Sandra Chastain Read Online Free PDF

her freedom was more important than a father for their child. Now he wasn’t sure.
    Cade had seen Janie as a strong woman. He wondered if she’d been ashamed to let him know the truth when she’d gotten sick. Pixie would have been all she had then, and she wouldn’t have been able to give her up. So in her shame Janie had kept Pixie’s birth a secret. Cade felt he understood Janie better in death than he had in life.
    But there seemed to be nothing hidden about Rusty Wilder. Shocking though it might be, she was open with her plan. Now, with the firelight silhouetting her, Rusty waited quietly while he considered what she’d said. She must have expected him to talk dollars and cents, to ask for special concessions, to make demands. He didn’t.
    He allowed himself to consider her proposal, weighing the pros and cons, trying without success to erase the picture that flooded his mind—the picture of making love to the enticing woman before him.
    With the firelight behind her Rusty could see Cade’s face clearly. His expression didn’t change. The only indication she had of the war waging inside him was the intense look in his eyes. McCall was a realist too. She felt her respect for the mangrow. And that wasn’t planned either. This was to be a business arrangement, pure and simple.
    “And what about Pixie?” he asked in a voice that didn’t reveal the extent of his struggle to control his confusion.
    “Your daughter?”
    “Yes, my daughter. She’s already had one mother desert her. I have no intention of going into any relationship that has a built-in escape hatch without also ensuring that every possible means of success is given equal weight.”
    “That’s why we have a six-month trial period.”
    “And what happens at the end of six months if we don’t agree to make the arrangement permanent?”
    “Whatever you wish. You can leave, or you may keep the job and one of the tenant houses with no strings attached. I won’t expect you to take any interest in my child. No one will ever know what happened.”
    “No. I can tell you now that I won’t agree to that arrangement. I’m learning to be a father to the child I have. But if I should have other children in the future, I intend to be with them. So, if I become a husband again, business arrangement or otherwise, it won’t be a temporary arrangement.”
    “You can’t be serious.”
    “Oh, but I am. And there’s another condition to consider, Mrs. Wilder. I’m not an easy man to live with, and from what I’ve seen, living with you won’t be a cakewalk either. Maybe not now, but there may come a time when I’ll get married to give my daughter a good life, but I’ll never have children with a woman who doesn’t want me as muchas I want her. If the love isn’t there, the sex had better be.”
    “I don’t understand what you’re saying, McCall.”
    “Let’s spell it out, Redhead. You know that I fathered a child. What are you offering, on a personal basis? In other words, what assurances can you give me that marriage to you is worth giving up my freedom?”
    “I’ve already told you that once my child is born, I’ll make you a partner in Silverwild. You’ll have the kind of life you’ll never know otherwise.”
    “It’ll be
our
child, Mrs. Wilder, and money isn’t what I mean.”
    He was looking at her with such intensity that she could almost feel his physical reaction. There was a tightening in the corded muscles of his neck. He stepped forward and reached to place the coffee cup and saucer on the rough-hewn cedar mantle above her right shoulder.
    She jumped.
    As he drew his hand down from the mantle, he grazed her shoulder with his fingertips, sliding them around her upper arm, across her back to clasp her neck. When the other hand moved around her waist, her body gave an involuntary jerk. The fire behind her was nothing to compare with the heat arcing across the scant space now separating them.
    “What—what are you doing,