Chapter 5
Five
Lily
The night was a blur of feedings. Just as I’d wake to Kellan’s cries, I’d find Eliot handing him to me. I’d nurse, and as soon as Kellan fussed after he ate, Eliot was quietly knocking on the partially open door. He’d take Kellan, and I’d drop into the deepest slumber I could remember. Repeat. I hadn’t been this exhausted in vet school.
I was dimly aware of the sun rising outside for the last two feedings, but when I blinked my eyes open, panic rose. It was well into the morning. The angle of light streaming through the windows wasn’t normal. Neither was the silence.
I scrambled for my phone. Eleven. Oh no.
Alarm pumped through my veins as I catapulted out of bed. Where were my kids? I bumped out the door and careened down the hall to Cali’s room. I’d left her alone with a strange man.
A hot, considerate, basically a miracle guy. But I didn’t know him.
What had I been thinking? My boss vetted him, but what did that mean? I should’ve?—
I came to a halt when I took in Cali’s bedroom. The longing was almost as strong as the relief. Cali was on her stomach on the bed, kicking her feet behind her. She had on headphones while watching her tablet.
She grinned at me. Only partially mollified, my gaze darted to the rocking chair. Eliot was snoozing with Kellan curled on his chest. Kellan’s face was turned to the side. He puffed air out of his mouth a moment before Eliot did the same.
Eliot’s ball cap was on the floor, and his rich, chestnut hair was ruffled. Dark lashes swept over his cheeks. His face might be lax while sleeping, but he still had a jaw carved from stone, only this late in the morning, it was dusted with dark stubble.
For the first time in months, a kindling of desire curled through my belly.
Nope. I could not go there. The guy had given me almost fourteen hours of sleep. No orgasms could compare, and I was wrong to be so attracted to a man I was cornering into a marriage.
I turned my attention to Cali and tapped at my ear before putting my finger to my lips.
She took her headphones off.
“Did you eat yet?” I whispered.
“Eliot made eggs.”
I nodded, and she put her headphones back on. He let me sleep, and he cooked. This guy might just be perfect. Maybe the trick to picking a man to marry was to get one who wasn’t interested in me.
How long had Kellan kept Eliot up?
I backed out of the room.
In the kitchen, embarrassment filled me. I usually got groceries on the weekends, but I had purposely let supplies dwindle. Less to move or trash that way.
I checked the fridge as if food would miraculously appear. There was a plate with Saran Wrap on it. Behind it was a bottle of lemonade.
Where did that come from?
“It’s yours.”
I yelped and jumped away from the fridge. Eliot was standing behind me. Slumbering Eliot didn’t destroy my nerves as much as sleepy, tousled Eliot. He blinked, and the corner of his mouth lifted. He held Kellan facing out. I got a drooly smile from my son.
“Morning, baby.” I held my arms out. I couldn’t look at Eliot. It would sear my retinas as thoroughly as staring at the sun. “Thank you. I haven’t had that much sleep in years.”
“I can see why you needed it. Little man likes to party at all hours.” He lifted his chin to the fridge. “I hope you don’t mind. I called in a favor from Vienne and Austen. They brought us some food.”
“I’m sorry. I was going to get groceries tomorrow if I was still in the house.” I grimaced. Not only did I fail to impress his siblings with my scant pantry options, but they had to ask why he’d been here that late. “Did you tell them?”
He nodded. “They’ll keep it quiet until we can explain. Which brings me to this weekend.”
“What about it?” Kellan was wiggling around and self-consciousness was digging in. I had woken up after being nearly comatose for fourteen hours. All night, I’d risen like a zombie to nurse and then went back to my grave. I hadn’t showered or brushed my teeth since I’d woken up. How bad did I look? Was my shirt crooked? It didn’t feel askew.
“Cody’s having a Fourth of July picnic on Sunday. We can tell everyone then.”
“Everyone? All at once?” Another Knight family gathering? He had a big family. I was used to the same, but my siblings were all currently single. They could be a force among themselves. If they had spouses, did the scrutiny and questions double, or was it different for Eliot? He wasn’t the youngest like me.
Could I plant myself in the center of a giant unit of supportive siblings and tell them I entrapped their brother for the next year? My heart rate crept up.
“It’ll be fine,” he said.
Did I look ready to bolt? I had nowhere to go, and the diaper bag needed to be reloaded with fresh diapers anyway. “There are a lot of you.”
“Yeah.” He huffed out a laugh. “I told you about Aggie and the inheritance money?”
I nodded. Kellan squirmed. The last time I nursed must’ve been around nine. He’d be rooting at my shirt. I swayed side to side with him.
“She got away free and clear. Barns—that’s my dad, Barnaby Knight—wrapped up our ranching and oil well operation into a trust. In order to get any inheritance, my brothers and I have to work for the family company.”
I didn’t understand. His family lived in Crocus Valley.
He nodded like he wanted me to know he was getting there. “Cody runs Knight’s Oil Wells. He used to be the accountant for the ranch, but with his growing family, we were able to justify hiring a bookkeeper that he oversees. And that’s the loophole Wilder used. We hired another guy, but technically, Wilder is still a ranch employee. He comes out to help with moving cattle and working them and the horses.”
“Right, you breed Arabians.”
“Then there’s Austen. Barns was actually a little considerate with him. He let Austen choose between a bigger inheritance if he got out of the army and worked the ranch, or he’d give him a smaller cut if he went on to get his full military retirement. Austen picked retirement.”
“That leaves you.” Was it all dumped on him?
“Yep. Mine’s a little more complex. I was ranch manager when Barns died, and if I want to keep my job and have a place to live, I have to stay ranch manager. My inheritance is my paycheck, like my siblings.”
“But it’s your only job. The others had different careers.” Sutton said Wilder had been a deputy in Buffalo Gully.
“Yep.” A dark shadow crossed his face. He was as tied to his place as I was mine.
“That sucks.” I wanted to live in this house, but he didn’t sound fond of his home. Dedicated, yes. Nostalgic? Nope.
“Sure does. But I’m telling you that to point out that my family will understand and help us out as much as possible. We’re going through it with our own trust.”
The idea crawled along the back of my neck. I wasn’t dragging his family into my problems any more than I had. “I’m fine. I mean, as long as we have the marriage certificate… How are we going to do that?”
“We can ask Sutton and Wilder what they did for their second round of vows.”
“They got married twice?”
“They were divorced for a year, separated for longer.”
“No kidding?” Sutton seemed to have her life pieced together perfectly, but she had made comments that alluded to how it hadn’t always been like that.
Cali wandered in, her headphones still on.
Talk of marriage would have to be tabled. Eliot and I had a lot to cover, and I needed time to figure out what to say to Cali. The divorce had been a lot to talk through, and occasionally, she still needed reassurance that it hadn’t been her fault. “Hey, kiddo. Hungry?”
“Yep.”
“I have to get groceries.” I looked down at my shorts and T-shirt. I’d have to nurse, then shower, or vice versa, and then get Cali dressed in something other than pajamas. Kellan was in his sleeper too.
“Go feed him and get ready.” Eliot went to the fridge. “I’ll figure out lunch.”
“You’ve already done enough. I’m sure you have family waiting to hear from you after you left the picnic last night.”
“They’ve gotten along without me for years.”
Why was it so easy to trust him?
Because, for once, I couldn’t see what was in this arrangement for him. I wasn’t a ready-made mom for his neglected daughter. I wasn’t a wife who would work at his clinic for cheap. And I wasn’t running his errands.
A girl could get used to this.
A girl should know better than to think anyone else can clean up her disrupted life.
“I’ve gotta ask one thing,” he said.
There it was. The ask. He’d tell me what he expected out of me. Should I tell Cali to give us a minute?
“I looked for food downstairs. What’s with the mice in the freezer?”
Lily
Flakes had been fed a thawed mouse before we left. His tank was in the main bedroom, a juxtaposition compared to the old-fashioned style of the space.
Cali had talked Eliot through the whole process. He’d been patient, but judging from the wary look on his face, he would’ve rather released the snake into the wild and flushed all the mice.
After I had showered and dressed, I fed Kellan and dressed Cali. Eliot had already heated up a frozen dinner for her. The retching sound she’d made over the gooey brownie made it as far as the bathroom, and I’d known exactly which kind he’d tried to serve.
Now we were at the grocery store. Eliot attracted attention from everyone we passed. Sometimes, he ran into someone who thought he was one of his brothers. With the Knights in town, it was like tall, dark, and handsome grew on trees.
“Ooh, Mommy. Granola bars.” Cali pointed at the shelves.
Eliot grabbed the box she was most excited about. He’d cleaned up, but his scruff was still in place. I couldn’t quit letting my gaze stroke over it. Instead of concealing his jawline, the dark stubble enhanced it. He had his ball cap pulled down low, and he was studying a box of granola bars Cali was asking for as he held Kellan in his other arm. The bars were name brand.
“You can put that back. We usually get a different kind.” A cheaper kind.
Cali let her shoulders hang. “Mo-om. These are better.”
Yes. They were. Those granola bars were definitely a case of generic not being the same. “You know we don’t eat those.”
Eliot was studying me. “How about I get them for me? I might share one.”
A large grin spread across my daughter’s face. “Yeah!”
He quirked a brow at me, and I shrugged. I knew what he was doing, and it made Cali happy. One box of granola bars wouldn’t hurt. He put the box at the end of the cart.
I shook my head, but my smile broke through. I circled around the aisle and went for the beef display.
“Nope.” He tugged the front of the cart, and I was helpless to push it after him.
“I need to get some hamburger.”
“I’ve got a place you can get hamburger. Let me make a call.”
Sutton had mentioned their freezer was always stocked with Knight beef, but Eliot wasn’t likely to haul a cooler of it in his pickup at all times. “You can’t raid from your siblings.”
“No, but Aggie’s husband has a lot of ranching cousins who’ll stock you up with good beef.”
My alarm was rising again. I’d love to buy from the source. I used to do it when I was married, but without a veterinarian’s salary, that wasn’t happening. “I can’t afford bulk fresh meat like that.”
“My treat.”
“Eliot—”
He turned, and I was pinned by his intense stare and Kellan’s dark-blue one. “If I’m staying with you through Monday, I’m going to need more than that freezer-dried food in the basement. You don’t want me diving into Flakes’s stash, do you?”
Cali giggled.
“I don’t have a small appetite,” he added. “My treat.” He turned back around. Since I was sick of discount beef, I followed him.
He loaded up the cart with more eggs, milk, yogurt, cereal, fruits, and frozen veggies than one man could eat in a weekend. My suspicions were growing before we reached the cashier. When it was time to pay, he handed Kellan to me and dug out his wallet.
“Eliot, you can’t?—”
Another dark, quelling stare. It should upset me, not make molten lava flow through my belly and circle down. I was not attracted to his high-handedness.
“He’s going to share his fruit snacks,” Cali whisper-squealed.
Didn’t all rugged ranchers want princess fruit snacks after a hard day’s work?
I waited until we got the kids and the groceries loaded into the car. He’d never given the keys back to me after he’d driven here. He put the cart away, but I stayed outside the vehicle.
As much as I wanted to indulge in being a passenger princess, I had to address his intrusiveness in the store. “I’m going to pay you back.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I do worry about it.”
He stopped next to me by the passenger door. I had to tilt my head back to look at him.
He waited until he had my full attention. “It’s okay to get a little help.”
“Not always.”
He held my stare, then his gaze traveled down my face, down my neck, to my collar. “It’ll bother me if I don’t, and it’ll sure as hell bother me if you try to pay me back. I don’t cook for more than one unless I’m running the grill at family events.” He skated his gaze away. “And those don’t happen in Buffalo Gully as much as they used to.”
That sense of loss in his voice matched the heavy air I’d first noticed about him. “Isn’t your family all up in your business?”
“Not anymore. When we were younger, my brothers did their thing and ignored me unless I wasn’t pulling my share around the place.”
Oh. Well… “What about Aggie?”
“She was usually upset she wasn’t included enough.”
My points were falling way short of their goal, but this had hit home. “I’ve had to pay for the help I get in the past.”
His gaze sharpened. “How so?”
“Carter’s parents were hypercritical. If I asked them to watch Cali, they’d ask him if I was doing my share around the house. Was I contributing? Could I handle the duties? Why was I always calling my parents or my oldest sister, Violet? So I didn’t.”
“And your family? Didn’t they check on you?”
“I think they got discouraged, but I do have to learn to live on my own.” Having a guy pay for all my groceries wasn’t the best example of fending for myself.
He arched a brow. “Most people have a support system. Your ex-in-laws sound like jackasses.”
A laugh sputtered out of me. They were jackasses, but were they wrong? “I agree, but I can do it. This is just a hard season in my life.”
“Lily Duke, you burn your candle at both ends. Sometimes you gotta let a guy blow on you.” He frowned, then his eyes widened. “Shit, not what I meant.”
A giggle left me, morphing into a genuine laugh that rang through the air. It’d been forever since I’d laughed. “That’s how I ended up in this situation.”
He grinned, and thankfully, I was laughing so hard I was already out of breath, or the view of him with a full smile would’ve stolen every particle of air I didn’t have to give.