Texas Hope: Sweetgrass Springs Stories (Texas Heroes Book 16) Read Free Page B

ma’am.”
    “Well, you got manners. That’s something.” She turned toward the kitchen with a quick glance at the clock.
    Scarlett would be back within an hour after taking the afternoon nap both Ruby and Ian had insisted upon once she’d entered her last trimester. The girl was wearing herself to a nub, and they were worried about her.
    Thing is, Ian would most likely come with her when she returned, protective to the last.
    My, my, my.

    “Sweetheart,” said the deep, sexy voice that never failed to make Scarlett shiver.
    She sighed at the vividness of the dream. They were in the clearing, Ian and she, their first time together in Ian’s special place.
    She smiled. Oh, the dance was such fun, thrilling and frightening and sweetly aching. Somehow she knew he was important in a way no other man ever had been.
    Then he kissed her, and the dream felt so real, so…
    A nip to her earlobe, a sweet sting…she sighed again. “Ian….” Her voice gave her away, how much she wanted him. She didn’t care.
    She sighed again, an undertow of moan as his lips traveled down her throat and his hand cupped her breast. When his long, strong fingers gently squeezed, her hips rocked in automatic response—
    A sharp kick to her middle popped open her eyes. Shot her straight into reality. “We’re not in the clearing.”
    The face she loved beyond any in the world smiled, brandy-brown eyes twinkling. “We could be.” His grin widened. “There are still a few bluebonnets.”
    “Really?” She jackknifed up in their bed. Gasped. “Ow.”
    “What is it? What hurts? Is she all right?” His big hand cradled her belly while his eyes scanned her face.
    Scarlett smiled and stretched. “I just forgot about the basketball in my middle.” She glanced down. “And you don’t know it’s a she.”
    The worry hadn’t left his eyes yet, so she stroked his brown hair shot full of red in the afternoon’s light shining through their bedroom window. “I’m fine. We’re fine. Don’t you have work to do?”
    “I worked while you were sleeping.”
    She stuck out her lower lip. “I’m not a child, you know. I don’t need a nap.”
    He bent and kissed her belly. “But you’re growing ours, and you’re so damn little.”
    He did top her by a full head, that much was true. “I’m getting huge. You won’t be bigger much longer.”
    His one dimple popped out. “Yeah, you’re a horse all right. Cleopatra has nothing on you.” He spoke of his prime mare, the one he’d pinned his hopes on for the horse breeding operation that was his dream, though cattle were his current reality and the ranch’s lifeblood.
    “I love you,” she said, cupping his jaw.
    His entire face suffused with emotion. “And I will never take that miracle for granted, not for one second.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “Take the night off,” he urged.
    “You know I can’t. Nana’s not getting any younger.”
    “You’re not getting any less pregnant. Let Henry cook. He’s pretty good now.”
    “He is, but he’s not ready yet.”
    “He will be by the time she’s born. And you have Spike now.”
    She nodded at the mention of her new studded and generously-tattooed pastry chef. “She’s great, and Henry’s coming along very well. But we’re working up the menu for Ruby’s Dream and we’ve added on stocking Jackson’s commissary. He has more of his people moving here by the day. I can’t slow down now.”
    “You have to.”
    Nothing got her back up more than being told what to do. In her entire wandering childhood with her single mother, she’d been the adult, even when she was still a little girl. She’d been a rising star chef in New York, had run her kitchens with flawless efficiency, and she didn’t need anyone ordering her around.
    Ian’s eyes sparked with the need to overrule her, and it didn’t help that she knew he simply wanted to protect her and their child from anything that could possibly go wrong.