so sweetly.

“Really,” he admitted. “Until you came along I hadn’t wanted to be with anybody.” He pushed one hand into her hair, sweeping the curly soft locks away from her face before placing a soft kiss onto her cheek.

He eased out of her and pulled her jeans up before fixing his own clothes. If they were going to have this discussion they were not going to do it while he was butt naked and still inside of her.

She turned around and looked at him. “Well, I’m clean,” she told him. He hadn’t even thought of that. They hadn’t used any protection. Was she on the pill? “I’ve only been with two guys in my lifetime.

Darin, my ex-boyfriend who now happens to be my stepfather,” she laughed hard. “That sounds so weird doesn’t it?”

“A little,” he admitted.

“Feels weird too. He’s my age.” She shook her head. “Clearly I won’t be calling him dad.”

“Clearly,” he nodded. “Who’s the other guy?”

“Oh…I was afraid you would ask that. I was…um…sixteen,” she made a scrunched up face that told him she was embarrassed.

“So was I,” he chuckled. “Daisy and I didn’t want to wait. We never told our parents. And she wasn’t pregnant, clearly, when we got married so that had nothing to do with it.”

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A Rancher’s Love ~ Capri Montgomery

“I didn’t think it had, Dean. You loved her with all of your heart and I know that. My situation is a little different than yours.”

“How so?”

“I was sixteen and he was twenty-seven.”

“Zoe! That’s illegal. That bastard—”

She held up her hand, stopping his tirade. “I was as much to blame as he was.”

“Zoe, men like that…”

“He was a good man. I liked him, and as a sixteen year old I thought I loved him. He was smart, and funny, and he paid attention to me; my mother never did. My father didn’t want me, but he, he wanted me.

He fought it. I know he did because he always kept telling me when I got grown we could see where things went. I didn’t want to wait, so I pursued him a little.” She laughed. “It didn’t take much pursuing. I stayed behind one day to help him clean up the kitchen and he was going to drive me home. He took me to a deserted spot, we started kissing and the next thing I know we’re hot and heavy. I didn’t know we were going to have sex that night, but I didn’t make any attempt to stop him when he pulled my pants down. I let him. We found secluded spots to go at it with each other for several months, but I guess he got scared of what it could do to him and his restaurant so he ended it. He asked me to leave. He said he would set me up in another restaurant if I wanted to keep working in the industry, but he couldn’t let me stay there.”

Dean could tell it broke her heart. He could hear it in her voice and see it in her eyes.

“Anyway, I left, started working for a little bakery on the island and voila, the pastry chef cometh,”

she chuckled. “Well, not in the way I wanted to back then. I so missed him, for a couple years. I think I missed the connection. Plus I loved the job.”

“So what happened to him?”

“He still owns his restaurant. When I was nineteen I ran into him at a family function. I thought it would be fireworks and heaven. But there was nothing. There was no spark, no attraction. I started wondering what I saw in the man in the first place, other than he was smart, and a really good chef and restaurant owner. Danny was nice, he was, but I think the me at sixteen and the me at nineteen were just 52

A Rancher’s Love ~ Capri Montgomery completely different people. If I could go back and talk to myself at that age, knowing what I know now, I would tell that sixteen year old that it wasn’t love and to just wait for it.” She closed her eyes and whispered those words. She opened her eyes. “You’re only a virgin once, Dean, and when you give that gift away it should mean something. At the time I thought it did, but…oh well. Hindsight right? I learned my lesson at the ripe old age of nineteen I realized that what I had been looking for with Danny was somebody who would love me since my parents didn’t. And I realized that I couldn’t look for love to define me. I had to make my own way; be my own person, otherwise I was just another version of my mother. She, instead of looking for love, looks for money. She’ll marry a checkbook in a heartbeat. And on some level I felt like her, not that I wanted his money, but I wanted love and I thought he was the only way…giving myself to him, being with him…I thought that would buy me love. So, I grew up,” she nodded. “I grew up fast and I realized I didn’t want to have to wait on anybody else to fill the void in my life. I put my career in focus and I made my own way. I found my own path and while that didn’t bring me love it brought me life. For the first time in my life, as an adult, taking care of myself, I felt alive.”

“Zoe, I’m so sorry.” He brushed his fingers against her cheek.

“Don’t be; I survived. And thanks to all the craziness in my life, and Bambi,” she laughed. “I found you. I think if we ever have children I’m going to tell them that Bambi brought us together.”

He laughed about the deer being the cause of their meeting each other, but he stopped when he realized she had started talking about children.

“Don’t freak out,” she held up her hand to calm him. “I’m not saying I want kids, or that I have to have them. Just, if it happens you know it could be a pretty cool story.”

“We didn’t use any protection, Zoe. Are you on the pill?”

“No,” the softness of her voice conveyed her uncomfortable feeling. She shook her head. “But I’m sure I won’t get pregnant. It was our first time.”

He scowled at her. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t mind making a baby with her. He had always wanted children, but he couldn’t believe her words. “You do know you can get pregnant even on your first time; right?”

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A Rancher’s Love ~ Capri Montgomery She shook her head no. “Danny always said I couldn’t. The condom he had in his glove compartment broke on our first time.” She shivered. “That was really weird.”

“It broke because it was in a hot car. Hell, didn’t anybody talk to you about sex?”

“No,” the sheer innocence in her voice made him want to reach out and hold her close, to shelter her, protect her. She didn’t seem to have much of that sheltering and protecting in her life. “My mother never talked to me about anything. Some of the girls at school told me some things. They told me about how to give a blow job,” she giggled. “And then I got older, when I was with Danny, I started researching some things online, but the site I found even said that it wasn’t likely to happen on the first time.”

He sighed and shook his head. “Honey, something not being likely to happen and something not happening are two entirely different things.” She was so innocent and somewhat naive. She knew what her body liked, but she knew nothing about the realities of sex. Hell, his mother had given him the sex talk when he was seven, right before his father told him if he knocked some girl up he was going to be a man and marry her no matter what his plans were they were going to change because marriage was going to happen whether he wanted it to or not.

“Well, I don’t think you need to worry. But if I do get pregnant and you don’t want it I’ll take care of it.”

He wrapped his hands around her arms and pulled her away from her leaning against the counter position. “What do you mean you’ll take care of it?”

Her eyes widened. “I just meant that I’d have options, you know. I can’t afford to be a single mother right now. And when the condom broke with Danny he told me about a doctor who could fix things if…”

her voice trailed off and he imagined that was because his face probably looked as angry as he felt. She might not have thought the man had used her, but he had. He wanted to go pound his fist against the bastard’s face himself. How had she made it to thirty-two and still knew absolutely none of the important things about sex? Why didn’t somebody educate this woman?

“You do not,” he nearly growled. “Take care of anything,” he could feel himself clenching his teeth.

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A Rancher’s Love ~ Capri Montgomery

“Dean, that hurts,” Zoe tried to pull away from his grasp and he realized he was also clenching her arms. He released her. With his anger he didn’t trust himself to hold on to her because he would risk squeezing too hard again.

“Do you know what it means when a guy says he’ll have a doctor take care of it? Do you?”

“I didn’t,” she uttered those words sheepishly, “back then. But I think I have an idea now.”

“And that’s okay with you? Getting rid of your baby; our baby; that’s okay with you?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I can’t raise a child on my own and if you don’t want it then what am I supposed to do?! I could put it up for adoption or something, but I don’t know.”

He exhaled sharply, trying to bring his temper under control. “I never said I wouldn’t want a child with you, Zoe. But hell…damn,” he slammed the palm of his hand against the side of the refrigerator and she jumped. “If you end up with my baby in there,” he pointed to her stomach. “You are not getting rid of it in any way shape or form. I know it’s your body and your choice, but hell…you just can’t do this to me!”

Her mouth fell open. He was angry and he was sure that anger was coming off of him in waves. It wasn’t even that he was angry with her. He was angry for her. She was thirty-two years old and in some ways she was still that sixteen year old girl learning things for the first time. “Your damn mother should have taught you something about sex,” he growled.

“I’m sorry,” she sighed. “I’ve made you angry and now you won’t want me either.”

“What?”

“That’s why everybody leaves, because of something I did. That’s what my mom told me when my dad left. It’s basically what Danny told me. He said it was my fault. And Darin, he preferred my mother over me. I guess there is something wrong with me. I guess they were right.”

“No they weren’t.” He moved with a slow, deliberate gait until he was standing right in front of her.

“Look at me.” He waited until she looked into his eyes. He could see the puddles of tears just waiting to fall.

“There is nothing wrong with you. They didn’t leave because of you. They were adults who should have behaved so much better than they did, but that is not your fault. And I do want you, Zoe. Even if I get angry I still want you.”

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A Rancher’s Love ~ Capri Montgomery The tears poured down her cheeks and he pulled her into his arms. “I’m sorry, honey. I just got angry.” He smoothed his hand up and down her back. “If you’re pregnant you don’t have to worry because we’ll face it together.”

“I can’t be pregnant,” her voice was nearly a high pitched scream. “I can’t be a mother. I don’t know how to be a mother.”

“We’ll learn how to be great parents, Zoe. Just think about the things your mother did and do the exact opposite.”

She laughed and he laughed with her. “Okay. But I’m not pregnant. I’m sure I won’t be.”

He wasn’t so sure, but if she wanted to believe that he could let her—for now. He would carry the burden of wondering if she was or wasn’t so that she didn’t have to carry it. He didn’t need to educate her on how to please a man, but he did need to educate her on how to protect herself.

“Do you know anything about your cycle?”

“It comes; it goes. It’s not regular, but sometimes it comes closer in date range than other times.”

He nodded. “So you don’t know how to tell when you’re fertile?”

“Never thought about it,” she admitted.

“I think we need to have a talk,” he pulled back and looked at her tear stained cheek.

“No. I can just look it up online. You can find anything on the Internet you know. If it’s that important to you that I know I’ll look it up.”

“Don’t you want to know?”

She shrugged. “My mother always said it wasn’t important.”

“Well what the hell did she think was important?”

“When I was seventeen she taught me how to calculate child support and alimony payments based on the number of children and the years in a marriage. She said that it was important to do a full cost 56

A Rancher’s Love ~ Capri Montgomery analysis otherwise she would have ended up with the short end of the stick. I told her I didn’t want kids or alimony payments.”

“And what did she say?”

“She told me to make sure I used a condom. So I always made sure that Darin and I had condoms.

Danny had used them anyway. Darin took some work to ensure regular use.”

He shook his head. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Zoe, but I hate your mother.”

“You don’t even know her yet.”

“I know enough,” he mumbled. “You are so wise in some ways, and so…”

“Stupid,” she filled in the blank, but it wasn’t with the right words—not his words anyway.

“Innocent,” he said. “You’re so innocent in other ways. I would have never expected that of a woman your age.”

“Deficient,” she sighed. “I know I don’t live up to the worldly knowledge that some people have, but…

He took her hand in his. “You’re not deficient. You’re innocent in some things, and in need of schooling in others. It happens. We’ll work on it. You need to know more about your body than you do.”

“I don’t know if you noticed, but I know my body.”

“Not just what pleasures it,” he winked. “You need to know everything about how you’re put together, and how everything works.”