Natural Born Daddy. Sherryl Woods

“That’s definitely the one. It appears to me that this breakup with Rexanne has hurt you more than you’re willing to admit. Perhaps it’s addled your brain.”

      His eyebrows rose a fraction. “Oh, really?”

      “Yes, really. Did you really love her, Jordan? Was I mistaken in thinking that she just came along at the right time, at the precise moment when you’d decided you needed a wife to complete your transformation into solid citizen?”

      He went very still. “Transformation?”

      Kelly almost chuckled at his expression. “I seem to recall a boy who ran away from home at seventeen to be a wildcatter on the oil rigs. Then there was the disruption you caused at the high school when you got on the public address system and performed a rock song you had composed. The lyrics, as I recall, had every teacher blushing. The principal had to take the rest of the day off, she was so stunned. And let’s see now, there was the summer you rustled a few of your own daddy’s cattle, so you could start your own herd.”

      A once-familiar impish grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Not fair,” he accused. “I was only seven when I did that.”

      “It was, however, the beginning of a highly notable career as the family rebel. I’m sure Harlan despaired of your ever turning into someone respectable.” She surveyed him closely, from the neatly trimmed brown hair to the tips of his polished boots, and regretted that his hair no longer skimmed his collar and his boots weren’t worn and dusty. “I’d say you beat the odds. A wife would complete the package.”

      “You make it sound so cold and calculating,” he objected.

      She shrugged. “If the shoe fits…”

      “It doesn’t. I’m thirty years old. It’s just time I settled down.”

      “When was it you decided you needed a wife?” she asked.

      “What do you mean, when?”

      “What was the precise date?”

      “I don’t recall,” he said stiffly. “Sometime last fall, I suppose.”

      “I’ll tell you precisely. It wasn’t fall at all. It was January 12, your birthday. You turned thirty with a worse midlife crisis than most men have when they’re forty-five. You made your decision. Then you looked around and chose Rexanne. When that didn’t work out, you did another survey of the candidates and decided on good old Kelly. Did you figure all alone out here, I wouldn’t put up much of a fuss before saying yes?”

      He had the grace to look embarrassed by her assessment.

      “Well, isn’t that exactly how it happened?” she persisted.

      “Something like that,” he agreed with obvious reluctance. He regarded her with a stubborn thrust of his chin. “That doesn’t make the plan any less sound.”

      “Exactly how far have you thought this through?” she inquired carefully, barely keeping a flare-up of temper in check. “Have you chosen a wedding date? Picked the caterer? Reserved the church?”

      “Not exactly,” he muttered in a defensive tone, which told her that was exactly what he had done.

      She was going to lose it and fling her steaming hot tea straight at him in another ten seconds. “Let me guess,” she said. “You were figuring on the same date you’d set with Rexanne and you figured the caterer could just change one of the names on the cake. The minister wasn’t likely to care who was standing next to you, isn’t that right?”

      “Those are just details,” he argued. “You can pick the date, the church, the caterer and anything else you want. The sky’s the limit.”

      “How thoughtful!”

      “You don’t have to be sarcastic.”

      “Oh, I think I do. When a man gets the romantic notion of letting me fill in for his originally intended bride, I definitely have to get a little sarcastic,” she said, clinging to her cup so tightly her knuckles were turning white. The idea of splattering that tea all over him was looking better and better. Unfortunately the stuff was cooling too fast to do much damage and far faster than her temper.

      “You have it all wrong,” he insisted. “It’s not like I plucked your name off some computer network. You and I have known each other all our lives. We’re compatible.”

      “Oh, really?” she said doubtfully. She seized on the most obvious thing she could think of to point out their differences. “Where did you plan on us living?”

      He seemed taken aback by the simple question. “In Houston, of course.”

      “I hate Houston,” she shot back.

      “No, you don’t,” he said, as if he knew her better than she did herself. “You just had a bad experience there. Paul colored the way you feel about the city.”

      Kelly gritted her teeth to control her exasperation. “No,” she said eventually, when she could speak calmly. “I disliked it from the first.”

      “Then why the hell did you move there?”

      She would not tell him in a thousand years that she had moved there to be near him. “Because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. There were opportunities there that didn’t exist around here.”

      “And there still are. Even more doors will open up to you as my wife.”

      It was the last straw. “Dammit, Jordan, don’t you know me at all? I will not use you or anyone else to gain acceptance,” she said tightly. “Around here I have made my own way. I have earned the respect people have for me.”

      “I never said you hadn’t,” he said. Now his exasperation was clearly growing by the second. “I’m just saying things will be easier for you as my wife.”

      She sighed. “You’ll never get it.”

      His expression suddenly softened and he hunkered down in front of her. His eyes were level with hers and filled with so much tenderness that Kelly wanted to gaze into them forever. “I do get it,” he said quietly. “One of the things I admire most about you is your fierce independence.”

      “Then how could you even think about taking that away from me and making me nothing more than your appendage?”

      His lips quirked with amusement. “Plenty of wives are able to exert their independence. Marriage isn’t likely to join two people like us at the hip. I am capable of compromise, Kelly.” His gaze caught hers. “Are you?”

      The question caught her off guard. “Not if it means losing who I am.”

      “I want to marry you because of who you are,” he declared. “Why would I want you to change?”

      “That’s what marriage does. It changes people.”

      “Not if they fight it.”

      She had no ready answer for that. She was beginning to weaken and he knew it. She could read the gleam of triumph in his eyes. With his hands resting on her thighs, with his masculine scent luring her, all of the old yearnings were beginning. Heat flooded her body and made her reason vanish. She had wanted Jordan Adams as far back as she could remember. She had ached for his touch, hungered for just one of the wicked kisses that he seemed to share so freely with other women.

      “You’ve never even kissed me,” she murmured without thinking.

      She hadn’t meant it as a dare, only as an observation, but Jordan was quick to seize the opening. His hands, softer now than they had been when he was working his father’s ranch, but still strong, cupped her face. His thumbs gently grazed her lips until they parted on a sigh of pure pleasure. His mouth curved into a half smile at that and, still smiling, he touched his lips to hers.

      The kiss was like the caress of warm velvet, soft and soothing and alluring. It made her head spin. The touch of his tongue