The Bad Boy's Baby (Hope Springs) Read Online Free PDF Page A

was easy to think she’d done him a favor by not telling him, because he didn’t want kids and she didn’t want to experience what her mother had, a guy telling her how much he regretted being with her. How much he resented having to deal with a kid—which was also something she felt very strongly about protecting Zoey from.
    While Cam’s opinion on having kids probably hadn’t changed, there was a big difference between telling herself he’d moved on and was pretty much unreachable so she was justified in never telling him, and seeing him every day and holding it back.
    She tried to convince herself that it’d be selfish to tell him just to rid herself of guilt, but it became painfully clear that he had a right to know…
    And she was going to have to find a way to tell him.

Chapter Three
    This was the moment Cam had been looking forward to least. The closer he, Heath, and Quinn got to his childhood home, the tighter his nerves stretched.
    To calm himself, his mind searched for a serene image. Over the years, he’d often imagined sitting at the edge of a clear blue lake, complete with mountain backdrop, to control his temper and keep the bad memories away.
    But the image that popped into his head now had nothing to do with nature. No, this one belonged to a woman who had brown eyes, a warm laugh, and had said that she could “screw and bang with the best of them.”
    He bit back a grin. He’d wanted to talk to her more, but she’d kept to the outskirts this afternoon, and every time he’d moved into her orbit, she’d gone off on another job, into another cabin, that Pete guy who’d interrupted them earlier in the day trailing after her.
    Cam didn’t care if they were together—well, he shouldn’t care. Ever since he’d seen Emma, though, he couldn’t stop thinking about her lips and the way she’d kissed him all those years ago. She’d surprised him, and he was so rarely surprised by people.
    Just forget about it, Brantley. She’s out of your league, even if she was drunk enough one night to forget it, and it’s not like you’re looking for a relationship anyway.
    Because relationships required trust, and all the ones he’d been in only proved women always had another agenda. There was a lot of trying to manipulate feelings involved, not to mention the trap questions that led to fights, and after the last one, he’d pretty much given up ever having another.
    He trusted his gut, his brother, and his platoon—more specifically, the other nine soldiers who’d been in his squad.
    Nine, until that last mission. Now there were only eight of them left, and seven with him gone… Cam pushed away those thoughts and concentrated on the reason he’d started this line of thinking in the first place.
    Sure, Emma seemed like the trustworthy type, but that didn’t change his stance on relationships, and he had other things to focus on. Get the lodge running, along with the hiking and hunting tours, and escape to the mountains as often as possible—those were the main goals. Well, and ensure Mountain Ridge was successful enough that he and his brother could make a living. While the army had given him a place to channel his anger, he’d lost a bit of himself with each mission, and the last one had made him question everything, including whether his squad was better off without him.
    While he knew he’d never get back to the person he used to be, he wanted to get back to someone who didn’t always think about exit strategies or how many ways he could kill a possible threat.
    Like right now, with the truck pulling up in front of the run-down three-bedroom bungalow where he’d grown up, the urge to bolt consumed him. Open door, tuck and roll, run down the street. As an exit strategy, not too complicated, but those always worked the best, unless enemy gunfire was involved.
    Judging from the look Heath gave him across the cab, he understood. “Dad really is doing pretty well. He’s trying, Cam.”
    “Is he