Cowboy's Baby. Victoria Pade

been poured like water that night. And the result of everything put together was that he’d gotten carried away.

      Okay, so taking Matt’s sister to a wedding chapel and marrying her on the spur of the moment probably qualified as more than just getting carried away.

      But that’s where the insanity part had kicked in again.

      By then he’d been aware that he was attracted to Kate. But maybe not how much. And if she’d been another woman he would have just tried coaxing her into spending the night with him.

      But she hadn’t been another woman. She was Kate. Sweet Kate. Matt’s little sister. And a virgin.

      Brady still didn’t know how she’d arrived at twenty-nine years old with her virginity intact. Or why. But when she’d confided in him that she was a virgin, he’d known he couldn’t just make love to her because they’d both been so inclined. There had to be more to it than that. It had to be special. It had to be ceremonious.

      And what had his liquor-soaked brain come up with?

      Marriage. They should get married….

      Brady stood under the pelting spray of the showerhead and let it beat down on his face as if it might wash away the stupidity in that reasoning from two months ago.

      But it didn’t help. What else but stupid could you call marrying your best friend’s virgin sister and then taking her to bed?

      Monumentally stupid.

      Especially when that sister woke up the next morning feeling about it the way Kate had.

      What a rude awakening that had been!

      Before he’d so much as thought about what they’d done, she’d been out of bed, frantic and ordering him to rectify it.

      Sure he agreed what they’d done had been dumb. But did she have to be so appalled? So outraged? So downright repulsed?

      His pride hadn’t just taken another strike, it had taken a full body blow—and then a knee to the groin when she’d gone on to let him know she was so horrified by having married him and slept with him, that he had to promise never to tell her brothers.

      Of course, telling her brothers was not high on his top-ten list of things to do, either. But again, it wasn’t an ego booster to know the extent to which Kate was disgusted by the whole situation.

      That was about when he’d decided he wanted to kick himself for having fooled around with her in the first place. For having put his friendship with Matt in jeopardy. For not having seen ahead of time that Kate wasn’t anywhere near as attracted to him as he’d been to her.

      And rebruised pride or no rebruised pride, Brady hadn’t been left with a doubt in his mind that the best thing for everyone was to do exactly what Kate had ordered him to do just before she’d run out of the room as if she couldn’t stand to spend another minute with him—dissolve the marriage.

      Which was what he had contacted a lawyer for the very next day.

      So now, as soon as she signed the papers and they filed them, it would finally be over and they could put it behind them. Once and for all.

      Finished with his shower, Brady got out of the stall and wrapped a towel around his waist. Then he used another towel to clear the mirror to shave.

      As he did, he couldn’t help wondering if, when he could put this fiasco behind him, he would also be able to get Kate McDermot off his mind.

      Because that’s where she had been for the past two months. Stubbornly, continuously, vividly on his mind. No matter what he tried to do to dislodge her.

      But would some simple paperwork accomplish that? Especially when seeing her again had done what it had done to him?

      Even surrounded by her family and at a distance, he’d still felt her presence the very instant she’d walked into the living room. It had been as if the temperature had suddenly risen. As if everything were brighter. As if all the colors around him were more vivid.

      And that was before he’d so much as glanced at her.

      Then he’d looked up and seen her for the first time since New Year’s morning, and he’d been struck all over again by how beautiful she was in that quietly understated way of hers. With those sparkling green eyes and that wildly curly honey-brown hair shot through with streaks of gold, and those tender lips he remembered kissing until they’d grown puffy….

      Damn if he hadn’t wanted to walk away from the rest of her family and go to her, take her in his arms, kiss her again the way he had that night….

      Brady nicked himself with his razor, drawing blood.

      “That’s what you get for thinking those kinds of things,” he told himself as he tore a corner from a tissue and pressed it to the wound.

      And why the hell was he thinking about this now?

      He’d already made one huge mistake with that woman and she’d let him know what she thought of him for it.

      So what good did it do to be wallowing in this damn attraction to her?

      No good, that’s what.

      “So shake it off,” he ordered.

      And that’s exactly what he was going to do.

      Even though a part of him was itching to do something entirely different. To do a little courting. A little charming. A little wooing…

      But that was the stupid, crazy part of him.

      Because if there was one thing he’d learned in the past year—and learned the hard way—it was that no amount of tenacity or persistence, no amount of wooing or wining and dining or gift giving, could change a woman’s feelings once she’d decided she didn’t want him.

      And Kate McDermot had made it more than clear the morning after their wedding that she didn’t want him. Or anything to do with him.

      So he was here to visit Matt, to look at some property, to get the divorce papers signed, and that was it.

      And if Kate McDermot could still rock his world just by walking into a room? Too bad.

      He wasn’t giving in to the attraction. He wasn’t letting it put him in any position where he could be dealt another emotional body blow the way Claudia had done.

      And if he and Kate had had one incredible night together? Obviously it hadn’t been as incredible for her as it had been for him.

      So that one night was all they were ever going to have together. Because he just didn’t need any more grief.

      And that’s all there was to it.

      Chapter Three

      “Go on in with your company,” Junebug Brimley told Kate, making a shooing motion with her hands in the direction of the door that led from the kitchen to the dining room.

      Junebug was the McDermots’ housekeeper. All six feet, three hundred pounds of her.

      “I want to help,” Kate informed her, trying to do what she’d decided to do to get through dinner that evening—make herself as scarce as possible by staying in the kitchen.

      “Don’t need your help,” the booming-voiced woman told her bluntly. “Raised a passel of sons who ate like bears comin’ out of hibernation at every meal. I think I can put on this dinner without too much strain.”

      “But we’re all here tonight,” Kate reminded her.

      All being those family members who lived in the big house built to accommodate them—her twin brothers Ry and Shane, their wives, Tallie and Maya, and Ry’s nearly three-year-old son, Andrew, Matt, Jenn and Kate, along with Bax—Elk Creek’s doctor who lived in town—and his wife Carly and his going-on-seven-year-old daughter, Evie Lee, plus Brady.

      “All or not, I can do it myself,”