Baby My Baby (A Ranching Family) Read Free Page B

former husband’s jaw.
    Ash’s head shot to the side, but that was all that was disturbed by the punch that would have knocked any man in Elk Creek across a room.
    Then the big, powerful Indian again leveled his coal-colored eyes on her brother and, with a deadly calm, he said in his deep, rich bass voice, “I’m here to see Beth.”
    The instant the words were spoken, something made him look past her brothers into the dining room, where Beth had stalled. And just the way her gaze had been caught and held by his on that airplane the first time they’d met, so it was now.
    Did she heard him whisper her name or only read it on his lips? She didn’t know. But she knew he’d said it. And somehow she also knew it was filled with confusion. With pain. Maybe with longing....
    No, that couldn’t be.
    But she suddenly realized those things were alive in her, even if they weren’t in him. And she hated herself for it. For the fact that for just one split second it took away the anger she felt at him—for being there, for not having given her the life she’d been so sure they’d have together. Her anger at what would never be...
    “Go away, Ash,” she said in a voice that was barely audible.
    In spite of her brothers blocking his path, he took a step forward, as if he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—stay away from her.
    “Linc!” she called, sounding panicky, beseeching her brother for the help she’d requested moments before.
    Then she saw Linc’s hand go to Ash’s broad, hard chest to hold him back.
    And that was when she made her escape.
    From the man who had fathered her child.
    The man she’d divorced.
    The man who had, once upon a time, enchanted her.

Chapter Two
    A sher Blackwolf stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom of his rented log cabin in Elk Creek’s only tourist accommodation—the ten-cabin hunting lodge. With a hand on either side of the old-fashioned pedestal sink, he leaned close and turned his stiff jaw carefully from one side to the other, angling his head slightly to give himself the full view of his jawbone.
    There was soreness to go with the slight discoloration where Jackson Heller’s fist had landed the night before, but he’d live, he thought wryly.
    And a punch in the face was the only thing he’d gotten for his trouble.
    “Damn you, Beth,” he muttered under his breath, not really blaming Jackson—or Linc, either—for being upset and feeling protective of their sister. In spite of the fact that she wasn’t in need of protection.
    Even Linc, who he knew to be the more mild mannered of the two, had looked as if he wanted to bruise the other side of Ash’s jaw. But then, if he had a sister who was pregnant by her ex-husband and ran out of the house as if she were afraid of him, he doubted that he’d be well-disposed toward that ex-husband himself.
    Of course, she didn’t have any damn reason to be afraid of him. Or to run from him, for God’s sake. And he didn’t really understand why she had. Did she hate him that much?
    That thought twisted his gut, though he told himself the response was uncalled-for. Whether she loved him or hated him shouldn’t matter. Their marriage was over.
    But what he had every right to resent was her leaving him alone with his two former brothers-in-law glaring at him as if he were a mass murderer.
    For three hours he’d sat there facing them, none of them knowing what to say, none of them happy. Jackson downright mad, and Linc only repeating again and again that Beth had begged him to tell Ash to go back to the reservation and leave her alone, and suggesting that maybe that was what he should do.
    Ash had certainly spent more pleasant evenings.
    It hadn’t even been informative. Beyond the fact that their sister was pregnant, neither Linc nor Jackson knew any more than Ash did.
    And he had plenty of questions. Like why the hell she hadn’t come to him personally with news like this. Why she’d waited so long. Why she hadn’t told him before