Their Newborn Gift Read Free

dumped him unceremoniously in Molly’s chair. The girl fell on him with open arms. Max looked suitably disgusted.
    Lea’s mouth opened to protest, but then she snapped it shut.
    ‘What—she can’t be near cats either?’ Shock was giving way to sarcastic fury.
    Lea shot to her feet and spoke to Molly. ‘You play with the kitty, sweetheart.’ She crossed to the far corner of the veranda. Reilly followed.
    ‘She’s mine, isn’t she?’ He loomed over her intentionally. He wanted the truth from her almost as much as he wanted to smell her. Lea nodded and his chest constricted, bright light exploding behind his eyes. His mind worked furiously.
    ‘Did you not think I’d care?’ he asked. Lea turned away from him. ‘Did you think I’d tell you to get lost?’
    ‘I wasn’t looking for a relationship,’ she whispered back over her shoulder. ‘I saw no need for you to know.’
    ‘No need?’ She winced and he struggled to keep the edge out of his voice. He knew what impact it had on his toughened workmen; Lea was not one of them. ‘I got you pregnant, Lea. I would have stood by you. By Molly.’
    No matter what the world expected of him, he would have done that much.
    She spun. ‘ I got me pregnant, Reilly. There was no need foryou to stand by me. I was fine. I made the decision to go ahead with the pregnancy. It didn’t need a team.’
    There was something in her tone, like the particular look in a stallion’s eye when he was about to turn. It screamed a warning at him. Suspicion stained his words. ‘I can’t believe it took you five years to find me.’
    Her furtive glance told him it hadn’t. Ah. ‘You weren’t going to tell me.’
    Her chest heaved. ‘No.’
    ‘Nice.’ He meant her to hear his mumble.
    ‘Don’t you judge me, Reilly Martin,’ she snapped furiously. ‘If you cared so much where your DNA ended up, you wouldn’t have distributed it so liberally across the district.’
    Slap! Being true didn’t make it any less pleasant to hear. He could have little Mollies scattered across the state.
    In theory; he’d loved and left enough women.
    Anger boiled up furiously between them. ‘Did you think I was a good catch, Lea?’ He nearly spat the words at her. How stupid had he been to think he had been the reason they’d gone so long and so hard that weekend? To think that she might have felt the same indefinable connection he had, despite running out on him. ‘The heir to a country-western fortune. Had you been tracking the circuit long waiting to bump into me?’
    ‘I didn’t plan it! I might have made some bad choices five years ago, but that wasn’t one of them.’
    ‘You didn’t know who I was?’ He let the challenge roll out like giant rolls of straw shoved off the back of a feed truck. Her hesitation gave her away.
    Blush-heat raced along her cheekbone. ‘Everyone knew who you were, Reilly. You’d just brought home the rodeo champion’s cup. You were Reilly Martin, king of the Suicide Ride. I practically had to join a queue.’
    For what good it had done him. ‘I’m sure the challenge made me all the more attractive.’
    Lea’s eyes flamed. ‘You don’t really need much help with that, Reilly. I’m sure you’re not going to tell me I was the first bar-room pick-up you’d ever pulled?’
    Self-loathing added its weight to the discussion. ‘Not by a country mile, sweetheart.’
    The blush doubled. It intensified the glitter in her eyes, and did unhelpful things to his resolve. He dropped his face from her gaze. ‘I’m not the point of discussion here. You are. Or rather, Molly is.’ He met Lea’s eyes again. ‘You cheated me out of knowing my daughter.’
    Damn, that felt weird, coming out of his mouth.
    Lea paled and her eyes widened. She struggled against something internal. ‘No one forced you to have sex with me. Fatherhood is a risk you were taking every time you went with any woman.’
    ‘Particularly a deceitful, immoral one.’
    Pain streaked across her